Contributed by Miriam Kolker

One of my favorite adventures abroad occurred during a rare New Zealand snowstorm. A group of friends and I took an early morning bus to the Otago Peninsula, a breathtaking strip of land in Dunedin. We ignored all premonitions of the day’s forecast, including the disturbingly fast-moving clouds chasing the bus along the coastline. Soon enough, the snow cloud caught up to our location and elevation. Coming from Florida, I had never seen snow fall horizontally. We decided to walk to the bay: why not see what the bay looks like in a blizzard?: when a car driving by stopped and rolled the window down. A very nice old man with ruddy cheeks and a thick white mustache inquired if we needed a lift. He explained how we were not within walking distance of anything substantial and that we would probably die of hypothermia. Clearly we needed that lift. Our hero, who wore a stingray brooch on his jacket collar, took us to the Peninsula’s aquarium. We spent the day coloring in the kids’ area and playing with sea stars while the snowstorm made its way across the water. In the picture, we are enjoying a quiet break from the frequent snowstorm blasts on the walk from the aquarium to the tiny town of Portobello, where I got stranded once more, but that’s another story.