Thursday was the big
day! It was the day of our Red Card and
time to go all out! Erin and I went on a
run in the morning and then we changed into our school girl outfits for the day. The rules of the Red Card included everybody
dressing up like school girls and going to as many classes as possible. I looked so crazy! I mean, I was wearing my hair in pig tails
and borrowed a tie from Nathan. We had a
point system, and we earned points for how many classes attended, number of
questions answered, number of questions asked, number of high fives given,
number of selfies taken in class, etc. I
attended my own two classes for the day and then also went to Rachel’s Pacific
Studies class, where I learned about music in Fiji, and my flatmate Nathan’s
recitation where I learned absolutely nothing about finance. In Pacific studies I even answered a question
and was asked to elaborate! But I was
right and I earned some points! Erin and
I went to Nathan’s class and we sat in the back of a class of about 12
people. Nathan could barely keep a
straight face to teach and we had no clue what he was talking about (it was
advanced finance) so we just ended up writing down funny pick-up lines with the
finance words he was saying! After
classes were finished for the day, we all met in a little courtyard in the
university for “Orientation” where superlatives were awarded for a plethora of
different categories. I won most studious
because I answered the most questions haha J Then
the official Red Card began with the whole group! There were about 10 of us. 
The first activity,
planned by Erin and Audrey, was a scavenger hunt around the university and
town. And the things on the list were
absolutely ridiculous. In that hour, I
ran up an escalator that was going down, proposed to a high school boy in the
mall (I have no clue why he turned me down though), got wrapped up like a mummy
in a bathroom, ate a double scoop of ice cream as a group (it’s huge),
protested the killing of lambs, sang “Call Me Maybe” on the streets, went
Christmas caroling, asked a high school couple about their future plans, joined
a zumba class for like 3 minutes, had a thumb war with Campus Watch, asked
random people where I could find a vegetarian meat pie, ran through campus
screaming, and a million other crazy things that I can’t remember right
now! Never have I had so many crazy
looks in my life! But we never thought
twice and I have probably not laughed that long in forever! And my group won the scavenger hunt!!! After that, we met back up at my flat,
grabbed a quick dinner, and moved onto phase 2 : Trivia! Anna made up questions that could have real
answers, but the right answers were always something related to past events in
NZ. It was a good break from running
around town, but once we finished, it was time for our final phase:
Recess! Rachel and I had planned this
part and it turned out great! By this
time, it was dark outside so we went to the rugby field near our flats and
completed different relay races. We
played leap frog, the game where you spin around ten times with a bat and then
have to run back, wheel barrow (Scott dropped me and I face planted during
this), and a race where we had to crawl through each other’s legs. All doing this in skirts and in the
dark! Afterwards, we went back to Anna,
Kelly, and Emma’s flat to relax for a couple hours before the last part of the
Red Card: going to town that evening in our school girl outfits! And yes, it did happen and it turned out to
be a great, and certainly memorable, day and night!
Friday, I went to the
grocery store with Erin ad Rachel to pick up supplies for that night. With the weather looking absolutely wonderful
(a rarity in Dunedin), we decided to take advantage of it and go camping Friday
night at Long Beach. We had one car, but
the beach was only about a half hour away so we shuttled people back and forth
and in the end, there was about 15-20 of us there! I was in the first shuttle, so once there we
walked the 20 minute walk to the caves at the end of the beach that we were
planning on sleeping in. They were
huge! And the perfect place to
camp! We didn’t even need tents, which
was a good thing since we didn’t bring any.
While waiting on the other groups, we hung out on the beach for a while,
collected some firewood in the nearby woods, and started the fire. Once everybody got there, we had the fire
going strong and it was time for dinner.
We had brought sausages (they don’t have hotdogs here) to roast over the
fire so we stuck then on some sticks and had a great dinner! We also brought supplies that resembled
s’mores. NZ does not have normal
marshmallows or gram crackers though, so we ended up using oddly shaped
marshmallows and malt ginger thin cookies.
But we were determined to have them because our German friend, Marvin,
had never tasted one before. However,
even with the major substitutions, he still loved it and they were a
success! Afterwards, we just hung around
the fire joking around, singing along to a couple ukuleles, and telling stories. 
Once part of the group went to bed around
midnight, Erin, Marvin, Rachel, Emma, and I went down to the ocean to hang out
and ended up joining a group of Kiwis, who were also camping there, for the
next couple hours. They also had a
guitar and loved to sing so we sang along with them too around their fire. We eventually went to bed, but not for long
because we (Rachel, Erin, Marvin, and I) were up before 6am to watch the
sunrise. We were definitely living by
the philosophy that you can sleep when you’re dead! So even though it was a little cloudy, it was
still nice to get up and see the sun reflect off the clouds! And by that time, we just decided not to go
back to bed. So we took a long walk to
the end of the beach and climbed around on some rocks. It warmed up pretty nicely through so once
everybody was up, we just hung out on the beach in the sand (still too cold to
swim this far south on the island).
Eventually, we decided it was time to go so we began the shuttles
back. Once back in Dunedin, I took a
shower and then a much needed two hour nap.
Afterwards, I went over to Erin and Rachel’s flat and we purchased
flight tickets for our travels after exams.
I will let my travels be a surprise, but really there are only a couple
guesses J 
Sunday morning, I woke
up early to meet Colleen (Rachel’s kiwi host), my flatmate Margaux, Rachel, and
Malika to make a journey to Middle Earth and Rohan! For those of you who don’t know, they are
places in Lord of the Rings. It was a
two hour drive, but luckily Colleen had a car so no renting this time! I am obviously not a huge Lord of the Rings
fan considering I had not even seen the first movie until about a month or so
ago, but it was still a great trip! We
went to the area where many of the scenes from the second movie were
filmed. We had great weather and the
landscape was beautiful. It was a very
rocky area so we did lots of climbing over rocks and even recreated the movie
in a set of mini video of us J So I am excited to watch the
second movie soon!
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