A Fun Filled Weekend

This weekend started Friday afternoon for us when a bunch of us went into the city (Christchurch) to go to the International Buskers Festival, which is essentially a street performers festival. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be and, other than one horrendous act, the performers were all pretty good. My favorite one was Reuben DotDotDot even though I only saw the end of his performance. He used to work for Cirque du Soleil and the part of his act that I saw was acrobatics. He was using a Chinese climbing pole held steady by four memembers of the audience. He did some amazing stunts such as climbing to the top and holding on with just his hands while his body was horizontal, sliding down using his torso wrapped around the pole, and climbing to the top and completeing a full circle on one hand with his body horizontal. He was amazing! Many of us arrived back at school for dinner and spent the rest of the evening lounging around. On Saturday a few other kids and I went into Lincoln for breakfast from the bakery and to visit the small market there on Saturday mornings (we bought delicious gluten and dairy free cookies and a big bag of little plums). Afterwards we headed into Christchurch to get picked up to go the Adrenaline Forest, which is a high ropes course made of cables strung between trees to create obstacles and zip lines in different courses and levels. It was actually harder than we all expected it to be but it was so much fun. The equipment was actually really cool. We were given a harnes that had a pulley, for the zip lines, and 2 clips attached plus a pair of gloves (similar to the thin cotton gloves you wear in the beginning of winter when its not super cold yet). Yes, that is all we got and no, I'm not forgetting the helmet. The clips were the coolest part. They were both connected to each other and were both magnetic. Each one had a magnet at the tip so when you put the clip on the metal cable it was activated and was able to be pushed onto the wire and into the closed position around the cable. To take it off you had to push a button and pull the clip up so that the part that was over the wire moved back into the open position, letting go of the wire. The big safety mechanism was that if one of the clips was in the open position the other had to be in the closed position, this way you had to be attached to soemthing at all times, it was impossible not to be. To get off a course and unattach yourself there was a cable at the end that was only attached to anything on one side so you clipped one of your clips on and then slid it off, still in the closed position, and then you were able to remove your other clip. We all came out a little battered and bruised but all with big smiles. After we were all free of our harnesses we headed back into to Christchurh to get some dinner at the Restart Center (delicious woodfired pizza!) after which we split and half went back to campus and two other girls and I stayed in the city to wander. We ended up with delcious frozen yogurt and a beutiful park full cicadias putting on a summer concert.
On Sunday we got an early start and all headed to the Riccarton market, the Tin Shed (finally got some yarn!) and the town of Geraldine before heading to Mt. Peel Station to visit the farm and stay the night before our rafting adventure Monday morning. It was really rainy so we weren't able to walk around any of the farm but the owner did come and talk to us about it. We had a great evening in the lodge where we stayed playing cards and charades before we all clocked out early to rest up before our early wake up call at 6am. Monday we all went white water rafting (on free time, not a UD sanctioned activity) on the Rangitata River with class I through V rapids. The water level was very high due to the rain the day before and was moving very quickly, roughly 180-190 tons of water per second (the cutt off for rafting is 200 tons per second so we got lucky!!) which made it extra exciting! It was such an amazing rafting experience, my boat had an amazing guide and we all worked really well together through the tough rapids. At one point we were all able to do both 4 meter and 9 meter cliff jumps, which were nerve racking but very cool. The only injury I sustained were some "wetsuit burns" on my knuckles from them rubbing on the wetsuit trying to put on wet suit that was too small (they didn't believe me that it was too small and kept telling me to pull it up, the world just needs to remember that I am always right!) After we all were back in our dry clothes we had lunch and headed over the the Church of Holy Inocents and the garden on the property before heading back to school for a well deserved lazy evening.
It was an amazing, and quite long, weekend that was totally worth all the work we did during the week leading up! At least I wasn't in the boat that almost tipped over, even though it did make for some great pictures!

Reuben DotDotDot

The Adrenaline Forest

My boat and our guide Mike