Relaxed Style

For those of you with limited time, you can skim this blog as this was a relatively uneventful week. We have remained in the clear weatherwise over the last week. It hasn't been as warm, but considering this is the end of winter, I'm not complaining. The days have been around 10 degrees with nights dropping to 4 or 5. We had some rain but not constant like most of winter. Plus, daylight has lasted until 6:30 or later if it is clear!!

We had our first workweek happy hour on Tuesday. Tracey, the woman we are subletting from, lives in Christchurch (about a 3.5 hour drive). She teaches in the law school and commutes here for half the week, every week. She has been staying with friends when she comes but doesn't know many other people so we met her out for a drink. It was fun and nice to get out.

Thursday, wednesday US time, Mark and Michel had a baby boy named Drew Michel Conklin! See the link to their blog below for pics. They are all home now and everyone is doing well. Congrats to them. Thursday also saw Katie give her first lecture. One of her projects at work had her making a business plan on how to open a PT clinic so the students had an example and some idea of what was involved. From initial reports most of the 120 students were awake most of the time, better than my lectures.

This weekend we didn't have any set plans and decided to not decide on doing anything. Saturday we went the Farmer's Market as always. With the warmer weather, there are many more vendors than in the middle of winter and crowds are picking up. From what I read, the most popular market day is Christmas Eve with everyone stock piling for the family parties. After that, we checked out the Chinese Gardens. These just opened a few weeks ago and are pretty close to downtown. The gardens consist of one large pond with a bridge style walkway across, a waterfall on boulders feeding the pond, and a few pagodas surrounding with the usual Chinese ornamental woodwork. It would have been be a nice relaxing atmosphere, but it was busy. Most folks thought like us and wanted to enjoy the gardens in the decent weather. We plan to head back sometime and have a cup of tea.







Sunday was mostly lazy in the morning. For the afternoon, we decided on a tramp to Mt. Cargill. This is the highest peak around Dunedin and overlooks the harbour. I have heard from several people that the view from the top is the best they have ever seen. We hiked up to a point called the organ pipes. These are interesting rock formations that look like organ pipes, that's why they're called that. They look quite similar to the rock formations at Giant's Causeway in N. Ireland. The rock is formed from volcanic lava and when it meets the salt water, the solid state becomes hexagonal columns. Many had fallen but a few standing columns could be seen above the trail. We continued on to the top of Mt. Cargill knowing the view wasn't going to happen today. The entire top of the mountain was cloud covered. We could see the clouds whizzing by with the wind, but could not see more than 15 meters in any direction. After the trail became steep, we decided to hike back down without any great views or pictures to share. We will leave the top for another day.