NEW ZEALAND!

So I've been up since 5:15 New Zealand time today, so I'm a bit tired. BUT IT WAS SO AWESOME! Like driving through a postcard/LOTR movie. We drove up the west coast from Queenstown to Picton. Then jumped on the Ferry to Wellington, then Auckland for two days. Will blog about what we did/ put up pictures in the coming days. Thanks!

Cleland Wildlife Park

So today was the day I PET A KOALA! That's right. I even have the pictures to prove it.

Ok, so I'd been wanting to go to this place since the day I got to Adelaide. So I was STOKED. And I wasn't disappointed. It pretty much was a giant park that just happened to have kangaroos and koalas in it. We had to wait a bit to have our "koala encounter". Which was actually pretty funny because half hour into waiting, this woman turns to us and says "we have to switch out the koala... a half hour of work for koala is like 9 hours". So then they had a changing of the guard. Or as we joked... the koala ran out of batteries... had to recharge it. It felt like matted wool, sort of like a puffy sheep.

We fed and pet all the different kangaroos.

Thanks Somer for these pics

They were everywhere!

We encountered several emus (hear pronounced emeuuuuu). They were actually terrifying. They are about the size of an ostrich. They growl. And it looks like they have eyes on the back of their head. A couple members of our party braved it and fed them. I declined.

We also saw wombats, wallabies, dingos, and Tasmanian Devils and other creatures.

Scratching its butt on a rock for about a minute = hilarious

the wallabies behind the fence wanted some food 

General Parkland.

All in all a great day! New Zealand next week

Strawberry Picking!

So my floor decided to go to Hahndorf up in Adelaide Hills to go Strawberry Picking. We all drove up there, paid and got our little baskets. It was good fun, we struggled to find nice strawberries and ate too many along the way. Afterwards we stopped in Hahndorf, which is a small German town. Sort of like Solvang but German. We walked around, went to the lollie shop in which I got the most massive jaw breaker. Many of these pictures aren't mine

Action Shot. Stolen Pic

Also went to Hallett Cove for geology. Here are some pics.

Netball/Debate

So on of the things I tried here is Australia is Netball. It's normally a girls sport and it's quite competitive. Well like most things here I decided to give it a try. It's like basketball without dribbling. It's also technically a "non-contact" sport which means you can't block someone closer than 3 meters without it being "an obstruction". Also, depending on which position you are limits where on the court you're allowed to go. Only "Goal Shooter" and "Goal Attack" can shoot or be in the shooting area. Also the hoops have no backboard. You can't actually move with the ball either, so you have to pass it within three seconds. There were a lot of rules. "Wing Defense" became my position of choice since all you had to do was defend and run after the "wing attack". Here's a video about it.

In terms of debating, St. Marks got 3rd. See my group was undefeated, but the other group lost every debate. But we made it to the finals and won being negative on "Australia should only provide aid to democratic countries". All in all debating was a great experience, learned a bunch and met some great people. On to trying out Footy!

At the Horse Races!

So, horse racing and going to "the races" is quite a bit thing over here. People dress up super classy (wear silly hats) and then proceed to get piss drunk. They're so popular there is one pretty much every weekend. So when I was invited to go to the races Easter monday, I jumped on it! You see, in Australia if the holiday falls on a weekend, the next weekday is a public holiday (god forbid they miss a chance to have a day off). So Good Friday and Easter Monday (even though it's sunday) are public holidays. So most of St. Marks went home to celebrate with their families. Anyways back to the races. We got up early sunday. Also a good thing about Oakbank races is that it's BYOB. So we got our goon sacks (boxed wine) and our heels and headed down. Worried that we would look less than classy, we got some fancy looking plastic cups which made it look like we were having champagne (and actually made the beverage more consumable), as well as brie cheese and crackers. It was an absolutely great day! We walked the grounds and bet on the horses. (2-3$ bets.... we're big spenders). Anyways I won twice! Making my winnings 6.50$. Cornish lad came through for me at the end. We didn't really know what we were doing, so we pretty much chose taking into consideration of the odds and the humor of the name of the horse. There were some crazy ones! Anyways here are some pictures.

Us with Fancy Cheese

Horses! 

Our Betting Tickets

Examples of Funny Hats (Looks like she could be in Star Wars....turns out she won the official Fashion At The Races competition... to each their own I guess)

Second Round of Debating Thursday!

Debating

I guess I should do a quick post about debating. So here at St. Marks, it is considered a sport. People all show up in their colors and cheer! Last time my team won. I have to say they had an advantage having me on the team, as our question was "Should The Drinking Age be Raised to 21?" and we were affirmative. We have this discussion all the time in the states and I knew what the negative would say :). Unfortunately we lost to Aquinas on whether or not weed should be legalized, but the judge was a bit harsh and staunch in his scoring.