St. Patties day and a weekend in Kaikoura

This past weekend was packed full of good times. Friday was St. Patricks Day and it was also my good friend Mia's birthday. We decided to hit one of the Irish pubs downtown, but well-knowing it was St. Patties Day we went EARLY. By eight pm we all felt it was two in the morning, there was a live band and a large majority of our class ended up showing, which was fantastic. The bars got packed but we ended up calling it a night before the clock even struck midnight.
Saturday, Mia and I took a road trip to Kaikoura. Right away, as I was all ready to go and leaving the campus, my car bummed out... i was soooo disappointed but then some nice stranger came over and told me a little bit more about using the choke and he could tell by the sound of it that there was just too much gas to the engine and i just had to wait a few minutes for it to evapourate (jeeze! thats impressive listening). Anyhow, he was right, it was perfectly fine when I re-started it and then it ran beautifully the entire weeekend, yea Puddin'! Kaikoura is about three hours north of Christchurch up Highway 1, hehe yup, just 1. The highway was insane too, it was only one lane about 95% of the journey and it went up, around, and even through mountains, at some points it dipped so low beside the ocean that I wondered what would happen if there were to be a storm... It was an absolutely beautiful drive. I definitely got some first hand proof of the extreme inbalance of sheep to people ratio as we drove the entire way there were soooo many sheep and sooo few houses. Only really went through two tiny little towns in the entire journey. Once we arrived in Kaikoura we found ourselves a fantastic hostel. THen we drove out to the peninsula where we walked out on the rocks and to the Seal colony, sooo many seals, playing around, it was awesome. Back at the hostel we caught the sunset from the balcony of the main house. We wanded the city and took a stroll on the beach. Then we just went back and listened to people play guitar and basicallly hung out. The next morning Mia and I got up super early and drove to the peninsula for sunrise. It was breath-takingly beautiful, the sign on this lookour askes if 'this is the best view in New Zealand' and I gotta say.. so far, its in the lead. We took an adventure out to the mountain base for a little hike, alot of loose gravel, winding, sometimes uphill/downhill road, but Puddin' pulled through and we took a little hike up the side. Our camera's had both drained batteries and it was sooo early in the morning we couldnt replace them, so no pictures, but i was a nice hike, we made friends with two cute birds that followed us the entire hike. Basically this was our trip, we went back to the city, wandered around, got some postcards etc etc and then headed back to ChristChurch. Nice drive back as well, overall, great weekend excursion - can't wait for the next one!