Queen's Birthday Weekend

So I'm a bad blogger. I know it's been a while, and I was going to save it until tomorrow (for no particular reason), but I promised Ryan I'd blog more...so here goes.

It was a long, fun weekend. So much fun. Randomly on Friday I was invited to go to a concert with Megan, Renee, Katey, Sara, and Marcia, plus some extras...I met a few people. It was downtown at a bar, the band was called "Sneaky Sound System." I had never heard of them, but it turned out to be loads of fun. They were a pretty cool band, and as usual for a concert, I managed to get front and center. Good time, ended with a family sized french fry at KFC.

Saturday morning Sara and I managed to wake up early in the morning to meet her mom for breakfast at a restaurant called Honey Pot. It's a cool little cafe like place downtown, and they have a bunch of paintings all over their walls. Sara asked about them, and turns out that they need more paintings and are going to take some of Sara's and put them up on the walls..! Neat and exciting!

Anyways, after that we got in the car and drove to Hamner Springs...a hot-pool resort in New Zealand known for it's relaxation, spas, and hot springs. It was soooo cool! This was a long weekend, so we stayed Saturday and Sunday night...Monday was the Queen's Birthday.

Saturday we first walked around the town and looked at a few shops. It's a really neat town, really close to the Southern Alps so there's snow capped mountains everywhere you look. After our tour of the town, we went to the hot pools, which was really cool. Some of them are naturally heated by sulfur, and they smell like Rotorua, or rotten eggs, but they're good for your skin and really hot so I liked those the best. We found a good dinner place and ended up coming back to our cute little cabin like hotel room and falling asleep early (not much of a night life in Hamner).

Sunday...such a good day...drumroll please...we woke up to SNOW! So exciting! So cold! We had heard it might, but didn't really think it would. It was white EVERYWHERE. I loved it. We then proceeded to walk across the street to the spa, where we indulged in a sauna followed by a massage. Heaven... we were given these robes to wear around the spa place, and so when we then decided afterwards to go to the hotpools we walked around in between pools in our robes. Great save from the cold. The hotpools are so nice and warm, and it's really cool to be sitting in this big thermal hotpool and have it snowing all around you (it was still snowing), but when you decide to move or go to another pool or leave even, you're outside in the snow, cold, and wet. It was borderline miserable, but worth it cause it was so much fun. So then we did more hot pools for a few hours, and after that we went, showered up, and ate at a cute little tapas place that gave us way too much food. What a perfect day.

Monday we woke up early to take on hiking a mountain. I'm not kidding when I say, it may have been a bit dangerous. Like borderline really bad idea. We had planned to do the waterfall hike, which was about 2 and a half hours long (straight uphill by the way...tough). That hike would have definitely been sufficient for my state of fitness and health status at the moment. But of course, to make the hike even better, the ground was covered in fresh snow, that seemed to get thicker the higher we got up the mountain. We had gotten pretty far, and were determined to find that waterfall, so we just decided to go on, no matter what. We had to actually walk across logs and rocks to go by two streams that were overflowed because of the rain and snow, and the paths were completely covered at the top. We made it all the way there. It was worth it, and not so bad. Turns out, the hard part was getting down. Man, that was scary at some points. Long story short, we both made it back, tired and in one piece, and we drove home from there...tired and hungry (we got a pizza). Here's a sideways view of the waterfall we walked to...

So that was my weekend. A full schedule, I'd say, and it was so much fun. Next weekend should be just as fun. Today (Tuesday) Sara, Megan, and I went shopping for a party we have on Saturday that is a double-denim theme. It's gonna be hilarious.

Also, good news: tomorrow I have a job interview. With Subway. Ha. Hope my visa doesn't get in my way. I also had a phone interview today with Sunglasses Hut. Both good prospects, and hopefully it will turn into something. It's been almost a month! I will let you all know how it goes...

I love you all and will be a better blogger from now on! Promise!