Life in Dunedin

Hello everyone….it has been awhile!! I apologize for being the missing lynx…but the lynx has been found….I am almost a cougar now(year older, and I hope a little more wiser). I moved from Christchurch, where I was previously living since I arrived in NZ, further south to a city called Dunedin. It may be further south, but it sure isn’t warmer! I will complain about this later.

Dunedin is a cute little city, smaller than Christchurch but a happening little city because of the university. It reminds me a lot of Ithaca with all the student housing and student antics around town (AKA drunk university students….EVERWHERE!!!) and I thought these days were over for me…Just joking I have been pretty tame and have not participated in these endeavors (much). The biggest reason on moving to Dunedin was because I was offered an ice hockey coaching position. I am the skills development coach for all age categories within the club. All the way from 5 year olds up to 50 year olds. It is great!!! I am really enjoying my time on the ice with the kids and they have all made major improvements in a short time period. When I first arrived I put on a real short notice ice hockey camp, and I was able to get 25 kids for a week of development. For being such short notice, the camp turned out great and the kids learned a lot.

I also was offered a teaching job by one of the local high schools, the opportunity just kind of fell in my lap. The school offered to pay for my registration fee and my qualification assessment, which is quite costly and grueling process, this made it an easy decision to take the job. It is only one grade 11 biology class 4 times a week, which is a perfect stepping stone for a beginner teacher. I have also been doing quite a bit of relief teaching (substitute teaching) so this has been quite interesting. It is an all boys school and lets just say, they like to test the limits! I now wish I was much nicer to my substitute teachers, what comes around goes around! There are some great beginner teacher stories coming out of this year, that is for sure!!!

I was very fortunate when I first moved to Dunedin, for I lived with a very nice family for the first 5 weeks while I was looking for a flat to live in, but then it was my luck that another lady in the club was leaving for 5 weeks to visit her son in London, so I had a new home for a bit. It has just been recently that I have had to bite the bullet and for the first time living in NZ, I now have to pay rent!! I live with 3 other flatmates (not called roommates here) and so far they seem really nice. I have been very fortunate, because the rink has given me the kiwi skate car to get around town with. So I have been driving a purple penguin mobile…it is great!!! The free petrol has defiantly been appreciated!

So the weather….well, lets just say the first couple of weeks of ‘winter’ I was a little worried….my new best friend that I slept with every night was a ‘hottie’, on real cold nights I would even have two ‘hotties’….not your typical ‘Hottie’…it is a rubber hot water bottle…wrapped in a towel or pillow case so you don’t burn yourself! It was the only way to get the chill off. It wasn’t that it was that cold outside, it was the houses were and are FREEZING….no insulation at all! Seeing your breathe when you wake up is normal. This has taken awhile to get used too..but I think I have beat the cold houses…it is called an electric blanket and a heater….as soon as I get home I turn on the blanket and turn on the heater. My little shoe box of a room is warmed up in no time and it is quite pleasant, until you have to go to the bathroom.

My tramping days (hiking days) have come to a halt as I am now a working girl! But I have managed to stay quite busy with working both jobs as well as playing hockey on the weekends. I have also been coaching the premier team, which is the best guys in Dunedin and we are hoping to be accepted into the super league next year (which is basically NZ major competitive league for ice hockey..kind of like their NHL) It is challenging at times, but the guys are learning a lot and have made major improvements so far. It hasn’t been all work with no play, that is not my style! There are plenty of good little hikes in the area, and I am really excited to get into rock climbing as one of the teachers I work with, is really into it! There is this really neat place called ‘long beach’ yes the kiwis say it as it is…..its a really long beach! But the cool thing about this beach is that there are these caves… people have huge bonfires in the caves and party the night away. I will let you know when this happens! There is this other place called tunnel beach, which is a cool little place. There is a tunnel carved out of the rock, which leads you down to the beach area. When the tide is out, you are able to walk around and explore, I have yet to plan it right and be out there when the tide is out! A short drive down the peninsula and you will arrive at an Albatross colony, it is quite the tourist attraction. An Albatross is basically an over sized seagull! They are massive with a really long wing span. I have yet to actually pay to see the colony, but my hopes are if I go up there enough eventually I will see one flying over head. I am excited to explore more little areas around the city.

I took a trip up to the North island with my friend, Deanna, whom happens to be from Edmonton…(we randomly met through a mutual kiwi friend. Pretty crazy half way around the world and meet someone 3 hours away from you back home! Turns out we have some mutual friends as well….small world that is for sure!)Anyways we played in a roller hockey tournament. It was a really neat experience, met some great people and played in a pretty competitive inline tournament. I spent my birthday in Wellington and then had a great birthday dinner with all my Christchurch friends as we were passing through to go back to Dunedin.

I also decided to take up snowboarding, I bought all second hand gear and hit the slopes as soon as the hills were opened! It was quite the experience. First of all, the kiwis freak out as soon as there is even a bit of frost on the roads. Granted so, they have a lot of hills , do not have much for snow removal, and do not believe in salting the roads so they gravel them……but still, they freak if there is even a little snow! They even shut down schools if there is snow in the hills or have late starts if the roads are frosty….crazy!! So the plan to go snowboarding almost was cancelled due to the road conditions…but these are kiwi standards….not Canadian…so away I went with the fellow Canadian friend Deanna and we took on the extreme caution road conditions! There were cars in the ditches and along the road side…it was quite humorous! I am sure the road conditions were bad, but they weren’t while we were on them! We made it into Queenstown, which reminds me a lot of Banff, we toured around the city for a bit and then spent the night in B3….where to begin….B3 stands for the name of the random car I kind of acquired through a lady up in Wellington. Her name is Beater Buckin Barbara (the car not the lady in Wellington) …hence B3…basically she is a beaut of a car! But she has four wheels and a whole lot of character…you never know if she is going to break down on you! So….exciting! On with the snowboarding adventure!

So to begin, you have to actually drive up the mountain to get to the ski lifts, I had my first experience with putting chains on a vehicle. Okay I played the damsel in distress, and a nice man helped us out, but I was still there and got my hands dirty!! Every sort of vehicle makes this trip up the mountain, from your basic 4x4 vehicle to your average car…it is quite funny! The ski field itself, is BARE…no trees…so good thing for me, makes learning to snowboard that much easier! The first half of the day was me trying to figure out which way I ride….goofy or regular (what foot is first basically)! I have only tried snowboarding a handful of times. But after this season I will be a snowboarding machine….well at least be able to get down the mountain without falling!

My Christchurch friends made the trip down to Dunedin to hang out for a weekend, it was a lot of fun, we did some of the touristy things in the area. We did the Cadbury tour which is the chocolate factory here in town as well as the Speight’s tour (type of locally brewed beer) The Speight’s tour was really informative, but the real reason for going on any alcohol tour is the tasting at the end! We were the last tour of the day, so we were allowed to stay in the tasting area a bit longer than usual. At first we were all being sophisticated and actually tasting all the different kinds of beer…but then the Canadian kicked in….and we started doing shots of our favorite brew….lets just say the night continued from there and we didn’t get home until the wee hours of the morning!

I took a trip up to Christchurch with my friend Megan from here, because we had tickets to see the All Blacks, which is NZ national team for rugby. A must see and do while you are in NZ. I met with some friends and we went to Mount Hutt to take in a day of snow boarding before the game. The day was absolutely beautiful, not a cloud in the sky and great snow conditions. Just like my previous experience, we had to drive up the mountain to get to the snowfield. Although this time, one of my friends is a mechanic, so she knew exactly what she was doing with the chains and had them on the tires in record time! I am quickly getting the idea behind snowboarding, I can now make it down the mountain without falling, I now know what it means to carve, and I even tried a few jumps and landed some…..the ones I didn’t land so well, I am still feeling today!

After a whole day of boarding my legs were quite sore, but what a better way to ease your pain but a few beers and a rugby match! So off we went to the game, it was a rush to get there on time, but I made it just in time to see the Haka…which is a type of war dance that all men national players do before a major competition. It was really neat to see it live, it brought shivers up your spine! They basically stand in the middle of the field facing the other team….and perform this ritual in the Moari language (NZ native), and the other team just stand there and take it! The whole stadium is silent while the haka is happening and it is quite the spectacle to see. The All Blacks ended up beating the South Africans by 20 some points and walked away with a win.

Erewhon Cup

Outdoor ice hockey tournament….need I say more!!! WOW what a weekend…..it was brilliant as they say here. Basically it is a fine line of how much you can drink and still play……the line was tested for the first game, and I scored a hat trick…so maybe I should play this way more often!!! It was another teammates 18th birthday, she was way over the line, and was having trouble standing up…so the refs actually benched her!! It was great!! But all in all, the tournament was a lot of fun! It took place in a mountain paradise called Tekapo, the whole facility was placed by Lake Tekapo and surrounded by mountains, it was a pretty special place. There was a nice wood burning fire place inside to warm up by! It was a pretty small town, so all the teams would go down to the local bar and hang out. On the final night the bar had a mechanical bull, so that made for some fun laughs, and I managed to track down a pair of Chaps.. so I felt like a real professional! There was a lot of laughs and lots of beers drank by everyone!

To top off a great weekend, we were told by a local that there were some frozen ponds down the way, so all 15 of us or so headed out to these ponds…we drove for quite awhile but the scenery was amazing….we finally got to the ponds, and we were in luck cuz they were frozen! Some of the guys that were there, never played pond hockey in their lives, so it was a neat experience for everyone! We spent about 2 hours playing shirts against skins….it was great fun, and no one fell in, except for a few lost pucks!

On Tuesday nights we started up a best of 7 series or the Toonie Keg cup…..yes that is right…..one of the guys designed a cup out of an old keg, a paint can with a wok on top. Doesn’t sound all that flash (oh check out that kiwi lingo) But it looks AMAZING….quite like the Stanley cup. He even had it chromed so it looks all shiny and silver! It is called the ‘Toonie’ Keg cup, because a toonie was placed in the middle of the ice when the friendship games were hosted in Dunedin. The Canadian team that came down for the tournament, placed the toonie in the ice. It has been there since March, however, a kid in public session decided to chip the toonie out of the ice, luckily Hans, one of the rink managers, caught the little brat and now the toonie is going to be placed on the cup! Well the best of 7 didn’t quite turn into 7 games….my team got swept. But the games were in tense, we had two fights in the first game. So the boys got a talking too as it is an in-house competition and the last thing we need is fights between players! But things went better the following week, but for some reason we just couldn’t buy a win! Much like Ottawa this year!! There ended up being blood in the last two games as well….the one called for 9 stitches in the eye, but no permanent damage. So all in all good fun, the boys got to hold the cup up high and have drinks out of it!

I had my first experience with taking school kids on away trip. I was the teacher chaperon for the John McGlashans hockey team, which worked out great, because I became their honorary coach for the weekend! It was great fun, we got beat in every game but it still was a lot of fun…

I have managed to get out to another ski field with my Christchurch friends, we all met up in Queenstown, and stayed in a rented house all together. It was quite the international affair, for we had a handful of Irish, English, Canadians, Americans and one Kiwi managed to slip in! We went to a field called Cardrona, it was the same story with driving up the field to ski, no chains this time so that is exciting! It was a great day of boarding with blue skies! Sylvie, one of my friends from Christchurch is leaving soon to do a bit of traveling on her own, so it was sad to say good-bye to her!

I will be playing in the National tournament this weekend for Ice Hockey so I will have to write again for an update on that! Hopefully we will come away with Gold!!

Again I apologize for the long delay….but that pretty much sums up a bit of what is going on down here with me! I have made some minor decisions in that, I have decided to come home beginning of October. Playing and watching all this hockey down here as given me the bug to play at least one more year with the Strathmore Rockies, which were fully accepted into the league this year! So I am very excited to come home and play as well as catch up with family and friends. I will see everyone SOON!!!