A weekend of firsts

I was going to write this post tomorrow, but I saw I had 4 page views today, so apparently there's pressure to get this up!  I had a ton of new experiences this weekend--not sure where to start.  We took our new car on its first road trip and it didn't break down! We were in the Southern Alps for the first time!  I went south of the 45th parallel for the first time!  I snow skiied in July for the first time!  I stayed at a hostel for the first time! So many firsts!  I even saw my first Kea or "mountain parrot!" All I'm really left with, though, is that New Zealand is a beautiful country--the mountains were amazing.  Hitchhiking is fun.  We didn't take our car up the rough access roads, so we just hitched from the bottom to the top and vice versa and I got picked up each time within 10 minutes and met some cool people!  One of our friends hitched from Dunedin to Wanaka (normally a 3:30 drive) and got there in 5 hours and 3 cars, which was really impressive!  We skiied Treble Cone one day and Cardrona one day.  The resorts made me realize how spoiled I am in Colorado, but I really just appreciated how beautiful this place is and how friendly the people were.  We met a guy from Russia, who now lives in Sydney at the hostel and he ended up skiing with us both days--he was really weird, but cool to meet people from around the world! Next weekend we are off to our Kiwi friends farm and her dad's going to replace the brake pads in our car!!!  Well, hope to catch up with you all soon!  P.S. neither of my 2 debit cards are working and my student discount card didn't work for my discount, so I understand this whole thing about little frustrations, but nothing major is broken!  P.S.2 The video is a funny and accurate representation of how Kiwis talk... (not sure how to put it at the bottom yet)