Wednesday (21.11)

On the next day we had a day off. I met with Kie at the countdown in Mosgiel. I had to walk there from my house in Kinmont Park which is 45 min far from the supermarket because ,y ost mum was sick and had to saty in bed.

Kie and I wanted to cook a japanese meal and a german dessert. After we bought all the ingredients and we went home to her house, it is not that far away.

But insted of cooking tea we decided to watch the last half of the Vampire Diaries Season 1 frist ;)

Kie wasn't a fan but after she watched the very first episode ahe got addicted like me..

Tea was very yummy and the dessert I cooked (Kaiserschmarrn was sonst?) was approved by the others.

After tea Angel (another international student from Hong Kong) and Kie showed me their favourie comic TV shows and magazines. Haha :D Do you know that the books and magazines in Japan are read from the other side? It looks really confusing ;)

This was a nice, fun and relaxing day to just spend some time with a good friend.

Natures Wonders (20.11.2011)^^

Firstly I am sorry that I didn't post something for such a lonng time but for a week or so I had no internet and I some other stuff to do.

On this Tuesday we did one of the best trips with school!

Mark our personal tour guide drove us to a farm/ animal reserve on the Otago Peninsula.

Maggie had booked two tours the first one was the wildlife tour we all really enjoyed. We got some green coats for the mudd because it had been a rainy week and then we sat in little vehicles that looked similar to golf cars. It was so much fun to drive up and down these little hills and we had some stops to observe some birds. But that wasn't so interesting we all were very keen on watching the many seals all around the coast. :)

Finally we saw seals and seal babys very close and they were soooo cute <3 But the best thing was when we walk in something like an underground tunnel and I took a photo of a baby seals 10cm close!!!!!

Unfortunately we had too leave early because the seals don't like human smell and the mal seals could become aggressive.

Our final stop was the penguin watching. In New Zealand you can watch a lot different peniguins. We saw the little blue penguin and the yellow eyed penguin. The little blue penguin are soo cute and fluffy but we weren't allowed to take photos or rather just walk on their special penguin beach because that could endanger the babys.

To see the yellow eyed penguin was something very special. They are very endangered as rare as a tiger or a rhino! There are just about 500 left in the whole world (New Zealand because they just live there). The photos I will post were not taken by myself but I will show you how they look like.

This was the amazing wildlife pur but the sheep farm was very cool as well.

First we saw how the farm dogs drove the sheep into their stables and we laerned something about the different kinds of sheep and about their benefit. Then the farmer chose one sheep to demonstrate how to shear a sheep. We weren't allowed to do it because we could have hurt the sheep badly. It looks so easy and the tool looks similar to a shaver from the hairdresser but it's very difficult and a lot of practice is needed to be able to do this.

The sheep itself looked a bit unforunate but it had no pain and they have a bad mind so they forget about it quickly. The seconf point is that they do feel better after they lost all their heavy whool.

Its like a relief because if there whool is too long and it rains the sheep could just fall down. That sounds dump but sheeo are not able to stand up then and they would die. The also have a different digestive system compared to humans or cows.. and their stomach would turn and they would die too.

Then we all got a piece of sheep whool and it smelled excactly like bepanten creme from the farmacy. Unfortunately the sheep whole business is a bit like the mikl business in Germany and the prices are very unsteady so they don't get eough money for the whool and the work they do.

We also learned to what objects sheep whool is processed. Did you know that a good quality tennis ball is made of whool?!

The highlight was at the end when 4 lambs walked in and I could feed one! We took a lot of photos with them in oour arms..

This was one of my favourite day and I recommend this trip to everybody who comes to Dunedin.

Olveston house

On Monday at 10am our international group visited the Olveston house just across the road from St Hilda's.
This house was built in 1904 by a rich jewish family who had an export business in Dunedin.
 The house is one of the oldest in Dunedin and we had a guided tour through it. From outside it lookes pretty grand but when you are inside it's just huge! There are so many rooms like a kitchen, a scullery, 4 bedrooms, a huge hall, a flat for the secretary, bathrooms, hidden corridors, billard and cards room, dining room, library, fodd preparing room...
The man who built the house was so clever, because you could live in the house now days and the only thing missing would be a microwave and a internet connection.
They built a heating in every room and had two telephones. The also had some pretty cool inventions like a thing to press folded table cloths or a chair with holder to put your book in while your reading.
Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any photos from inside so the photos below are from the internet.
After the parents and the childran died the house was donated to the city Dunedin.

Weekend

Last weekend was really nice even if the Saturday was a very relaxed day when I didn't do much.
The weather was horrible, so raainy that some streets of Mosgiel were fludded. When I went to town with Mike we passed some shops on the main street and in front of most shops were sand bags to stop the water from fludding the shops. But it didn't help very much, because some shops were under water ;)
On the way back we noticed smoke in the sky that didn't look like clouds and we were curious to find out what it was.
Unforunately it was someone's house that was on fire :( The weird thing was that the flame were meter high althought it was raining.

On Sunday morning I took the bus to town and met Sophie and her friend Alina from Christchurch to go to the Otago Museum. It was interesting but also a little bit boring but we had a lot of fun taking photos with a crocodile ;)
Then we went to the main attraction of the museum: the butterfly exhibition.
It is a big room with a tropical forest in it and you can see hundrets of butterflys flying around. They were so beautiful in every color. The most beautiful one was a big black and blue butterfly.
There were little feeding stations were you could watch the butterflys slurp bananas and oranges. We also learned that some butterflys have some weird prefernces about their food eg. tears, sweat and blood.
But butterflys weren't the only animals in the really hot (28°C) forest. They were turtles, little birds that were running around like chicks and ants.
LLuckily two butterflys landed on me and I could take a picture with them but you had to be very careful not to touch the wings.

Walking Tour

Last Friday morning we did a walking tour through Dunedin and our guide showed us historical buildings and street of Dunedin. We had some knoweledge because we have been at the settlers mueum the week before but it was interesting to see and discover it by myself.
We also visted the First Church of Dunedin on the Bell Hill.
After two hours everthing was finished and my friends and me went to the Meridian shopping center and had lunch.

Monarch Cruise

On Thursday we did the Monarch Cruise on the Dunedin harbour alomg the Peninsula. The weather was cold, rainy and windy, but we still saw a lot of animals.
At the Albatross colony we saw a flying albatross and a baby.
On the very steep rock cliffs there were New Zealand Fur Seals and sea lions. They climbed up the rocks and there also was a baby.
And then a special thing happened for that I waited almost a half year. We saw dolphins!!! They swam next to the boat and jumped in the water. These dolphins are hector dolphins and they only live in New Zealand.

On the way back to school we stopped at an Maori bulding.

Omaru and Moeraki Boulders

On Wednesday in the morning we headed up to Palmerston (was just a quick break), Omaru and Moeraki. It took approximately 1.5 hours to drive up there.

For those you know New Zealand is a very young country (Dunedin ws first setteled in 1848) and they don't have a big long history but in Omaru are a lot of historical buildings... Most of them are from the victorian epoche and they are all made out of the famous Omaru stone. I think it's like the sand stone and probaly a similar one as the Cologne Cathedral is made out of. It just isn't as old (means not black).

The following weekend there will be an victorian festival which is one's a year when the people dress up in old costumes and ave parades and stuff..

After a quick look at a steam punk art thing (I really don't know how to call it but you'll see on the photos) we went into a gift shop where they had a „one wheel bike“ and it was really funny to try to ride on it. But all the small japanese girls had too short legs to reach the pedals :)

After Omaru we drove to the Moeraki bolders. That are some big round stones that are just in the sea and on the beach. Some of them look a little bit like dinosour eggs and others look like turtles. It really interesting because they are actually a mutant nucleous from a shell fish that developed in the sand and finally broke out of it. Sounds weird but when our really nice guide Mark explained it to me it made a lot of sence.

There were some rocks that were broken or fallen apart so you could sit in them, the only difficluty was that they were in the water. Some of the girls got a bit wet.

It was very funny and also fascinating if you thought about how the rocks got there.

We also saw one seal and it was so cool and cute. <3

I sometimes write this but that's because I'm still not used to the fact that they live here at the beach (more on the cliffs and rocks). So every time I see one it's amazing and an other great experience, because in Germany, espcially in Cologne it's not very common to find a seal just at the beach.