Last Post Before Autumn Break

Hello!
This is the last week of school before our autumn break starts. We get two weeks so I'm heading to the South Island with pretty much every International student in New Zealand. I'm taking the ferry on the way there and I'm excited because I hear it's beautiful. I'll put up some pictures of break when I get back.

These past few weeks haven't been too eventful. Last week one of the Americans had a gig at the San Francisco Bathhouse. A good Kiwi name huh? He played the guitar and sang, and we all drank. It was a lot of fun.

Last week I got roped into a interhall swim competition and hopped in a pool for the first time in 4 years. We had a practice on Friday and then the competition was on Sunday. At the practice we got timed so it could be decided who would be swimming in the meet. There were only around 8 events at the meet, all relays, and most of us ended up swimming at least 4 or 5 of the events. The girls team consisted of two Kiwis, another American, and me. A lot of the Americans and other people from our hall came to watch and cheer us on. I was surprised at how much they got into it. One American told me that she felt patriotic cheering for us and joked that she even teared up a little. Haha.

The residence halls here have pretty strong rivalries and their halls are their substitute for the Greek system. Apparently everyone makes fun of the Kiwis that live in our hall because it's a temporary hall and has a lot less people than all of the other halls, not to mention all those damn Americans. The rivalries led to a pretty intense competition and we were kind of feeling the pressure from our hall manager, Helen, to win.

I swam 50 back in the 200 medley relay and then 50 free in the 200 free relay and we won both of those races by quite a bit. The other relays I was in were a wheel barrow relay (where one person is the arms and the other is the feet), a feet first (sculling) relay, and a leap frog relay. We won both the wheel barrow and the leap frog and got second in the sculling relay. We ended up winning the entire meet and apparently earned ourselves a pizza party, so I'm excited for that. It was a lot of fun, but I'm still sore! I forgot what a good workout swimming was.

Now I'm wrapping up my school work that I have to turn in before break and then I leave on Saturday morning. I'm excited and I'll have a lot to blog about when I get back. Until then I'm just doing school work and taking a few breaks to blog and go rock climbing tonight. I'll blog again after break!
Team America

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hope everyone had a good St. Patrick's Day! For St. Patrick's Day, my dorm put on an hour long harbor cruise. The city was so beautiful at night and I tried to take pictures but they all turned out blurry. After the cruise, everyone went out to town to celebrate. I was super excited because it was going to be the first year that I could go to a bar and get a green beer, but unfortunately there is no green beer in New Zealand for St. Patty's. They don't have the pinching rule either! Apparently they don't have it in Germany either because one of our German friends asked, "Isn't the rule in America that if you aren't wearing green people throw yellow sponges at you?" He was completely serious and was confused as to why we were all laughing. It was hilarious. There was a lot of green when we went out to town, but I didn't see any specials on Guinness or Jameson. Overall, New Zealanders don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day quite as hard as Americans. Not really that surprising, Americans love to party!

This Saturday I took a daytrip with a few of the other Americans to Mana Island. It was so beautiful and if you ever go to New Zealand, you HAVE to go to Mana Island. We chartered a sailboat named the Paikea, which means humpback whale in Maori. It was about an hour sail to the island where we got off and hiked the trail to the top for a look at the South Island. The whole island had amazing viewpoints and there were a few hiking trails to give access to the more amazing lookouts. The island used to be a trading post and there also used to be a sheep farm there, but now only a park ranger and his family live there year-round. The old barn is still there with some rusty shearing equipment inside. It still smelled like sheep and lanolin, and it was actually really creepy.

The island is home to a pretty large group of a type of bird called the Shore Plover which is really rare. The Maori name for it is Tuturuatu. There are only around 200 of them in the world and people travel from all over to Mana to see them. We had no idea and took it for granted and only realized later how lucky we were to have seen them. The beach was also littered with Paua shells, which are a blueish iredescent color. It was hard to tear ourselves away from beachcombing in order to make the hike around the island.

After we got back on the sailboat we got the chance to do a little fishing. Technically, I caught the first fish of the day, a jellyfish. It was all over my line and my bait. Only one person caught a fish, but it was pretty big and she was able to bring it back with her. She needed help to gut the fish because she had never done it before, and naturally, she asked the Alaskan. I helped her gut it and she cooked it up and we got to have fresh fish for dinner. I'm not really sure what type of fish it was, but it had white meat and tasted pretty good.

Anyways, that was my big adventure for the week. It was one of the best days I've had here. The trip was amazing and we all kept talking about unbelievable it was to be sailing around in New Zealand.
The Paikea

Paua Shell

Mana Island

View from Mana


South Island

Mana Hiking Trail

Shore Plover

Jellyfish

Dinner

Finally Set up a Blog!

Hey!

So I finally set up a blog after being here for over a month, but now I'm in "uni" so I'm not really doing anything too interesting. The first few weeks here I was traveling all over the north island with my Australearn group and then with my Mom and step-dad. It was nice to get to see a lot of New Zealand in the few weeks before school started. Once I got to Wellington things were a bit rocky with my housing situation, but that has all been sorted out. We just got internet in my dorm last week after living here for around 3 weeks! Which reminds me, we Americans take our free internet for granted. It wasn't until I got here and had to pay up to $10 for a half an hour of "high speed" (as fast as dial-up) internet, that I realized how nice it is to have free wifi hotspots all over in the US!

Like I said, I'm at school now, at Victoria University of Wellington, and things have slowed down a lot. I am lucky that I only have class 3 days a week, but I have started working in a microbiology lab on my days off. The weather is starting to get a bit cooler, but when I first got to Wellington, it was in the 70s or 80s every day! It's still been pretty warm, but we've had some really cold, wet, and windy days. Last Friday there was a mini tornado that ripped the roofs off of some buildings. Apparently, that's not too out of the ordinary for "Windy Welly". There is a really cool picture of the storm front coming into Wellington at http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3443374/Southerly-buster-hits-Wellington. Looking at the picture, it's hard to believe that the next day I was doing homework at Oriental Beach!

Well, I don't have too much to talk about as far as what I've been doing this week. I'll keep you updated if anything interesting happens!

Oriental Beach