We had an early start to the day as we had to catch the train to Dunedin. Our car wasn't as good for viewing scenery as the ones on our previous trips had been (older car, smaller windows, less comfortable seats). We were seated in the aisle, so we ended up sleeping for the first hour or so. That was fine, as much of the first leg of the journey was inland. We woke up in time to hit Timaru and its spectacular Pacific Coast scenery. (It was a thrill to see the Pacific on its western edge after having spent so much time on its eastern edge.) We had great scenery on both sides of the train — the ocean on one side and snow-capped mountains on the other side. Soon after waking up, we struck up a pleasant conversation with our neighbors on the window — Tony and Linda from Brisbane (by way of Australia). Linda managed to convince Jen to see if she could try rafting when we went to Queenstown (our next stop after Dunedin).

After a few hours of pleasant conversation and fabulous views, we pulled into Dunedin. It's a lovely city. We went up to the Octagon and had success shopping for the things we wanted to get in NZ — yarn for Jen and CDs for me! (The Bats and a couple of compilations of indie rock.) Finding a cybercafe proved more difficult. After a lot of walking around, we finally found one with working terminals. I found out that I did not get the job in Akron. The news relaxed me as I realized that I would not have to worry about finishing the dissertation ASAP. Freshly and officially unemployed, I went with Jen to the cheap and amazing New Satay Noodle House, where I had one of the best soup noodles of my life (for about US $2.50). After the meal, we called Sue Heath of Natureworks Otago (with whom we'd be staying) and she picked us up.

Back at the house (high above the city), we met the Heath family (Sue, her husband Tim and their teenage daughters Kate and Fran) as well as their WWOFers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) Wendy, Annabell and Annabell's very Scottish four-year old son Ruiaridh (which angelcizes to "Rory"). Together, we had tea, which amounted to another full-blown dinner (tea = dinner, our language lesson for the day). After digesting all of this lovely food, we went for a walk along Long Beach and explored some shallow caves before calling it an evening.