Quirks of NZ

So i don’t have time to make a full post about the awesome long weekend we had, so i am just going to update you all on a few funny things about NZ

1. trash is rubbish. every trash can says “rubbish bin” and we all love saying it in pretentious voices

2. many times the sinks have two faucets, one for the hot and one for the cold. all of us amuricans just stand there with both running, quickly passing our hands from the scalding water in one spout to the freezing water in the other. i don’t have a clue if that’s how you’re supposed to do it…doesn’t make much sense to me.

3. most of the toilets have a full flush and a half flush option.

4. all of the outlets have off switches right on them.

5. anywhere that serves coffee will almost certainly have a flat white, short black, and a long black. and iced coffee is actually basically a coffee milkshake.

6. they don’t refridgerate the eggs in the grocery store.

7. i haven’t tried multiple brands of ibuprofen, but the pills i did get taste like they are sugar coated…sounds like a bad-ish idea to me

8. hokey pokey is one of the most popular ice cream flavors: vanilla with crunchy caramel bits.

9. ham is very popular

10. TONS of restuarants are Bring Your Own Wine (maybe that happens as much in other places in the states and i just haven’t seen it).

thats all for now, i need to study!

Hope you are all well, will post about the weekend when i get a chance!

Second Weekend

Abel Tasman!

It was a beautiful place.

After class on Friday Vishal and I flew from Wellington to Nelson in a TINY plane. You literally walked out onto the tarmac and up the steps into this plane. It was only in the air for about 25 minutes, and we had a great view of the Cook Straight and all that is Nelson.

We arrived at Accents on the Park (our hostel) around 8:30. Some of our friends had stayed there the previous weekend and we chatted with the owner about that. It was a really nice hostel with a pub in the basement!

We dashed to the grocery store before it closed to get water and snacks for the camping trip. Then I waited around worried about the four other group members who took the ferry earlier in the day. They ended up making it just a little late. I was just glad we were all reunited!

We crashed pretty early since we had to get a bus at 7AM the next morning.

This is the view from our hostel window.

The bus ride from the hostel to Abel Tasman National Park was fun because our bus driver was crazy, told lots of stories, and had a small terrier on board named Rupert, who eventually got loose.

We got to the park, paid, rented camping gear and got suited up in kayaking skirts and life vests. Then we learned to use the two person kayaks in the dirt before sending them off to a river that led to the ocean.

Vishal and I were the first ones to set off into the water. This place was so undescribably gorgeous! I could hardly believe my eyes. It was hard to focus on kayaking technique when i was so busy looking around me at the ocean and the mountains.

 

We kayaked for about 4 hours in the calm waters, with a few stops to look at some baby birds on a rock, to meditate over biscuits (aka cookies), and to hear the story of how the park was created and named after Abel Tasman (he never even set foot on the island, tho he got close).

We had lunch on the beach around 1PM, which Kiwi Kayaks provided. It was tasty. Our instructor took us on a hike up into the woods to get this great view of the bay we ate lunch in.

After lunch we finished out kayaking into Anchorage Bay, where we set up our tents. Rachel and I took a nap in ours because we were beat!

We had weird precooked pasta for dinner at the camp site and the girls in the group explored the beach for a while.

 

 

The next day we packed up all the gear and started our hike. It was a rough hike, but I had fun. We didn’t make it all the way to Tonga where the water taxi was supposed to pick us up. Instead we played in the ocean  for a few hours and got picked up at Bark Bay. They made fun of us for being lazy, but i didn’t care.

After a long bus ride back to Nelson, we checked into our second hostel of the weekend, the Custom House. We had the best fish and chips of all time (I really have never eaten such good fish, so fresh) and watched the sun set from the harbour.

The next day we took a train to the ferry stop and were reunited with friends who had been in Christchurch for the weekend.

I managed to avoid sunburn until that ferry ride home, since i stood on the deck the whole time. My face is a little red. But that’s all good.

So i definitely got to see a lot of beautiful sites this weekend.

Now i have a ton of homework to work on, so i better go. more updates later.

This weekend!

I have packed my backpack full of everything i think i could possibly need: clothes for three days, bathing suit, towel, flip flops, premade pasta foods, cereal bars, trail mix, safety kit…and i think i am ready to go kayaking and camping! It’s going to be crazy! Except there are bathrooms at the campsite as well as showers. I think all in all it will be pretty tame. haha.

The place we are going is Abel Tasman national park and it is claimed to be one of the best trips to take while studying here. In five hours i’ll be getting on a plane to get down to Nelson! Wish me luck! I’ll let you all know how it went when i get back!

Not sure if the hostels this weekend will have hammocks…

Our Road Trip

So we completed our road trip with mostly success. There were a few issues, as can be expected. The 8 of us packed into two cars because they didn’t have the van we reserved. We didn’t get to Napier until 1AM (mostly because we spent a looong time chatting with locals at a tiny tavern at dinner time).

Thankfully the woman at the Napier Prison hostel was still awake and let us in. We were able to meet up with our other friends and see the ocean before passing out in the room. We definitely had a fun experience in our first hostel. In the morning we explored and all took mug shots…heh.

After a great breakfast at a cafe in town, it was on to Rotorua. There are no open container laws, so we stocked up on local beer for the ride. Made it to Rotorua around 3PM, which was too late to do many of the activities we were considering. So we mostly hung out in the pool. We also went to dinner in town and  got coffee.

The next day it was on to Waitomo and caving!

Wetsuits!

This photo is dark because we are inside the cave, but you can sorta see me in the middle there.

After that awesome ride through the caves and jumping backwards off a 5 foot waterfall, we got to shower and have soup and bagels!

Our hostel that evening was called Juno Hall and it was so wonderful! It was really cute and comfortable, with a pool, hammocks, a trampoline, and farm animals! They have a deer … and everyone now calls me the deer whisperer because i made friends with it.

We took a hike around the small town. Then i fell asleep on a couch on the porch at the hostel. Everyone else was watching movies with the crew that was staying there. It was quite a mix of people, including a family with small kids. Such fun.
We all hit the sack early that night so we could wake up early to leave the next day. The drive back was long but scenic. I slept a lot.

We got back to Weir house around 3:30PM. That night our friends who were kayaking came home and we had a nice reunion. Everyone was so beat though that we showered and went to bed!

Last night we all went to another concert in the botanical gardens, which was such a blast. We got to share stories from our travels.

Now I am planning a trip with 5 other people to go on a 2 day tour of Abel Tasman next weekend. We’ll fly into Nelson, stay in a nice hostel, kayak on Friday, camp on the beach, hike on Saturday, stay in a hostel that night, and ride a  ferry through Cook Straight back to Wellington on Sunday. The exchange rate is so great right now. The total cost of all of that was 444NZD but that only comes to $242 USD!

It will be a blast and we’re bringing two boys with us, so one of them will definitely be in my kayak!

I have a lot more pictures but we found out we DO have a limit of how much we can do on the internet per day, so I can’t upload all of them.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how my week goes! I’ll be doing real research in the Karori Wildlife Reserve on an endangered bird species soon, so there will be a lot to tell. Hope everyone is doing well. Love you!

My weekend

I only have a sec to post before we run out of here for a nice long weekend. But I thought i’d let you all know where i will be!

Me and 8 others rented a 12 seat van and we are driving from Wellington to Napier, which is on the east coast of the North island. We are staying in Napier Prison, which was a prison until 1993 and is now a hostel and historic site. It is apparently haunted…

We will probably have dinner and go to the beach tonight.

Friday morning sometime we will be driving north west through wine country. Do some wine tasting and hopefully honey tasting!

We’ll spend friday night in a nice hotel in Rotorua, which has thermal baths! Rotorua has a lot of volcanic activity, smells of rotten eggs, and is a huge tourist place. We are spending Saturday morning exploring.

Then we’re driving to Waitomo which is about 2 hours away. Here we will get to ride innertubes through a glow worm cave in the dark! Wet suits and headlamps included!

Saturday night is a hostel. Sunday is driving the 7 hours back to Wellington. Plenty of time to catch up on my sleep!
I probably won’t talk to anyone in the states until i am back, so I love you all!

Ps. i think i can recieve text messages for only 5 cents. and send them for 50 cents.

Photos!

I don’t have too many photos, and none of them are that great. But i thought i’d post a few anyway!

View of Wellington  from hill on campus

View of the harbour from the botanical garden

View of the rose garden from the “Steep Walk” to the rest of the gardens. I guess there was a not steep way to get  to the rest of the gardens, but we didn’t take it…

You can see more of my photos in my flickr account, click here!

Now I really must go read before lunch!

My first three days

HOLY COW!

I am going to have to give the quickest recap ever. SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED! It feels like we’ve been here a week!

The plane ride over here was alright. Massive fancy airplane (the boeing 777 i think) with rows of 3 – 3 – 3. I was on the left side of the plane in the middle seat, but Akira, who had the window, sat with his friends for most of the ride. That meant i got to stretch between two seats and doze, a lot. There were over 84 inflight movies (not to mention games and tv as well). I think I watched 5 of them, falling asleep through most of it.

The food on the plane was ok. We got dinner (in Atlanta time it was served around 1AM) as well as breakfast. I somehow managed that entire ride without standing up a single time. We got to see a sunrise in the morning. The whole situation felt unreal.

Made it groggily through customs in Auckland and boarded a tiny plane to get to Wellington. In comparison, that hour long trip was NOTHING. It was glum and rainy in Wellington when we arrived. Rode a bus to the dorms, got all checked in. The rooms are nice. A twin bed, a long desk, two chairs, a sink, a mirror, a wardrobe, a large window, and plenty of shelf space. I packed nearly nothing in comparison to most of the girls, so my room is a little barren. But it doesn’t matter to me!

The first  evening I went into town with a group to look around. Wellington has SO MANY HILLS! Seriously, you wouldn’t believe it. There is a cable car with a stop right outside our dorm that takes you downhill into town. I spent the night playing cards with people in the common room. We were all very tired.

On our second day, which was Sunday, we had breakfast and then got a tour of campus. It is a very small campus all in all. Just a few buildings clumped together among the hills! We also found out that we had reading assingments due for class the next day. So after lunch a group of us sat in the common room reading. But we all were a  bit antsy, so we ended up going on an adventure to explore the Botanical Gardens.

If there are words to describe this place, I can’t find them. The gardens are not 5 minutes walk from our dorm. It is massive and distruibuted through the hills right outside of the main town. There are rose gardens, rock gardens, herb gardens, an observatory, historic sites, a duck pond, etc etc. The whole group (about 6 or so) couldn’t keep our jaws off the ground. We just kept saying we couldn’t believe how beautiful it really was. My pictures do not do it justice in the least. AND IT IS ALL FREE.

My friend Nick and I got lost from the group  and wandered the park oursevles. We’d heard there was a jazz concert there and wanted to find out what time and where. Many photo shoots later, we found the lawn where the concert was being held.

We went back to the gardens after dinner for the concert. What a blast! The place was packed full of natives and non-natives, with picnics and blankets. As it got dark a light display came on through the park and bubble machines were turned on. Some of the large group we came with ended up leaving early, but Christine, Nick and I stayed to explore the park after dark. We ended up running into a Georgia Tech grad who is vacationing here!

Today was the first day of class. My first class is at 8AM and it is Biogeography of NZ. Many of my friends are in this class and for the first few weeks we are being taught by a professor from Victoria University, which is so fun! Plus, we have a lot of field trips. That class will be awesome!

After that class i came back to the dorms and finished reading for my second class at 2:30PM. I hung around talking to people and went to lunch. After lunch Nick and I went exploring because it was too beautiful outside not to! Plus, there are so many trails and places to see, every where you look there is amazing scenery and you can almost always see the harbour.

Once we got back from that short walk, i sat in the common room with Liz, Sydney, and Stuart and we worked on planning the trip we are taking this weekend (the alternative to doing the kayaking trip).  Liz and i had class at 2:30. That class is Intro to Organismal Bio which will probably be kind of boring. But the labs are going to be cool (dissecting pigs).

Liz, Nick, and I went to the student book store and got  school supplies. The paper is funny sized here…but i like it. Everything is so novel and wonderful! After that we hung out until dinner…everyone trying to get on the net.

Dinner was kinda ick (I’ll talk more about the food later), and afterward a group of us went down to the main grocery store called New World. This place is cute as anything! I got some crackers, granola bars, trail mix, popcorn, and juice so I’d have some snacks.

After we got back, I spent a few hours with the group of 8 that is going on our weekend trip, which i will have to talk more about later. And that brings me here…trying to fill everyone in!

All in all, i am growing more comfortable and getting to know everyone better. It is too beautiful for words, even though the weather hasn’t been great. It is still warm enough to know it is summer and be excited for it!

There is so much more to say, but i will have to leave it at that for now. Liz is having a birthday tomorrow and we are all going out to celebrate, so i want to get extra rest tonight.

I miss you all and hope that wasn’t too long of a read…I will post photos as soon as i get some good ones!

Weir House

This is the dorm I am staying in! Isn’t it beautiful?!

City of Wellington as seen from Weir House

You can see more photos here if you are interested!

This is roughly where Wellington is located (on the southern tip of the north island).

What I’ll be leaving behind, part III

My friends!!!

Shauna and I

CLICK THE LINK FOR TONS MORE!

Last Night in Atlanta

So i know i didn’t post all the stuff i said i would. but i have been ill. I started getting a fever and hives on Christmas which escalated to terribly swollen glands by New Years Day and full on strep throat so bad i couldn’t swallow over the weekend. But the strep throat was only secondary to the mono.

I never get sick so of course i had to in the two weeks preceding the biggest adventure of my short life. But i guess we all get what’s coming to us. All in all i haven’t felt too bad from the mono, but only time will tell with that virus.

Needless to say, i have been a little too depressed (and ill) to post, especially when i had to cancel the three day sea kayaking and hiking trip that was planned for January 15th.

My bag is packed for the most part and i have tied up most of my loose ends. I wish i could have posted more, but i am sure i will have at least a few minutes this weekend to let you know about what my dorm is like anyway.

For now i will leave you with a brief summary of my flight itinerary:

JANUARY 8th

Flight #DL 2087  on Delta : Leave ATL – 1:25 PM / Arrive LAX – 3:19PM  (Flight time approx 4 hours)

6 hour layover…

Flight # NZ1 on New Zealand Air : Leave Lax – 9:15PM

JANUARY 9th

Arrive AUCKLAND – 7:25AM (Flight time approx 13 hours)

3 hour layover…

Flight #NZ421 on New Zealand Air : Leave AUCKLAND – 10AM / Arrive WELLINGTON – 11AM (Flight time approx 1 hour)