I spent the spring semester of 2010 studying in New Zealand through the ISEP program. I used this blog to keep an account of my school experience and as a record of the adventures I found. Hopefully it can serve two purposes: to have kept my friends and family informed of my travels and experiences; as well as to serve as a reminder of how important the study abroad experience is, whether it's in New Zealand or not.

27 March 2010

First Installment of Sunset Recording

So, occasionally I'm sitting at my desk and I get distracted by what's happening outside my window. And of course by occasionally, I mean every time something moves. While Palmy is quite a cloudy place much of the time, these occasional distractions sometimes reward me with a thrilling sunset scene. So I've decided to record basically the same picture over time. I'll be putting it up in installments (if I remember) and one big blog when I get back home or just before I leave here, whatever I feel like, cause hey, it's my blog after all.

21 March 2010

Horse of the Year

Horse of the Year is a major event, attracting spectators and riders from around the world. Three of us broke from our studies to spend the day in Hastings and watch horses. The one in the first picture was an extremely well trained stallion performing with rider in the Dressage ring. We woke up to a rainy, gray, quite cold day, so we grabbed everything warm we could to layer on once we got there and drive out by 7:30. However, as we drove the sun started to peek its way out in the distance. By the time we got out of the car at the showgrounds it was positively sweltering. We walked around the booths for a while, looking at all the horse equipment you could buy, should you be so lucky as to own a horse. We then went around to all the trailers to try to look at the various horses those lucky people do own. Eventually we made it to the main show ring to watch show jumping from the stands where we could sit in the shade and drink our smoothies. This was just after I learned that here a milk shake is just that, a milk shake. If you want ice cream in it you have to order a thick shake. Something the place we were buying from didn't have. Very saddening. We then moved on to find the Clydesdale, but were sidetracked by tiny things. Tiny people on tiny horses. And tiny horses pulling a tiny cart. There were even two tiny horses pulling a tiny cart together. We had missed the Clydesdale contests, but we got to see a beautiful one anyway. One day I want one to use for something on my farm, I just don't know what yet. After that we returned the show jumping ring to see the older competitors of a higher class compete on some pretty impressively high jumps. This time we watched from just at the side of the ring to get a closer up view of the jumps. We recruited a friend of Sandy's that we found to take a picture of us. It was then apparent what Americans we were, as Kiwis apparently don't do that type of thing so much. We stopped by the showjumping pony warm up ring on our way to see the show hunter competition. Sandy used to do show hunter riding back in the states. Unlike showjumping, show hunter isn't based on time. All you have to do is make sure that you don't knock over the jumps, go out of order, and everything else is based on style. We stopped for dinner in the main part of Hastings. We shared some amazing cheesy garlic bread and potato wedges with bacon and sour cream. Sandy and I split a bacon, cheese burger. Super full and happy, we headed home into a magnificent sunset.

18 March 2010

Wanderers In The Riddermark

Alright, so it wasn't quite Rohan, but it was where they filmed the River Anduin and right next to The Black Gates of Mordor. And it may as well have been Rohan, looked about like it. This was a MUAC trip (Massey University Alpine Club), which made me really miss OPRA. There's a $50 membership fee to join this club, unlike the $10 refundable deposit for OPRA. And the trips aren't as well organized. We planned to meet at the main bus stop at 5:00, but our leader didn't show up until about 5:30. At which point he asked if we had all eaten, no you told us we would on the way up, and if we had hut passes, no you didn't tell us to get them and we don't know where to get them anyway. So after a couple of stops, we reached the "What, what's" as our Kiwi driver told us. Just after entering the park we realized the car wouldn't make it up the road, so the other car had to come back and pick us up. We finally started hiking in the dark with a very, very slight drizzle, one might call it a "misting." Since it was all uphill, this was actually quite nice. However, the total darkness means there are no pictures and we also had no idea what was around us. We just kept going and going until 11:30PM when we reached the hut. We woke the next morning to high speed winds and a decision. Three people decided they didn't want to go on and decided to head back tho their car and go home. Five of us thought, what the hell we'll brave it. So we bent over and pushed through the wind. There's not too much to say about the hiking, the pictures will have to do that for me. It was pretty hard. Fairly vertical, so the ups and downs were hard in different ways. We had to go across the lower ridges so the upper ones, or original tramp route, could block the wind. We had to link arms to keep from falling over half the time. We stopped for lunch at the river before deciding on our next course of action. We spent the next 45 minutes traveling up the river, me with my shoes off and everyone else just planning to have wet shoes. We reached Daphnie Hut around 2:00 and took a break before making our final ascent to Howellet's Hut for the night. We spend the evening pretending to do homework, well not quite all of us, two people do. I knew I wouldn't do work, but I brought a book. Mostly we just end up talking, then playing hearts for a while. We finally get around to cooking dinner, which is powdered potatoes, freeze dried peas and carrots, and sausage, which we mix together, heat, and add water. It's actually not that bad. We share the cabin with three hunters, their dog they keep outside, and a mother with her daughter and their dog that stays in the hut with us. Overall a pleasant night and the fire helps to keep us warm. I'm up at 6:00 to see the sunrise, may I point out here New Zealand is the first country to see the sun rise on a new day. I even got a picture of it so you can all see the very start of Sunday 14 March, 2010. The rest of the day is spent hiking. The wind has died down so we get to go along the ridges and now is when I really start feeling like I'm in Rohan. The first downhill is soggy and filled with holes. We have to watch our step quite carefully. But it's a welcome relief for a little while after all the uphill. We break for lunch in a little dip at the top of a mountain to keep out of the wind. From the top we can see Mt. Ruapehu in the distance.The next few hours are more or less flat, I guess actually less depending on how tired you were at that point. But it's all worth while. There's one downhill when we all keep falling down, what with the holes and the water. We all get laughing because there's just no way to avoid it and our shoes are covered in mud and totally soaked. We go up for a bit, passing along part of the same route we did the day before and quite near the first hut we stayed in. The final downhill is long and hot, but covered by trees, so we don't get too overheated. We make it back to the car and head home to campus. All in all, quite a pleasant trip. Thursday we get together for dinner and photo sharing. We cook up some rice with sweet potatoes, broccoli, carrots, zucchini, garlic, onions, and curry sauce. Along with a pleasant summer ale and follow it with some hot cross buns. We all take a long look at all of Arved's photos from the places he's seen in the last three years of living here. He's from Germany and studying river ecology and conservation. People on the trip: Me of course, Arved (the tall German with the teal windbreaker), Anna (the only other girl, from Vermont), John (our Kiwi leader in leg gators), and Joey (a small American boy from Colorado with a gray sweatshirt). I'll let the pictures tell the rest.

06 March 2010

Getting into the Swing of Things

So it's been a week and I thought I'd give all those back home an update, though nothing that exciting has happened. Classes are well under way and I'm learning why 300-level courses were so warned against. The material isn't all that hard, but the projects are really involved and the background reading required seems to never end. However, I have been keeping up and I know I'll learn a lot, regardless of the grade I end up with. The challenge is good and at least I have one friend in one class that needs to discuss the homework as much as I do. Last night found me and Sandy going over 13 definitions of animal growth and development to create our own. We didn't finish the part where we have to comment on the strengths and weaknesses of each example; that comes later today. My reproductive and lactational physiology class looks to be the most difficult when it comes to assignments. The teacher expects highly in depth answers and doesn't want us to miss a single aspect of anything. We go over each question from each reading section in class and the answers he expects in class are way less than what he expects in the written assignments, but no one ever answers satisfactorily in class. It's a little intimidating, but he's really making me think about my answers for everything, including those given for other classes. I think I'll really learn a lot from him about writing critically. I'm finding that there are a lot of students that are in several of my classes, so at least I know I'm not alone in attempting 4, 300-level classes at once. We had our fist Massey University Alpine Club (MUAC) meeting this week, where we were introduced to everyone who's in charge and shown a slide show off all the things the club does. It got me pretty excited about some of the trips I want to take. Saturday we went to Freshers, which is their opening event, where people can pay the club fee (making me really miss Hampshire's OPRA program) and pick up their club shirt. They had a slack-line which, while appearing easy, is really quite difficult. Though in the few hours we were there, I improved my abilities greatly. I can't wait to do it again, just to master it. It reminds me of the days when I used to walk on the tightrope for Circus Minimus, but the slack-line is harder to balance on. They also had an outdoor, portable climbing wall, which was quite fun, but difficult because it kept raining a little so the wall was slippery. They fed us lunch, consisting of their never ending Kiwi sausages. I seem to always be surrounded by Germans when these sausages are present, and the Germans of course don't like them. Given that I haven't had German sausages in Germany, I don't have that much of a problem with the ones here, though I do agree they aren't all that great. Other than that I haven't been up to much. Next weekend I'm hoping to go on the MUAC trip to the Ruahines, so I'll post again after that. Unless something really exciting happens before then. I'll also add some pictures here of the things I saw during my first few weeks that I didn't include early. Just to keep things interesting.