"She'll Be Right, Mate."

First and foremost – Happy Easter! I hope all of your holidays were lovely.  

*Just a quick note – the next blog post is bound to be packed with more stories, as my flatties and I are headed out for a South island road trip this Tuesday.  Here’s the itinerary: Lake Manapouri, Queenstown, Wanaka, Mt. Cook, and Lake Tekapo (where rumor has it is the best place to stargaze in the southern hemisphere).   I’ll keep you posted(..Blogsted?)  and take lots of photos!*

1) Easter Day

I have found a great church in Dunedin: Knox Church.  It's right by Uni, and is a classic, beautiful old church with a great congregation.  Parts of the service are in Maori(which I love hearing), but most is in English.  It's very unifying to hear hymns that I sang at home sung in NZ accents - a nice reminder that God is present all over the world! I went there on Easter day for a beautiful, joyous service including singing Handel's "Messiah", and meeting some cool new people.  

My new church - so beautiful!

Maybe I've had a good role model (this means you, mom!), maybe it's genetic - I love having tons of people over to celebrate a holiday.  So, this Easter, I cooked up an Easter dinner and had about 13 people over to share.  It turned into a bit of a pot-luck (how Lutheran!) which was nice as well!  Although it is sad to be away from one's family on Easter, I was very thankful to have my NZ family nice and close.

2)Abseiling

When one thinks of hooking herself to a tree with ropes and bouncing down the mountain using only said ropes and a harness, it doesn't sound too fun.  Spoiler alert: It is! It is so fun!  I went repelling at Long Beach, and was lucky enough to have a beautiful day to do it.  While repelling (aka “abseiling”), I was able to sit back in my harness, halfway down the mountain, and see what felt like the whole ocean.   On the way home, we found a long rope swing over the sea (which of course was swung upon), hidden caves, little paths, and an all around neat place. 

3) Real Life "Hunger Games"?

As I write this, I look out my door to see my flatmate Magnus shooting his homemade bow and arrow into the woods.  Yes, homemade (apparently they teach you to make these in school in Norway)!   We've all been practicing to become master archers.  We've also surprised a few people, explaining that meat was oh so expensive in NZ, so now we're hunting our own free-range future meals.  False.  This is not actually true.

However - you never know what's going to happen around here!

Since this has happened, everyone's been especially nice to Magnus...

That's all for now, folks!  Love to you all, Christina <3

View from our roof - not too bad, eh? (: