I apologize for my long period of absence. I haven't been doing a lot, but at the same time I have been busy. So I shall attempt to highlight the past few weeks without going on for too long.

Here we go...First of all, I started playing soccer on Friday nights. It is so much fun. We play against other halls, but ours, Atawhai, didn't have enough people so we joined with another hall. I forgot how much I love playing soccer. Also, I have been playing a lot of ultimate frisbee. Alyssa got me hooked, and I am actually getting pretty good at it. I have been trying to stay active and it is lots of fun just fooling around with friends.

I handed in my first two big assignments this past week, so that is pretty much what I have been doing. Classes are going good. My semester break starts on Friday. I have two weeks off!! Sweet, sweet relief! So on Saturday I will be traveling down to Wellington before flying out to Christchurch on the South Island. It will be Alyssa, Anke, and me traveling around the South Island, and hopefully we will meet up with some other people along the way. I am pretty pumped for that!

This past weekend I went camping for a night with Kayla. She was going with a friend of hers, Amos, and invited me to go along. So I found out Friday morning and left that afternoon. It was spontaneous and great! Her friend, Amos who is a Kiwi, drove us. We drove about fifteen minutes out of town and hiked to the site. It was right on a river and the night was so still and perfect. We hung around the fire and made s'mores! There ended up being me, Kayla, and five Kiwis. And the Kiwis have never had s'mores before! Imagine that! However, the s'mores were makeshift. We had to use chocolate chip cookie biscuits instead of graham crackers because they don't have graham crackers out here. Kayla and I decided that the cookies may have been better anyway. I enjoyed being around the Kiwis too. I am getting so used to their accents I don't even notice it anymore. Especially with Khali.

Being out here I have had many encounters with creatures. There is a little hedgehog that lives in the bushes outside of our flat. He is adorable. Then there is this cat Mikit, as we named it, that visits from time to time and will actually wander into our flat. We also have adopted a walking stick bug, Limb. He just chills on our house plant. We found a pray mantis the other day too. I was very happy to hear that there are no snakes here though, and no large animals either. I think you won't see anything larger than like a possum. The possums are nasty.

I am having trouble recalling everything that has been going on, so I will attempt to keep this blog more updated! I am missing everyone. I hope everyone is doing well!