What a weekend! So jam-packed. Friday after class a bunch of us went to the beach at mission bay, which was unbelievably beautiful and perfect. Just a small public beach but it had a cute little park and an unreal view of Rangitoto (volcanic island nearby) - swimming and tanning and the entire afternoon felt so crazy in relation to Hanover’s recent -20 degree weather. Lucky us! Saturday morning we got up bright and early to catch our bus to Rotorua. The town was quite different than I expected - it’s basically a hub for a bunch of adventure tourism, and there are geothermal hot springs everywhere so the town smells like sulfur a lot of the time. It was really cool. Once we got there we basically jumped right into some crazy tourist activities. Started off the day with zorbing, which is where you get in a giant puffy hamster ball thing with some water in it and hurtle down the side of a massive hill (one that looked almost identical to that old windows desktop background_. One of the weirder things I’ve done in my life, but so fun. You basically get tossed around and scream like a crazy person and then they pour you out of the opening and you run over to the hot tub to stay warm until the next round. Great stuff. After that we went luging, AKA taking a gondola up a mountain then zooming down on windy little paths on these tiny wheeled sleds that you could steer. So fun! Beautiful views from the top of the luge track. Dinner consisted of a LOT of delicious Indian food eaten in the park, then playing around like little kids in said park. (Because what’s the best activity after ingesting lots of curry? SPINNING!) What was great about the end of that afternoon was how uncomplicated it was. Our giant group of 15 or so had fragmented into a bunch of smaller clumps, and we had no solid plan for the evening, nowhere to be. We just played on the slides and swings and rope maze and it felt just as easy as it did as a kid. My only job was not booting up tikka masala and I accomplished that, so... Then, after trying not to cook ourselves in the hostel’s scalding-hot geothermal pool we ended up going out to eat street (this big pedestrian street that’s full of bars and cafes) that felt strangely like my visit to Austin, TX a few weeks ago -- it was outdoor with picnic tables and craft beer and a live band playing twangy americana music. Nice spot to hang out and watch drunk kiwis make fools of themselves in front of the band (Yes, I’m talking to you, blue dress lady). The next morning I reluctantly woke up at 7 to go running in the redwood forest with Elena and Terence, which was in some ways a bit of a failed mission but a totally awesome morning nonetheless... What was supposed to be a shorter run ended up being 10/11ish miles, mostly on roads, and very little time in the redwood forest itself. BUT we did find a really cool trail through this geothermal post-apocolyptic wasteland on the way there. It reeked of sulfur but the ground was bubbling right near the trail and it looked so otherworldly and surreal. We only had about 10-15 min in the actual redwoods since the way there and back took so long, but it was really beautiful and I’ll definitely want to spend more time there when I come back to Rotorua after this program ends. But I was really happy I got a long-ish run in. I hadn’t run for over an hour-ten in quite some time so it was nice to add some more mileage than my legs had been used to for a bit. After our run, we showered and checked out and then had an UNREAL brunch at the Fat Dog café. Singer and I split two dishes between us – an eggs/bacon/toast situation and french toast with fresh fruit, and I also had a flat white.
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