Orientation Goodbyes

Ok so I havent posted in a few days so I'll have to update everything in a few posts...

  Sunday was our last official day of orientation, which meant that a lot of the UC people would be leaving the next day. Our Kiwi hosts at Grafton Hall set up this really nice going away dinner for us. The restaurant was called Duders, which I thought was super funny, but it was a really nice place. It was a beach front restaurant in the nice little town, Devonport, which is a short ferry ride from Auckland. We had a little time to kill before dinner so a few of us decided to walk up this steep hill into the mountains past town that gave us an amazing 360 degree view. We could see all of Auckland in the distance and it was really quite breathtaking. After a somewhat treacherous walk down the side of the mountain to get down, we made it to the restaurant.


  It was really nice to see everyone together one last time and everyone kind of dressed up for the occasion (the girls went more all out than the guys did haha). They had a buffet style dinner of all the different kinds of foods and everything was delicious. They had a Kiwi sit with every group at the table, and we had the son of two guest speakers sit with us. It was cool because he was 17 so he kind of told what a lot of the younger people do in New Zealand for fun. After dinner we took a giant group photo with all 60 of us. I kind of got stuck in the back and it was hot and nasty because there were so many of us. We took a million photos because everyone wanted one on their camera. When that was over we all got on bored a party bus and headed back to Grafton. Along the way we saw some fireworks out the window for the finale of the Lantern Festival. It was the perfect ending orientation.