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