Farming and Beaching

So, for those of you who I talked to early, some of this may be repetitive, but some is new, so deal with it!  The weekend started off great.  July is beach season, eh, so we went to the beach between my classes on Friday.  We (Nick, Lauren, and myself) went to Tunnel Beach, which is named that for the tunnel that the ocean runs through and the tunnel you walk through to get to the beach.  It was GORGEOUS!  The weather here has been beautiful and the beach was awesome (plus, it's hard to get to a beach between classes in Colorado).  Then Friday night we drove down to a friend's farm in Mataura.  They live a very simple farm life, with not many unnecessary luxuries (such as TV), so we ate dinner then played some card games and watched a movie on a computer.  Saturday we had to herd the cattle into a truck to get them back to the dairy farm to milk them, so I sorta learned how to herd cattle.  Then we just got a chance to drive the ATVs around and afterwards fixed up my car.  We got new brakes for $25 as opposed to the $180 the mechanic quoted (sorry Dad).  Finally after lunch, we went out rabbit hunting and ended up with one hare!  Although it had been over a year, I still remembered how to skin it without instruction, but her dad actually shot it.  It was very relaxing and I learned all kinds of new things--for example, a windshield is a windscreen, a trunk is a boot, and a hood is a bonnet.  Then on our way back today we stopped by Gore--the Brown Trout Fishing Capital of the World, but it had nothing else going for it... Around dusk today we went to Sandfly Bay on the Otago Peninsula, which is the same beach I went to before and saw sea lions, but today we were after penguins.  It's hard to see in the picture, as they are small (yellow-eyed penguins) and were in the distance, but we saw one!  Another thing off my NZ-to-do list! He was really cool, but didn't move for the about 15 minutes that we watched him other than turning or shaking--not quite like Happy Feet.  On a side note, this week was the Dunedin Cadbury Chocolate Festival and on Wednesday they had a cooking with chocolate seminar.  I wasn't planning on going, but ended up driving two girls to it and stayed, but since we were a few minutes late, they didn't charge us and I got free chocolate!! Plus, we got a cookbook, so I was inspired and tried brownies--they looked like a disaster, but they tasted good!  Well, that's about all for now.  Off to Christchurch this weekend and hopefully buying tickets to Australia this week!!  P.S. sorry my posts are so long!