Sumner Beach and the Lookout: Our First out-of-town Experience!

Wes, Ella and I in the backseat

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Since Glen has a car, and he had already been to Sumner Lookout on his drive down from Rotoruwa (North Island), he offered to take Nick, Ella, Wes, and I up there before we headed to Sumner Beach to meet up with a bunch of other Uni kids that wanted to take advantage of the beautiful weekend. The drive up was CRAZY! The roads are SO NARROW and I don't think any Kiwis even know what a guardrail is. The drops off the side are just sheer cliffs and the space between the edge of the car and the drop-off was probably as little as 4 or 5 feet at some points. Creepy! But it was totally worth it; the lookout was amazing!

Once we got down to the beach, I somehow managed to avoid getting a sunburn (average burn-time here is 8 minutes according to the lady in charge of our international student orientation). The beach was gorgeous, and lots of other Kiwis were out there enjoying the beautiful day. There were caves and all sorts of weird rock formations all along the coast line. The water was pretty chilly; all the surfers were wearing wetsuits, but some kids were bearing the chilly water in just bathing suits. It was funny to watch families there; all the little kids have accents and people play rugby instead of football. There were also a group of teenagers who were slingshotting a tennis ball at four guys lined up about 20 feet away; I think the idea was to catch the ball, but no one succeeded in catching it with their hands although they took it in a few other places....I took a video, but I can only do pictures on this website. Too bad, because it was really entertaining! It's weird though, because Ella and I saw some guys doing the same thing over on the Ilam fields at school; they were just wailing each other with a tennis ball they pelted at each other with rackets. It's pretty funny to watch, but I definately wouldn't want to play. :)

The view over Christchurch

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A little later in o-week, there was a hypnotist, and my flatmate Dave got hypnotised. He was pretty funny; he was a ballerina, thought he was riding a horse in a race, fell out of his chair, and square danced to Shania Twain. Some of the other people were hilarious too; one guy thought he was James Bond and another guy danced and talked like Elvis. I still can't get over hynosis; it's so weird!!

Classes start on Monday, so hopefully that will all go according to plan. I picked up a Greek mythology class to replace my bio one, and I'll be taking a Maori class and a 300-level psych class (complete with lab: joy). But I only have to take three classes (or "papers") while I'm here so I have plenty of time to play!!