Living Dunedin Style.

Off to Class

I have never experienced weather similar to what Dunedin has had in the last couple of days. Referring to it as "raining cats and dogs" would be an understatement. I hardly left my flat to venture out into the weather because it was so bad (finished both the Entourage and Walking Dead seasons... which I am definitely a tad embarassed about). But Ofcourse these crazy kiwis had to take advantage of this extreme weather! I guess they figured it would be a good idea to surf the Leith river, which runs directly through the Otago campus. I cannot begin to describe the shock I was in when I first heard this. Leave it to the kiwis to casually surf the raging river after three days of non-stop pouring rain.

Surfing the Leith. The freestyle club gave that
guy $50 bar tab for being an idiot...

Fortunately the weather for the last two days has been beautiful. I decided to get out of the house and take a bike ride (an awesome Kiwi lent me a bike for the semester!) I planned to take the trails up to the top of Signal Hill and enjoy the nice view with the amazing weather. Turned out I took the wrong trail to get to the top and practically walked up more than half of it... Wasn't that much fun getting up there (Took over an hour and a half). Finally I made it to the top! And don't the clouds roll in and block the entire view of the city. At this point I was not the happiest of sorts (Kiwi lingo). I headed back down the same way I came up (which was the proper way) and the crazy 15 minute ride back down through the trails made the whole trip worth it!

Last time I was at Signal Hill

What was waiting at the top for
me this time

Last night a group of us did the Speights Brewery tour (which is a local beer, brewed right out of Dunedin). It was real interesting learning about the process of creating the liquid gold. It was a 45 minute tour of the factory, seeing the production lines, the raw materials and learning about the history (blah blah blah). Finally at the end of the tour, the group gets an unlimited "sample" of the brewery products for 20 to 30 minutes. All 9 of us eager hooligans thought we died and gone to heaven!

The Raw Materials

Looking back on it now I really do feel kind of bad for the rest of the other non-university students that were on the tour. It definitely turned into a competition right away between our group to see who could be the "King of the Speights tour" (or the biggest idiot hogging the beer tap). It actually worked out in our groups favor to go on the tour with an older crowd because they distracted the tour guide (who gets paid to drink beer!) while we subtly tried to drink the factory dry. Overall we had 36 minutes of unlimited drinking and within that time I placed second in being the closest one to the drunkest idiot (my parents would be so proud). It was such a blast, I highly recommend the tour.

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
-Dave Barry

After the tour our flat had a large gathering of sorts with a hat and wig theme! I would say between the tour and some of the ridiculous hats that I got to witness afterwards it was a fantastic night! (Poor Laura left her laundry on the clothes line to dry, forgot to take it down and some jerk stole her size 7.5 skate shoes!?!)

I'm now off to bed, got to wake up early for the Silver Peaks tramp we are doing tomorrow.

GOODNIGHT