Harry Potter!

I saw the movie before everyone in America -- haHA!  But I won't tell you what happens.  That would be cruel. 

Instead, maybe I should update on all the stuff that's been going on since the glacier and the day of no horse-riding.

Friday: We went skiing at Coronet Peak.  Skiing had sort of been the main plan all along, but the snow conditions weren't too great until Friday, so we headed up.  It was pretty snowy and the road was rough enough that we were required to use chains on the tires.  The views heading up the mountain were great.  The skiing was pretty good, but very crowded (only 2 out of 3 lifts were open).  Unfortunately, visibility got a little rocky and the snow conditions were sort of all over the place.  I actually ended up taking a pretty crazy dive -- more like a flying leap -- and wrenched my shoulder pretty badly.

Looking down from the side of the mountain.  See the Shire below?

Ready to ski!

Cousins :)

Waiting in line for the lift

Still waiting...

Me standing at the spot where I [crash] landed.  The red line is there to show the top edge of the drop off.  (I totally did not mean to fly off of this edge at high speed.)

(The aftermath)

But it was still fun!

Saturday:  Half the group spent the morning and afternoon skiing and a few of us went down to town for some shopping.  Queenstown is a pretty impressive little ski village with lots of shops and restaurants.  I discovered Peter Alexander (Australian brand).  Also big in New Zealand: Paua shell, jade, Maori pendants, wines, and Merino wool (which is also big in Australia).  We met the skiers back at the house for dinner and pannekuchenhaus for dessert!

Pannekuchenhaus uses lots of eggs and butter (but don't worry -- we were making a double recipe and we didn't use ALL of that butter).

Heather made an eggshell sculpture.  Somehow we thought this went well with a tempting hand gesture.

It's healthy because of the fresh fruit.

Sunday (our last full day in Queenstown):  Pannekuchenhaus for breakfast!  We got lots of snow overnight, and it was great packing snow so the morning was spent making snowmen and really painful snowballs.  Some of us were hoping to spend the day visiting Milford Sound in Fjordland, but some of the windy mountain roads were closed due to the weather.  So, we headed back into town in the afternoon, planning to head on to visit a local cidery.  But just getting down to the town required chains on the tires, and then we found out that our route back to Christchurch was also likely to be closed due to weather.  The plan: take a longer route out of Queenstown.  This meant we had to leave immediately, so we did some frantic packing and escaped before it was too late.  After a long drive, we spent a nice evening in Dunedin.

Kim made a snowman version of the Fonz.

'Eeeyyyy!"

My snowman stood proud, but didn't turn out as evil looking as I had hoped.  (He was later destroyed in a fit of violence by Cam and Mark.  Might add a video soon...)

He's a big fan of Cam's footy team, the Roosters.

We had dinner at the Speight's brewery in Dunedin.

Speight's -- Pride of the South!

Delicious dinner

Mark likes his bangers and mash!

Monday: After a long drive to Christchurch, we revisited our favorite Thai place and got to bed early in preparation for our early morning flight to Australia.

So, now I am back in Melbourne.  Last night we made fattoush and watched Australian movies (Muriel's Wedding and The Castle).  Today, I spent the afternoon at the National Gallery of Victoria with Kim and Heather, checking out a really nice exhibit called Vienna: Art and Design.  Lots of Schiele and Klimt :)  Then Harry Potter.  (Who wants to know how it ends?)