The stupid thing I did on the first night was clean my contacts with my Mom’s hard contact cleaner. I did this to only one of the contacts and tried to clean it off with regular solution but the damage had been done. As I put the contact in my eye it created a huge burning sensation and I was practically blinded for a period of time. I kept cleaning it off and it seemed to get better but little did I know what I was in store for. I managed to go on a run with blurry vision around the lake and everything seemed to be getting better. The hills in New Zealand are ridiculous and have inclines that go on for hundreds of yards at a time which makes them virtually impossible to run for long distances. After the run we went with Nicole to plan a sightseeing trip at Milford Sound. At this point my eye started killing and I had to remove (and lose) the contact completely which was a tenuous situation because I only brought one extra contact on the trip which was incredibly fateful because who the hell brings one contact on a trip? The craziest thing about the situation was that my eye was killing and for some reason my nose wouldn’t stop running which went on for what seemed like hours. You can only imagine how much fun I was to be around at lunch. Comments included “You look like death” – Jeff, “It looks fine” – Laura, “Do you need an eye patch?” – My mom. Fortunately I found an optometrist who took a minute to make sure there was no damage done and I got lucky he was so nice and saw me right away. He said it would get better and I went back to the room to get a few hours of rest.

When I woke up my eye was almost normal and I was ready for the night. We went to the Casino for dinner which had a 2 for 25 deal and the food was decent. After dinner we headed to a bar called the Bunker for a few more drinks (pictures below). Nance went home after that and Jeff, Laura, Nicole, and I went to Harry’s to meet up with some of Jeff and Nicole’s friends who were having a pajama party. Oddly enough, they were the only people there wearing pajamas and nobody really seemed to notice or care. We threw back a couple bourbon shots and played a few games of pool before heading off to another bar. An interesting note was that the locals had this American football that unscrewed and acted like a flask which stored a decent amount of vodka. It was a great disguise for sneaking alcohol into the bar. At the next bar there was this French guy who got Jeff to say that “he was gay” while Jeff was practicing his French. It was pretty funny because Frenchie was by himself and completely hammered.

After this bar we went back to the casino to play some blackjack. The bouncer at the door wasn’t going to let me in because my one eye looked beat red and apparently I was swaying. I was pretty drunk at this point but no where near TC drunk and the supervisor eventually let me in. Jeff and I lost 80 bucks each before we had our final stop of the night in front of a random bar where I struck up a conversation with a Brit. He was telling me how awesome America was and I had to be joking that I didn’t know that America was the best country in the world. After that Nicole got a courdon blue for some unknown reason and something you wouldn’t see in America happened in the convenience store. A drunk guy came waltzing in being loud and knocked over a display and no employee in the store even waved a finger or said anything. It was like it wasn’t a big deal and he quietly cleaned it up and left. After that I went back to the hotel at about 2-3am and got ready for Day 3.