South Island and Volleyball

Well after my overnight stay in Palmy, I took a taxi to the airport on Sunday morning.  The day didn't start too well, as my original flight scheduled for 10am to Christchurch was cancelled, and Air New Zealand put me on an 11:40 flight to Wellington and a 1:10 flight to Christchurch.  She assured me that I'd make the flight to Queenstown that was set for 3ish.  It probably would have been ok if my Christchurch flight was on time, but it wasn't, so the first time I see my dad in NZ is him frantically asking me where i've been and rushing to try to make the flight.  It was too late to check in so I missed the flight.  I had a brief moment of panic, as my parents didn't have a phone and if i couldn't find a flight that day, it would be rather difficult to contact each other.  Luckily, however, I was able to get on a different flight a little over an hour later.  I thought I was pretty resourceful telling them what was going on via my voicemail greeting.  Clever ay?  haha

After that near disaster, the trip was pretty awesome.  We stayed at a sweet bed and breakfast in Queenstown:  they had wine and cheese, pesto and crackers every night, and some absolutely delicious, fresh brownies at the front desk.  Our first full day in Queenstown we did a jet-boating/funyaking up and down the river, which was cool (in both the literal and figurative ways).  Apparently the surrounding mountains were the site of a lot of the Lord of the Rings scenes, as well as some scenes in the Chronicles of Narnia.  I haven't seen the LOTR, and I don't remember what part of Narnia it was in, so it wasn't as cool as it could have been.  I should have done some movie research before I came here...

The next day we took a plane ride to Milford Sound, which was quite gorgeous, and then took the "gondola" up the mountain to see a Maori show.  We missed the show we were originally going to see, so we had some wine and cheese while we waited.  Anyone picking up on a theme here?  The show was cool:  I went on stage with some other people and did the "poi", which is basically a dance with a ball on the end of string, and the Maori music is so awesome (they're great harmonizers).  

On Wednesday we packed up the car and headed for Kaikoura, a small beach town on the east coast.  I have to say it was quite hilarious watching my parents go to the wrong side of the car every time we got in... I'm not sure they'll get it before they leave...  In Kaikoura we went whale watching, which, despite a quite boring sperm whale, was pretty cool.  After we saw the awe-inspiring flip of the tail by tutu the sperm whale, we saw a pod of orcas.  Now those are some cheeky little fellows:  they seemed to be putting on a show for us, swimming around and underneath the boat for several minutes.  They probably enjoyed watching us just as much, as we were running around the boat like idiots trying to see them.  I'll try to get a video of the big boys up reasonably soon.  After the whale-watching adventure we went to a winery and had some wine and cheese and crackers/bread.  Ok, surely you've got the theme by now...

If not, wine + cheese and crackers + beautiful scenery = a pretty awesome week.  :)

Friday it was time to jet, as I had to be in a town just outside of Wellington the next day for a volleyball tournament.  We took a 3 hour ferry ride from the South to the North Islander, which would have been agonising if I didn't go watch Slumdog Millionaire in the boat's cinema.

So volleyball is quite different here.  At the most basic level, the competition isn't terribly strong, but perhaps the biggest difference is, not surprisingly, the fact that it is so laid-back:  there weren't any real refs, we didn't even have an official coach, and it was pretty much just for fun.  It was reminiscent of rec league play the way it was set up.  It's been so long since I've played that much volleyball though - 6 matches in two days.  Needless to say I'm pretty sore.  The only match worth mentioning was the final, against the NZ Institute of Sport.  Apparently most of their players are on the NZ national team and are our big rivals.  The match went to five, and we lost, but it was a fun game.  Aaaaand it's been a long time since that has happened.  The bad part about the league we're in is that we play the same teams at the 5 tournaments until nationals... so it might get rather monotonous.  Oh well...

On another note, I played basketball (an actual game) tonight for the first time since 8th grade and I was ballin'.  I probably scored 14 points.  Not that it was super serious but it makes me feel pretty good.  :)

here's an album i made on facebook- it's mostly just scenery, so you may not be interested, but it's there if you want it!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2143193&id=38706249&l=c30392117a