food?

What is this, you ask?

It's a typical day of food for a college student. Note the Subway cup, the plastic wrapped cookies, and the gross wrap. At school, we have the option of eating at the mass produced cafeteria, or, trying for some originality, going to exchange our meals for Subway. Not the yummiest thing in the world!

Bow down to my intestinal fortitude!

Take care, y'all.

alright, alright

Alright.

So I'm bad at blogging. But I LOVE reading other people's blogs... hm.

Well.

I'm back at Earlham for my senior year. Things have been going well so far... lots of work, lots of play, and lots of fun.

But I'm not really writing here to recap some boring life events over and over again. What I am here to do is this: show some hilarious pictures of me and etc using photobooth.

For those who aren't familiar, photobooth is a program found on the newer macbooks, with the built in webcam. It gives you lots of features, to do weird effects or whatever you like. The following are excerpts from my life over the past week. Enjoy :)



My friends and I are pretty cool....


Gross.

Filling up my water bottle at Yosemite... hahahaha.


Wooo rollercoaster.

Sam and I in Paris...


Sam and I are too cool for school.

Man we're weird.

Not actually staged, but hilarious.


Love,
Crazy cat lady

micro update

So I think it has been well established that I am horrible at keeping up with my blog. I do really love it! I love posting pictures and hearing myself talk...

Ahem.

Anyway, I have since returned from East of Down Under and have been living it up in Indianapolis ever since. I spent some time visiting my friends in Washington, D.C. over memorial day weekend and then moved into my new place. I also have a brand new cat-- the best cat in the whole world in a house I share with SS and our landlord.

I've been working at IU school of medicine and having an absolute blast! I'm doing parasitology research on Toxoplasma, a parasite that has a feline definitive host. For all of you ladies out there, when you are/were pregnant, typically physicians warn against cleaning out the litter box of your cat. This is because Toxoplasma is found in the fecal matter of felines and can infect your unborn child and have serious health effects. It is not harmful to immunocompetent people, but there is a huge area for research to determine pharmacological targets and treatments.

But, to spare you with all of the boring details, here are some cool pictures! My camera has been great, but my laptop not so great, and therefore all of my NZ pictures are still stuck without being able to be uploaded. So, we'll have to do with what was posted on facebook and the like.

first, Washington DC with KP:
next, bigcat. the next and best cat face to sweep the nation. also great at: having bad gas, sleeping, and scratching your face at 6am when his food bowl is empty.and finally, a fantastic and highly flattering picture of me in my new lab:
Alright. That's all for now, folks. More updates to come as the summer commences!
-kjf

obsessions

First off- it's my last week of city life in New Zealand and I've finally finished with exams. For that reason, my host mother and I took a trip out to the NZ equivalent of a JoAnn fabrics on crack and I purchased enough australian wool to last me the total 21 hours I will be spending on a plane in two weeks.

Man that was a long sentence.

Regardless, I feel it's important to update you all (the approximately 3 of you that stumble by here) of my current obsessions. First, it's important to note that what I love I love fiercely and obsess over learning every detail of.

1. Dalmatians. Especially extremely cute deaf senior female ones named Dot. Especially ones I am loosely considering adopting with SS for our place this summer in Indy. See here:

This image is purposefully big to make up for the lack of images to follow.

2. Gastronomic delights- this includes delicious special gourmet food like spinach artichoke dip but mostly includes yummy things that me and SS enjoy, like spaghettios, pizza rolls, fajitas, spaghetti, salsa, and chicken curry. There's nothing more satisfying to me in the world than enjoying the food you want to taste at the exact moment you get to taste it. Also on the list: cream cheese frosting, cool whip, cookie dough, and mini cupcakes. Yum yum.

3. Children and all children related blogs- I really love little kids. I love taking pictures of little kids. I love telling everyone how my cousins are the best little adorable children in the whole world.

this leads me to points 4 and 5:

4. Photography- I love my camera. I love photoshop and I love landscape photography. I used to think landscape pictures were boring but they are my favourite things. I love taking pictures of people and babies and bugs and omg sunsets and mountains. I love my bridge camera that is not quite a point and shoot and not quite a DSLR. I love reading my camera manual and photography blogs and magazines and and and... yes.

5. Knitting, crocheting, sewing gifts- I really have a huge blast making cute pink or purple fuzzy things for my adorable cousins to wear and I don't think I'm going to be able to stop. Today I bought more yarn than I can handle and after the poncho and baby sweater are done, I'm making concentrated efforts to knit a cable knit case for SS's laptop. But after that it's all baby clothes, all the time.

and finally,

6. Running- I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed with running blogs and foot-strikes-per-minute ratios and shoe sizes and conditions and wind speeds and running gadgets.

These obsessions are seriously a disease, people. I just wanted to outline them so I could let you all know when I go off the deep end and compose a post entirely about knit gauges following one about green onions and cream cheese, and you wont be surprised.

Missing all of you like crazy!
-kjf

update from the brink of... something

hello all-

first I'd like to inform everyone that while this post does have pictures that accompany it, they're not for the weak-stomached. Actually, I made that up, but the point is that they are gross pictures and therefore I'll spare you from the misery.

Gross pictures of what, you ask? Well, let's start our first round of Humiliating Tales from the Southern Hemisphere:

About 6 weeks ago, another girl (hereby referred to as K) was really sick. This is a good friend of mine on the program, someone I went out with and had a good time with. When she became really sick, we were at the Kaikoura station (see below) and that was just not a good place to be sick. In any case, it turned out that she tested positive for a whole host of bugs, including glandular fever.

What is glandular fever, you ask? Well, it's the New Zealand term for mononucleosis, a common college-student illness all over the world. Regardless, none of us really knew that so we were all freaking out when we heard 'glandular fever'. But I digress.

So a few weeks later, I started to get sick with what appeared to be either the flu or a nasty respiratory infection. Just before we went on the Mokihinui river trip (see below), I managed to swing by the campus health center and get checked out. For some reason, they only charge you if they diagnose you (which is a story for another time). Anyway, long story short the lovely woman there gave me Amoxicillin (old school antibiotic), painkillers, and nasal spray, along with a $40 diagnostic charge. Bravely, I headed out into the wilderness.

Fast forward to last Thursday. I'm still not getting any better and I've completed the antibiotic course. I woke up on Thursday morning with an itchy rash that started on my arms and ankles, and soon would spread to the rest of my body. Thinking it was just a laundry detergent reaction, I went off to work at the IAC. Well once I got there, my boss was convinced I had a fungal infection. I called the campus health center anyway, just to be safe. As it was just about to be the extended Easter weekend (that they take seriously here, folks), they suggested I come in.

And here is where it gets particularly hilarious. I leave work, leave my tupperware full of yummy home-made gluten-free pizza and fries in the staff fridge and instead lunch on $9 worth of fried potato wedges. After waiting a full 30 minutes for the bus, I ask the bus driver where the best stop to get off is. He grunts at me and tells me to move it along. I sat down near the back and finished my food. Then, wondering how far the rash had spread, I took off my shoes and socks and was busy publicly inspecting my feet and ankles on the bus (i know, gross) and suddenly the bus stopped.

"mskhgkhshgkj get off the bus sdlkjskljdf" said the driver.

"what?" said I.

"sdklkjsdkflsjd catch the other bus skjdljksds" said he.

Not knowing what was going on, I grabbed my backpack, empty wedge container, shoes, and socks and ran off the bus. I realized then that another university (and therefore health center) bound bus was right behind us. Barefoot and in my dress slacks and work shirt, I jumped around trying to get the other bus' attention, but to no avail. I felt like a complete idiot, made better by the high school boys standing on the sidewalk giggling at me.

Humiliation, I say.

Dignifiedly (or as dignified as one can be when holding shoes, socks, and styrofoam at 1pm on a thursday afternoon in the fall in NZ) I started walking towards the university.

6 blocks later I found the health center. After 3 appointments, $200 i didn't have, and many a blood test later, it turns out that I too had glandular fever. The rash, is a characteristic rash (oh joy) that's found only when Amoxicillin and mono interact. How AWESOME! Not.

Anyway, so I've spent my long easter weekend (friday-tuesday) sleeping and watching scrubs off of my external hard drive. New Zealand is a killer, folks.

Hope you're all doing well! Happy Belated Easter!

NZ update 3-- with photos!

Kia ora everyone! Welcome to the third installment of the NZ updates, now with photos on my blog! This will be a long update, but woohoo! Also, I wanted to say that a month from today I will be flying back to America. It seems way too soon, but also too far away at the same time. Hmm...

Alright, when we last left off, I was taking classes at the University of Canterbury and living with my host family.

My host family consists of my host mother, Fay, a retired gourmet baker, and Lindsay (male) a current policeman who now works at the communications center and issues press releases. They have two grown daughters, both over 30, one with a child who is about three. They're all quite proper and nice, and their home is absolutely gorgeous.


This is a bit out of order, but I think it's important to document the hilarity of things that happen in NZ. In my last update I mentioned going to a Canterbury Crusaders rugby match. Below you'll see a picture of Linnea and I there. The things we are holding are big cardboard fingers that they gave out for free with 'TRY!' printed on them. The idea is that you wave them whenever the team scores a try, or a goal. It's pretty silly.


And then random things like this happen. A NZ air force plane comes and lands ON THE RUGBY PITCH to deliver the game ball. They take their sports seriously here, folks.


Anyway, after a week or two in host families, we went out to the University of Canterbury field station on Kaikoura Peninsula. It was absolutely gorgeous. We stayed in a bunkroom connected to the marine biology lab all weekend and it was awesome. We got to play around in the tide pools and pull up all sorts of cool creatures and even go dolphin watching.


My favourite was the decorator crab. He uses his claws to decorate his back with seaweed and things to camouflage himself underwater. Pretty cool.

Oh hello, gigantic seven-armed starfish. How are you?

We then got to go check out a seal colony. Check out the big guy below, doing his morning yoga.


Well after a few more weeks of classes, it was finally time for a college student's favourite thing: Spring Break! Three other girls and I took off for our tiki-tour around the South Island. We took a trans alpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth, travelled down the west coast to the Franz Josef glaciers, then down some more to popular Queenstown, then back over to the east coast to Scottish-descendant Dunedin, then back up the east coast to Christchurch. It was a lot of fun, but a LOT of travelling. My favourite parts were the walks we spent going along the glacier. See below for atrocious hiking outfits (hiking shorts + leggings + wool socks and hiking boots = not a good look) and a nice view of the glacier.


As soon as we returned from spring break, we turned right back around and went camping, tramping, and lodging for the past week. We went along the west coast to Lyell/Westport/ and Seddonville, three small towns affected by a current power shortage. We camped along the Mokihinui river, a site of serious controversy in this area. Meridian, a NZ-based power company has proposed to put up an 85 m high dam along the river and flood acres of native forest, all for power in this area. There is a huge debate over whether the costs outweigh the benefits, and we spent a week as a class studying the issue from all different sides, and even interviewing town-folk about what they thought. We stayed at a beautiful lodge called the Rough and Tumble, started by a fiddling American and his Kiwi wife. Very cool.
This is where the dam would be built.

On our way back, we also stopped at Pancake Rocks, these super awesome geological formations... so cool. Pictures forthcoming-- I can't overload my host family's server in just one night!

We just got back yesterday, and are now back to the grind with classes and internships. Just a few more weeks of this, final exams, and then we're off to Abel Tasman National Park to tramp and sea-kayak. It is the most beautiful place in NZ, and if NZ is the most beautiful place on Earth (and it is), I dare say I may be going to the most beautiful place in the entire WORLD. I can't wait!

Love and miss all of you!
kjf

NZ update 2-- now with photos!

Hello Everyone!

Kia Ora and I hope you are all doing well and taking care of yourselves. I've just finished my second module and would love to update you all. When I last left off, I was sitting at a beautiful Quaker settlement in sunny and warm Wanganui. Here's what's happened since then:

After about a week in Wanganui, we took off for a trip with the Maori down the Wanganui river. This was a real treat-- we got to canoe down the aorta of Maori culture, so to speak, with their people and visit their tribes and Marae, or holy grounds.

Here is everyone in front of the second marae we stayed at.

It was absolutely fantastic. The scenery was gorgeous, and the canoes (or wakas) were fun. The tribesman who guided my waka was known as Baldy. He's the highest ordered person of his tribe, and was so much fun. He actually was one of Gandalf's horsemen in the Lord of the Rings 1-3! Anyway, he really pushed me to stretch outside my boundaries and I jumped off a 45 foot cliff into the water AND rode down rapids in my lifejacket! It was so much fun and I'm glad I went.
We then returned to Wanganui for a few days. After that, we took a day hike to Tongariro crossing. This is a huge volcano site that houses Mount Doom, also of Lord of the Rings fame. It was absolutely stunning and a fantastic day. Below, we are acting like Orks from LOTR on Tongariro.

We finished off our time at the settlement with a community dinner and then headed up the coast to Kapiti Island. Kapiti is a nature reserve that is closed off to only 50 visitors per day. Needless to say, with our group of 24, we were very lucky to get on it! We actually had the unique pleasure of staying overnight on the island (only 30 may due so) and we even took a late night hunt for Kiwi birds! My group spotted two of these rare birds that are also the New Zealand symbol. We also got to see the Takahe, a bird that there are only 226 left of in the world. Pretty cool!

A Kaka parrot also landed on my shoulder and tried to steal my granola bar... quite funny actually.

If you look closely, you can see the bite marks from the kaka's beak.

I'm trying not to ramble too much, but after that we took off for Wellington. We stayed in a wonderful hostel for that week in the nation's capital city. It was a fun city and we spent most of our time working on our midterm exams. After we turned those in on Valentine's day, we headed off for independent travel. Two girls and a guy from our program joined me and we took a night bus up to Auckland, the nation's international turnaround point. We stayed there for just under a week, and had an awesome time exploring the city and eating tons of sushi. The asian population there is phenomenal, and the food is awesome.



Since then, we traveled down to Christchurch to meet up with our host families. My host family is fantastic, they live in a suburb of chch and run a Bed and Breakfast here. I have my own suite, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I've spent time going for runs along the Avon river and strolling up the beach side in New Brighton. Last night I caught a rugby game at a local pub (Christchurch lost :( ) and then this morning my host family and I caught a surfing competition out on the sea. It's been so much fun here, and I can't wait for the next third of the program.

I hope all of you are doing well. It's sunny and warm every day here, and I feel so blessed to be here. Thank you all for your love and support!

I'll leave you with a list of things that New Zealand does not have that America does have:
1. Reeses Peanut Butter Cups
2. Raw cookie dough
3. Frosting in a can
4. Cool Whip
5. A1 sauce
6. Root Beer

And a list of things New Zealander's eat that we don't in America:
1. Beets
2. WeetBix cereal
3. Digestives (they're actually cookies! who knew?)
4. Fried Fish and Chips-- it comes wrapped up in newspaper for only 3$!
5. Marmite (odd activated yeast sandwich spread)
6. Beets. on EVERYTHING!

Love!

NZ update 1-- now with photos!

I hope you are all doing well over in the states and enjoyed the inaugeration as much as the New Zealanders did! I've been having a blast here and I just wanted to send an update on to those of you who I care for a lot.

New Zealand has been great! Kiwis (the name for native New Zealander's) are quite friendly and very fun. We arrived in Christchurch on January 6 and have been very busy since then. First off, let me say that it is mid-summer here and the weather is PERFECT! The climate is not too wet or dry because of it's island geography (close to all oceans) and the weather so far has been in the 70s with sun and a light breeze… perfect! The only thing is that the sun is VERY intense here, with nearly every day clocking in at 11/11 on the UV scale. You can get sunburned in under 10 minutes! Needless to say, we're slathering on the sunblock here.

Anyway, our group is composed of 19 students and 4 program leaders, all from Earlham. We come from different parts of the country and different fields of study, but we're all getting along very well. The leaders are all former Earlham grads, with one being a current biology professor at EC (shown below).
We stayed in Chch for a few days just getting an introduction to the city, the bird life, and the geology of NZ. We stayed in small dorms on the University of Canterbury campus and ate meals together. Soon after, we packed up all of our gear and headed south to Fjordland (land of the Southern Alps Mountain range) and hiked on the infamous Routeburn track for five days. It was pretty grueling at times. We covered 60km (45 miles?) in just over 4 days with 50-70lb backpacks on in the heat, no showers or clothes changing!

It was really intense, and the highlight for me was spending one day on the top of a mountain feeling very chilly, and the next day being down in the bog up to my knees in mud! It was a beautiful hike—we could see the glory of the Earth in many ways. NZs geology is so spectacular, we saw natural waterfalls, rock slides, plain grasslands, forests, sub-alpine areas, snowy areas, deserts, and many more types of environment all in one week.

After that, we showered and returned to Chch for two days to pack up completely and prepare to go to Wanganui. We've spent a LOT of time driving (on the wrong side of the road! That's how they do it here) in big 12-passenger vans all over NZ. Some people are carsick—so it's pretty brutal for them! We drove up the coast of the South Island and stopped in Picton for a stay in a backpacker's hostel. We then took the ferry across Cook Strait the next morning and reached the North Island of NZ. We drove to Wanganui, and that's where we are now.


I know it might not all quite make sense now, but hopefully it will soon! We've been getting our coursework and our cultural experiences in while still having a blast. So far in Wanganui, we've done a fair bit of work and had lectures. We're staying at a beautiful Quaker settlement for the next week or two. This picture is of one of the quaker settlers, named Nigel, on his birthday. He's one of the most friendly people we've met so far. Later next week, we're taking a river trip canoeing up the Wanganui river to travel through Maori iwi and undoubtedly see some haka.

So if that last sentence didn't make any sense to you, no worries! The Maori are the Polynesian decendents of the native indigenous people of New Zealand—think Native Americans in the US. While most have intermarried, some still live in settlements with their iwi, or tribe. Many of them live along the river and we will be staying in their marae, or worship buildings. NZ has many Maori influences—the signs are all in English and Maori, many towns are named in Maori, etc. In fact, Wanganui means 'land of the big wave'. Also, you pronounce Maori as follows: Mauw-ree.

Anyway, this email has gone on far too long. I'll leave you with a few fun Kiwi phrases:
Cheers!—thanks!
Sweet as!—Awesome
She'll be right, mate—it'll all work out

I miss all of you and hope this email wasn't too much. Take care and enjoy all of the Northern Hemisphere's haku (snow)!

woohoo!

welcome to the batman spaghettio blog! More updates soon!