Let the tramping begin

Ok, so fail on my part for keeping up on this blog. This past weekend I officially joined the tramping club, and we had a (very large) group hike up to the top of Mt. Cargill, which is just a 15 minute drive from campus. Since this was the first official activity of the tramping club, there were of course about 80 people there. I don’t know if anyone has ever hiked up a mountain with a busload full of people, but I don’t recommend it. It wasn’t really a hiking experience; we were just kind of herded along to the top. It was still fun though, I saw Abby and Lily for the first time since being here, and caught up with them. When we all got to the top, it was sort of drizzly and really foggy, so we weren’t able to see the city at all, and I’m pretty sure that’s the weather that provided this spectacular hacking cough that I’ve had all week. On the way down, we took a different route and went to the base of the mountain (we had driven up about ½ of it going up), where a delicious barbeque was waiting for us. It must be a New Zealand thing, but all during O-Week they had these tents that were giving out free sausages with bread for a bun with ketchup and onions, and they had them again for us… along with the staple choice of Tui or Speights. =) Sitting in our picnic was really interesting; we got to meet people from all around the world. That’s a really cool thing about being an international student here, I feel like half of the people I have met are international as well! We ate lunch with a girl from Switzerland, another from Brazil, and then walked back with a Kiwi and someone else from the states. And since it’s the tramping club, and we like walking (Julia’s reply to someone who questioned what we were saying), we walked back to campus.
On our way, Julia, Krystal, and I stopped at the steepest street in the world, Baldwin Street. Honestly, hiking up that was more of a workout than our hike. And it is steep! I forgot to snap a photo on the base of the street, but here is a sign explaining it stolen off the internet. I would love to take place in the gutbuster, but I think that happened earlier in the summer.

Spenst anyone?

Julia has some great pictures of us all; I will have to steal them from her sometime later. But these will do for now:

My flatmate, Julia. Notice the strategically placed water fountain!

I told Julia if we walked down backwards our calves would get a great workout... we had trouble climbing stairs the next day. PS, we're twins.

Oh, and walking back we saw this adorable kiwi stuffed animal.
So this weekend, we are tramping in Paradise... literally, it's called Paradise. Much more to come!

Oh yeah, and classes started. I'm now officially done with my Christmas break, just in time for everyone back home to go on spring break. I should probably go study minerals... dammit.