Kit's Posts

Hey Everyone, Kit here. In addition to Natalie's picture posts I've decided to write some posts about our adventures here in New Zealand. This will be stories from our daily life and interesting observances about the quirky life down here. Also, our full albums will be uploaded to our picasa account, you can see them at http://picasaweb.google.com/nskeelen. There will also be a permanent link to these albums on the right of the blog -------->

So yesterday was a fun and also relaxing day. Natalie and I went back and forth about what to do as our first week here has been very open. We were deciding between a brewery tour or a trip out to the peninsula to see penguins and royal albatross. Dunedin is located at the very back corner of the harbor and most of the area of the peninsula is prisitine and filled with wildlife.

But we decided to go on the brewery tour, huzzah! Located downtown is the Speight's brewery, where the beer is known as 'The pride of the south". It was a great tour taking us through the history of beer making as well as the current brewery operations. The tour was fun and our guide was great. We got lots of free samples and met a fellow American who had been living Summers in Antarctica cooking for the past few years (it sounded horrible!). Upon hearing we were moving to Dunedin our guide, a self proclaimed local Dunedin boy, told us about the Scarfies. Apparently scarfies are apartments here that are so cold that you have to wear a scarf in the winter while at home to stay warm. He then told us we should have a 'Scarfie Barbeque'. This involved the following:
1. Go to New World, the local shopping market, and fill a cart full of beer and meat
2. Bring all your supplies home WITH the cart
3. Build a fire halfway between the street and your couch, as you'll be burning your couch later
4. Once the fire is at knee height unload all the beer and place all your meat in the bottom of the cart
5. Roll the cart over the fire
6. Roll the cart off the fire, flip the meat, and repeat
7. When your done cooking and eating, roll the cart into the Waters of Leith, the local river

All in all this seemed like an actual thing students do here, awesome. So Natalie and I are really enjoying being tourists here while we also set up for this to be our home for the next few years. We've met some really great people and hope to continue to do so. Today - Cadbury factory tour!

Have a brilliant day,

Kit