Flat Hiking Trip To Silver Peaks

My most recent trip was a hiking excursion with my four flatmates. We did an overnight hike to Silver Peaks, which is only about a 20 minute drive from our flat to the start of the trail.

We woke up early Saturday morning (Early meaning 8 am) and started our trek. It took us about 3 ½ hours to hike to Jubilee hut, a tiny hut in the mountains where we were sleeping for the night. We dropped off our packs, grabbed a quick lunch and then went on an off-track hike to find a cave. We had a general idea where it was, but it took us about 2 hours of wading through waist high grass to find it. The cave was really neat, it was right on the mountainside and it had a platform, bench, and shelf built in to it for campers to use. There were a few hunters (they were hunting wild pig, there’s really not much to hunt here in New Zealand) staying in it for the weekend, so we chatted with them for a bit and then made our way back to the hut. Then we made the best dinner EVER, although everything tastes ten times better after a full day of hiking. We had a pasta, ground beef, vegetable stew, and it was so delicious. For dessert we had Tim Tam slams, my new favorite cookie and way to eat it. You take a Tim Tam, which is just a chocolate wafer covered in chocolate, bite off the ends, stick it in warm water and try to suck up the water through the Tim Tam, so it’s like the cookie is your straw. The hot water goes in to the cookie and makes it melt in to gooey chocolatey goodness, which you then pop in your mouth and enjoy. Voila! That is the Tim Tam slam.

The next day we had to make our way back, but the only way back to the car was via the Devil’s Staircase, which was just as brutal as it sounds. It was an incredibly steep trek that went straight up and up and up. My kiwi host Werner, who had never been on a hike as big as this, was less than thrilled to go up the Devil’s staircase, and halfway up he turned to me and said “The next time someone suggests we go hiking remind me to say NO”. But by the end of it I know he was happy to have conquered the Devil’s Staircase.

Overall it was a really fun weekend and all 5 of us made it through in one piece. It was a great flat bonding experience and it made me realize how much I’m going to miss Heather, Sammy and Erin next semester, as I am the only one in the flat who is staying for 2 semesters.

Here are a couple of pictures from the trip: a group picture at Jubilee hut, where we spent the night, a scenic picture of what we were surrounded by as we hiked, and a picture of the hut from a distance, if you look closely you can see it, it's the tiny little house in the midst of the mountains.

The Tunnel of Love

I successfully finished the peanut butter challenge! And I did so in a mere 30 hours, leaving 18 hours to spare. Yes, i ate 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of peanut butter in 30 hours...and it was awful. My stomach was so mad at me, and I have barely had any peanut butter since. However I did make 5 dollars, although in retrospect I am not entirely sure it was worth it...

As for my other various activities, everything is going pretty well. I had to drop field hockey because it conflicted with swing dancing class, and I couldn't leave my partner hangin! Swing dance started yesterday and I learned how to do the Charleston. By the end of the course my goal is to go to a jazz concert and wow the audience with my swing dancing skills. We'll see what happens.

For this post, I thought I would do a profile of my flat. Over these past couple of months I have gotten to know my 4 other flatmates quite well, and since they are such a part of my life here I thought it only appropriate to write about them. We (and by we I mean pretty much just me) call our flat the 'Tunnel of Love' after the Bruce Springsteen song. To do this profile I wrote a series of questions and handed them out to my flatmates to answer. Here are the questions:

1. If you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring 3 possessions what would they be?
2. Would you rather have a mullet or a rat tail? (background info: these 2 hairstyles are unfortunately very popular here in New Zealand)
3. If you could have one super power what would it be?
4. Tell an embarrassing story that happened to you.
5. What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?
6. What skill/talent are you contributing to this flat?
7. Anything else you feel like sharing?

Flattie 1: Erin (Erin is a boy, I guess in Canada boys spell their name this way) from British Columbia, Canada answered:
1. one of those restaurant umbrellas, a machete, and a pirate hat.
2. Rat tail for sure. waaaaaay cooler. Basically just sweet as. (background info: in New Zealand they add the word 'as' to the end of words for emphasis. It's like they are making an extreme comparison but just can't be bothered to finish it. For example if something is really scary they might say it's 'creepy as' instead of just finishing the sentence and saying that it's 'creepy as a (insert creepy thing here)' so in this answer Erin was making fun of this New Zealand popular phrase)
3. The jumping (and soaring) ability of a fly
4. So this one time I was playing catch phrase, and my word was 'Anne Frank' For a clue I said "She's deaf and blind!"
5. Organize and play in the world's first hockey game on Pluto
6. It's hard to pick just one...but I would have to say my fashion sense
7. No I don't know Joe from Canada, and anything less than 5.5% is not really beer.

Flattie 2: Sammy from South Carolina answered:

1. guitar, self-replenishing food chest, desalination device
2. mullet
3. ability to stop time
4. I crashed off my bike and face-planted in to a rock (background info: This happened while in New Zealand, Sammy ended up getting stitches on his face, poor guy!)
5. Fly
6. music or extreme mountain biking
7. I got the blues

Flattie 3: Heather from Washington (state, not the capital) answered:
1. company, food (bread specifically), and exercise shorts
2. rat tail
3. animorph
4. One time I slow-motion fell off my bike in to a bush in front of an old folks home
5. Any gymnastic activity
6. comic relief and a knack for shenanigan creating
7. I don't like showering or sleeping

Flattie 4: Werner, my Kiwi host for the flat, (New Zealanders call themselves kiwis, and international students are housed with a New Zealand host and a mix of other international students) who is actually a native of South Africa (he moved here when he was 11)
1. pikachu, laptop, coke factory
2. rat tail
3. teleportation
4. signed up as a kiwi host
5. use the force
6. organization skills
7. I need coke!

And finally, my answers to these questions:
1. an alpaca, cookies, and a snuggie
2. a combo of both hairstyles
3. power to move things with my mind (like Matilda)
4. One time this past summer (as in the year 2009) I asked someone what Bob Marley was up to these days...they replied that he's been gone for quite some time now.
5. try to swim from New Zealand to Antarctica
6. my vast knowledge of computers and other technologies
7. I am aware that my name rhymes with the word "geeze"

There you have it. Now you know the Tunnel of Love! Here is a picture of me and my dear flatmates: