10 October

It's been almost a month since my last post and I'm sorry to anyone who's foolishly still reading this.

Thursday will be my last day of class here in Dunedin. After that I will have my finals on the 8th and the 10th of November. That's right, a solid month after lectures ended.

Until then I'll be spending my time travelling around New Zealand. We're going to drive up the West coast this weekend into next week, stopping in various national parks to see the sights and do some things. A few friends want to skydive over the Franz Josef Glacier park, I'm sure that will be amazing. I haven't decided if I want to beg for money to do it. From the glacier we'll be driving up to Abel Tasman National Park, then coming down through Christchurch, effectively driving the perimeter of the entire South Island. This West Coast drive is famous for being ridiculously gorgeous and I'm super excited to be cruising through it. I'll have to make sure to bring my camera charger. I hope this memory card is big enough for everything I'll want to photograph.

After that I'll probably start my studying a little bit for the few days I'll be back in Dunedin. At some point towards the end of October we'll be heading back down to the Fiordland to hang out with a family that became close friends with one of my good friends. They offered to take us in for a little while and take us on some super cool adventures that rural kiwis do. Some of the things I remember mentioned are hunting and hiking. It sounds awesome. While we're down that way, a couple of us might try to make our way back to Queenstown and do the Nevis Bungee Jump. I'm not sure I'll like leaving New Zealand without doing it anymore.


In case I don't get on here and blog for awhile again, I'll outline for you lonely readers what the rest of my trip looks like.
After that time back in the Fiordland I'm trying to be back in Dunedin for at least a week before my first exam so that I can effectively cram a whole semester of two classes into my brain. After the liberation of completing finals I'll be immediately leaving for the North Island, where a friend and I will be cruising around looking at cool stuff. Most notably, the Waitomo Glow Worm caves and Mt Doom (from LOTR). Of course, there are also a bunch of other things we'll be checking out, since we'll be out for around a week.
Then once we're back, I'll have about a day to start getting my departure affairs sorted out before I'm off on another adventure to Australia. It'd be kind of silly to be in this part of the world without getting to that country. There we'll be driving from Brisbane to Sydney (which is only about a 10 hour drive, but we'll be taking our sweet time getting there). In Sydney, all four of us have tickets to the Stereosonic concert, which is a giant electronic musician show with some of the biggest names of the genre. I know it's going to be off the chain.
I get back from Aus on the 30th and I'll have just a few more days in Dunedin as I leave the country for reals on the 4th of December. I'll be flying out of Christchurch to Nadi, Fiji where I'll have a nice 5.5 hour layover. Just enough time to get some souvenirs so I can pretend I spent real time there. Then I'll be flying to Maui where I'll be spending some quality time with the grandparents. They're getting kinda old and I missed the family vacation to Maui this summer. Since it's on the way home, I figured I could stop there for a little while. I'm sure I'll be real tired from all the travelling and fun that I will have been having in that past month, so these old folks will be just my speed.
I'll be back in my favorite place in the world, Portland Oregon, on December 10th. I know it's not going to be as good as I remember it, because frankly the last time I saw the place it was sunny. And though when I think of Portland the faces of all the people I love come to mind, I know that I won't get to immediately see them when I arrive. The ones that really count will be there, no doubt, but the others will be off at school still. Maybe my parents were right in telling me to stay an extra month out here, not that I'm complaining I guess.

But before any of the cool stuff I mentioned can happen, I need to finish two lab reports. Just two, and there's nothing else. I guess I have some other minor stuff that needs to get finished, but for the most part, that's it. Wish me luck.

Hope October treats you all very well.

David