Easter Break - Sunday 4/4/10 - Wellington to Nelson

The clocks go back an hour at 2AM so I get an entire extra hour of sort of sleep. i leave the hostel at 7:10AM and walk across the street to the train station where the ferry shuttle leaves from. I get to talking to the woman in line behind me as we check in for the ferry. Her name is Paddy and she's from England. We sit together on the observation deck and talk for the whole trip. When we enter the Marlborough Sounds we get up and walk around to take in the scenery. We bump into some people she met in a hostel at the beginning of her trip. They're a nice couple originally from England, but now just north of NY in Canada. We arrive in Picton 1/2 hour before the buses all leave for Nelson. The bus ride is winding and beautiful. We go through some of the major NZ wine regions before arriving near the beach of the Tasman Sea in Nelson. I check in to a nice looking hostel and they show me around. I share a room with a very nice woman from the Netherlands and two nice, but very quiet other girls. One from the middle east, but she doesn't say where and the other from Japan. I leave my stuff and head out for a walk. The town is totally dead, but it is Easter Sunday. I go up to the botanical reserve and follow the signs for walk 1. Along the way I pass a Kauri Tree planted in the 1950s and make a mental note to find out its significance. I continue upward until I reach the dais marking the geographical center of NZ. After this I walk through an area with sheep grazing next to and on the trail. They look at me like I"m an alien, but the type of alien they are used to seeing. I wind my way back to the hostel stopping for a little milk to make my mac 'n' cheese. Along the way I hear the church bells start playing. They go on and on and I find myself wandering toward them. They're enclosed in a beautiful tower in front of a grand stone church. I sit and listen until they stop playing then finish my walk home in the near darkness. I eat my meal listening to table half filled with Germans teaching a kid with a heavy Scottish accent how to say inappropriate things in German. I crash at about 10:00PM leaving many people just about to start their night out.

Easter Break - Saturday 3/4/10 - Wellington

I plan to sleep in somewhat, though I know my plans will take up the entire time they're allotted. Te Papa (the national museum) opens at 9 and closes at 5, or so I think. My plan is to spend the morning in the museum and then catch a city bus to the zoo for the afternoon. But I'm woken early by people moving around in the room. I set off in search of Wholly Bagels, now knowing Te Papa doesn't open until 10AM. I eat my breakfast and read my guidebook until I can head over to the museum. People have told me you could easily spend a day or more in Te Papa, but I know how I feel about museums and I figure it won't keep my attention that long. Now, if I've ever seen a place my dad would love, it's this one. A free museum filled with mostly natural history. Every room is filled with interactive panels for you to learn about the things you're looking at. The first place I go is called "Our Space" and the floor is made of glowing square with satellite images of New Zealand. Some of the squares you can stand on and they light up TV screens on the walls with pictures of places within the square. I move on to the sort of animal section where they have tons of taxidermied animals and skeletons. New Zealand is the world's bird land and they need more than one room to show them off. They even have a scene depicting the world's largest eagle (now extinct) attacking the world's tallest bird, the Moa (also now extinct). There's a giant squid here as well and a video on how they caught it. They tell you about how at the ends of the tentacles the squid has these hooks to catch its prey and the hooks can rotate around. They even have a giant model so you can move a hook around and get a better picture. There are some interesting cultural and historical exhibits as well. They have a Maori prayer house and traditional clothing. There's a room about how the Maori's got to NZ, which has a model boat and when you look at it from one side there's a hologram play going on about life on the boats. A section called passports tells about the various peoples who came to NZ when it was just becoming a place to settle. Many Polish children were sent over by boat during the second world war. Apparently back at this time they were offering free passage to many people. I push a few buttons on a panel and find out they would have paid my way to NZ. However, I try another panel for a few years later and they wouldn't even have let me in the country. There's a display about the geography of NZ and natural disasters that take place here because of its location. They have a map of NZ you can move with a lever to see how the shape of the country has changed over the last million years and how it may look after the next million years. They even have a room you can stand in and it replicates how it feels if there's an earthquake. Let me take this time to remind you this is all free. There's a painting section and two or three sculptures, mostly from more modern day artists, but I buzz through those pretty quickly. I take a quick glance around the top floor at the silver and gold pieces they have, but there are very few of them and I go quite quickly again. Finally I pay for something: there's and exhibit called "A Day in Pompeii." Thinking back to my Latin days in middle/high school. I figure the exhibit might be worth it. After all, I"m only going to be here once, or so I need to think to decide on what's really important. It's well worth it and I just keep thinking "I wish Mrs. Keeley was here to see it," (my old Latin teacher). I learn all about life in Pompeii and get to see many artifacts removed from the site. There is of course a whole section about the fateful day of the Vesuvius eruption. Along the wall there's a time line of the 2 day catastrophe including excerpts from the only surviving eye witness account. They have body casts as well. These are not real bodies, the bodies decomposed a long time ago, but they left holes in the ash. These holes were filled with plaster and then the plaster was removed to show the form of the person who had once been there. Finally there was a 7 minute 3D film depicting the time line of the eruption. Quite possibly the best #D I've ever seen, though the actual material of the film left something to be desired. By the end I feel it was well worth the money. I end my experiences by paying for two "rides." The first you sit in a "submarine" and they take you to an underwater volcano off the NZ coast. The second they just show footage of NZ, both rides move around with the movements on the screen. I wouldn't say either of them is particularly worth it. I grab a sandwich on my way out at 5PM, at some point I decided I liked the museum too much and I would just skip the zoo. I head back to the hostel where they switch my room to a four bed one, but I think I would have preferred to stay in the 23 bed one. At least it's fairly quiet, but I still don't sleep that well.

Easter Break - Friday 2/4/10 - Wellington

I hear Sandy leaving at 6AM and am thankful I get to sleep another two hours. We didn't stay out late the night before, but it was late enough for me. Just as I'm drifting off again, I hear my cell phone vibrating on the floor. After hearing what I thought might have been Sandy knocking before, I figure maybe it's her and she needs something; perhaps she locked herself out. But it's a number that's not in my phone. I get the text my dad wants to come and I have to call home. Only slightly regretfully, I get up and turn on my computer. I may not get those two more hours of sleep, but it'll be worth it. One hour later my dad has a flight into Nelson and a day to pack. I try my hardest to sleep for one more hour, but it's useless and I quit to finish packing and eat breakfast. I barely get ready in time, only to discover there is no bus in to town on Good Friday. Luckily the big group of North Island traveler's haven't left yet and I manage to catch a ride with them. I make it to the main bus terminal in plenty of time. The bus ride is fairly uneventful. At one point a little boy sits down next to me. His unaccompanied minor permission form says his name is Cody. I'm reminded of the Rescuers Down Under which we watched the other night. Suddenly the ocean pops up next to the road. It's surprising because I just didn't see any warning and as unfamiliar as I am with this place, I had no idea how close we were. I take off from the combo railway/bus/shuttle station in search of a hostel. It's not long before I see the signs for Armageddon, a Kiwi Comi-Con. At this point I start to worry about the room availability. The first place I stop in has no rooms. So I retrace my steps back to the station where there's another hostel. They tell me they're all full, but they'll call around and try to find me a place. As I'm waiting a young man walks in asking "Is there any space? Please say yes because I've already been to seven places." Another receptionist looks for him and finds they do have something open. So I luck out and manage to get a room for both nights. So, once I've stowed my stuff, I head back out on the town. I'm unsuccessful at locating the Wellington Sea Museum, which is strange because I passed it twice earlier. So I just wander the main streets thinking I'll eventually catch the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens. But I totally misjudged the distance on the map and end up always going way past where I want to be. So I eventually enter the gardens from the other end. It was well worth the walking as I'm greeted by the smell and color of the rose garden. It's getting to be fall, so I wouldn't say everything is in full bloom, but it's been quite warm the past few days and I think the plants are happy about it. I spend the next hours wandering through the gardens. Sometimes retracing my steps to catch all the highlights. There's an endangered plants section, a succulent section, a flowers section, and a sculpture section that I mange to hit. I end up at the observatory area. There is a WWI and WWII plaque. And a German Cannon (though to be the only of its kind left of 190) from WWI. I get to the cable car museum, but it's closed, so I just take the ride down. Walking back to the hostel, everything's closed. I see two bars and a BK open. Completely by accident I run into the government buildings. Turning, I notice the Beehive, so I take a quick detour to their lawns to get a peak at them. I finally make it back to the hostel and make myself some dinner. It's 8:30 by the time I start writing this. I listen to two guys from the Netherlands talking to one from England and another from near Ithaca, NY. They eventually leave to find a bar and I"m left nearly alone in the 23 bed dorm. But as you might imagine with 23 people sharing a room, you're never alone for very long. It's 10 to 10 as I finish this and I am thoroughly ready for sleep.

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.

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.

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.

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.