Halswell Quarry

25/02/07

The morning after the Amazing Race, 3 buses filled with Ilam Village students headed to Halswell Quarry for a 'bar-b.' The location used to be an old site which was mined and later turned into a regional park. Here's what the Christchurch website has to say about it:

"Halswell Quarry is a unique 60.4 hectare park, with an unusual combination of recreational walks, historic sites and botanical collections. Important historic buildings from the quarrymen’s days are being preserved and the once noisy rock face is now a quiet amphitheatre facing onto a parkland of short walks and wetland ponds.

Halswell Quarry also features six sister city gardens and a Canterbury botanical collection. Tracks, viewing points and three car parking areas have made the park increasingly popular for walking and other recreational activities over the last decade.

Halswell Quarry, which played a major role in the development of Christchurch, ceased production in 1990 after 140 years of quarrying. Its fine blue-grey stone can be seen in many of the city's prominent buildings including the Canterbury Museum and Provincial Council Buildings."

for more info: http://www.ccc.govt.nz/parks/NaturalAreas/halswellquarry.asp

The park is close to the Kennedy Bush Walk, a long and popular tramp. We hung out all afternoon and were treated to a traditional Maori hongi meal. This is a style of bbq-ing where the meat is cooked in a hole in the ground and covered which brings out a nice smokey flavor. Now a days, however, they have giant grills which replicate this process and can cook larger quantities faster. Overall it was just a nice day to relax, take a short hike up the quarry, and eat some good food.

part way up the trail.

over-looking the quarry.

from here we could see the campus library and Christchurch.

pretty landscape.

pretty flowers.

Mik threw a liter of water on Cal...who subsequently chased Mik around only to sprain his own ankle...bad Mik.

Mik giving Traci an Italian massage...

Dante showing up Mik... I swear he was just rubbing in the sunscreen...

happy kids.

THE (MOST) AMAZING RACE!!! ...EVER

24/02/07

As giant Ilam Village icebreaker, the RAs (mainly Cal, Meg's flatmate) put together a mock-up of tv's Amazing Race. There were three stages, with the first beginning at 10 am. The challenges that each flat had to complete were at each station (usually cross campus which meant lots of running) could be mental or physical. Sometimes the route information to the next pit stop was ambiguous making it difficult to find exactly where to go. Almost 25 flats participated, not mine however, so I joined Flat 50 (Meg, Amy, Alex, Mic, but not Cal who is an RA and thus cannot play). After each stage a certain percentage of teams were cut. Our flat finished 7th, then 4th, and eventually...FIRST!!! Here are some of the highlights:

-counting the number of right triangles in the library square...over 160 in case you were
wondering
-carrying a recycling bin of water around a track w/out spilling any of it
-eating 3 pizzas as fast as we could at the beginning of the 2nd stage
-running
-running all holding hands
-taking a nasty spill in the Ilam Gardens, all in the name of victory
-transferring buses into Christchurch and subsequently jumping ahead of every other team
-running through Cathedral Square and scaring tourists...and locals
-screaming the national anthem at the art gallery and scaring Japanese tourist (we are
permanently frozen in their scrapbooks forever)
-arriving back at the office so far ahead of schedule that no one was there to great us nor congratulate us on our win
-winning a free dinner at Spice Traders cafe on campus...and trying to exchange our free meal only to find that it's not open past 5 pm on weekends

*more pics to come, of the winning team nonetheless.

2nd place finishers celebrating.


3rd place went to 3 flats who got stuck all on the same bus coming back from the city. they linked arms and came walking to the finish together singing singing 'lean on me'...what happened to the competition?


here it is! Dante out sprinting Adam to avoid getting last place!


the masses enjoying the end of a long day.


cavallo*!!! twice! when will you learn Alex?

*for those of you who are not currently near an Italian, cavallo means horse, and is a "traditional" drinking game where if one individual is caught drinking alcohol at anytime, using his/her right hand, cavallo can be called out. said individual must now chug/skull/drink quickly the rest of his/her beverage. if cavallo is called out by someone when an individual is drinking with the proper, left hand, or does not currently have the alcohol in their mouth, the person calling cavallo must now chug/skull/drink quickly, their own beverage. now that you are reading this you are fully aware of this game and must adhere to the rules unto death due you part...so says Mic**.

**this game is entirely Mic's doing and in no way represents the actual views or opinions of other cultures. it is a horribly addicting game and should be taken with a grain of salt, unless of course you are near Mic or anyone else who has been brainwashed by him...which now includes almost all of Ilam Village.


3rd place having some cold ones.

As for me: one bottle of champagne, a couple glasses of wine, a few beers, one Eurotrip movie, and the first two MacGyver episodes later, I completed my well-deserved celebration with my winning team.

Sumner Beach

20/02/07

A 40 min bus ride can get you to the coast. This is one of the two popular beaches that all the cool kids have been hanging out at. Word on the street is that New Brighton is better, but Sumner did just fine for a relaxing day after hanging out in the city the day before.

looking up into the hills.

Meg & I taking a stroll.

check out that beach stud! his name is dante!!!

the Pacific, like I've never seen it before.

Just Arriving

13/02/07 - 15/02/07
Pre-Flight

Thanks to Josie I arrived safely at LAX where I ran met up with Dante and Megan. We also ran into Mira which turned our 747 into a mini Skidmore campus.

Dante, Meg, & I shortly before boarding our flight. possibly the 3 most excited Americans on the flight...in part due to the complimentary beverages.


a view of the Pacific between Auckland & Christchurch.

16/02/07 - 17/02/07
IES Orientation: Day 1

After a quaint party hosted by the Ilam Village RAs upon arrival, all the IES students stumbled back to their rooms in an attempt to reclaim the loss of time. The next morning we got on our bus with tour driver, Jeff, who took us on our 2 day adventure. We headed towards Springfield and stayed at Smiley's Hostel which was luckily in crawling distance of Bona's (the town's pub). On the way we stopped in Darfield to view a sheep auction. The locals told us how to decipher who had the best wool while we meticulously cleaned the sheep poop off our sandals. Then we headed to a sheep farm where they fed us an intense meat-filled lunch: steak, sausage, and lamb.... so much food and so good. Then we went off-roading, jet-boating, sheared sheep, and got to feed and pet some alpacas, goats, and merino sheep. That night we ate an amazing dinner and headed off to the pub.

we stopped by a sheep auction on our way towards Springfield. lots of sheep + small square footage = sheep jumping over each other.


there was even a spotting of the North American Narva.



after a short jaunt in a the 'unimog' (massive off-roading vehicle) we end up a 1000 ft or so up on the ridge. Dante pensively captures the scenery.

there are up to 9 meters of loose fertile soil laying on top of bedrock and glacial deposits across the country.

this is one of the nimble jet boats we rode in which are designed for high speeds in extremely shallow water.

action shot...shred the gnar!

the water source would be the snow melt from the southern alps, so clean you can drink from it.

360 spin time!!!

alpaca anyone?

this would be the stud of the herd...and i just kissed him.

our guides giving us a demonstration of the amazing control he has over his dog to herd sheep.

typical tourist shot, but hey, it's New Zealand (sheep out number humans about 14:1).


Traci's birthday @ Bonas with the IES kids... and Bones

18/02/07

IES Orientation: Day 2

Everyone fortunately made it to breakfast the next morning after spending a long evening celebrating Traci's birthday and mingling with the locals, especially Bones (the self-elected mayor of Springfield...). Our first stop was Castle Hills which is a beautiful scenic area littered with hundreds of limestone boulders left by the glaciers. There are over 3,500 boulder problems marked in guidebooks... and that doesn't even cover all of them which have yet to be logged and/or discovered. You could say I felt more or less somewhere between a deer in headlights and a kid in a candy shop. Then we ate lunch in Arthur's Pass where we watched some cyclists ride from coast to coast raising money for cancer. The Pass is extremely windy, narrow, and not cyclist friendly. One of New Zealand's major fault lines runs directly through the continental crust of Arthur's Pass and has been active in the past several decades. Our last stop was further into the Southern Alps where we got to spend a little bit walking through the trails checking out the rainforest and got a nice view of some snowy peaks.

castle hills... Jeff, our bus driver, only gave Mira & I two hours to play... clearly not enough time.

the first boulder (i couldn't resist)

the final scene from the chronic-WHAT-cles of narnia was filmed just around the corner.

happy narva -:)

speechless...

there is a fence encircling the area behind me which the DOC (department of conservation) protects. i am sitting in an area which is private property but used publically and well-respected.

a local told me i was working a v9 with a v4/v5 standing start variation... i'll have to come back to this one.

still trying to work it. perhaps next time i'll bring my shoes.

a fun little ditty.

nice view from the top.

a satisfied dante.

a very elated narva.

a bit of the rainforest in Arthur's Pass.

the Devil's Punch Bowl.