Chelsea's Semester in New Zealand: 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