Home sweet home

My life, narrated by David Attenborough

Last night, we were watching Planet Earth while we were working on our papers, and all of a sudden, they were showing amazing scenes from Rico Rico Cave, that we had snorkeled in in the Poor Knights!

Our boat in the mouth of the cave--much smaller than the inside was! And full of fish and jellies

Our papers are due in 2 days, thank goodness, and then the semester is over soon after and then I get to go to the South Island on vacation! It will be so great to get off campus and get to see amazing things again, life has been pretty ho-hum.

Movie time

So we've had a lot of time on our hands, what with the whole "we're in school, but don't have any classes or responsibilities except to turn in a completed, flawless research paper on the 7th that determines your entire grade for the whole course" thing going on. Plus the whole "I'm going to rain relentlessly on you, every day without stop until you can't wait to leave New Zealand just to dry off, love Mother Nature" thing. This has led to some desperate time-killers.

Terrible Movies I have seen while in New Zealand (mostly on VHS)

• Ghettoblaster (lone white man in a flannel single handedly takes down Latino gang who have taken over his old hometown. This is done largely through the use of Tom & Jerry-esque pranks)
• Kissing Jessica Stein (a lesbian romantic comedy we did not expect to be a lesbian romantic comedy. The lead is a heterosexual woman--Jessica--who is so boring, I really don't see how anyone could fall for her, man or woman.)
• Surf Ninjas (yep)
• The 6th Day (Arnold Schwarzenegger and laser technology of the future)
• Stigmata (based on a true story, minus the stigmata part)

Expect this list to grow, the paper's not due for 4 more days...

Some cool pictures from last week

fungus can seriously look like ANYTHING.

 A pod of orcas swimming past campus!

 Tall

Farmland, pretty in a different way, but this is a more accurate picture of what the majority of New Zealand looks like (although Lonely Planet would have you believe otherwise)

 So fat! That toadstool growing off the side was big enough to set my nalgene on

I love this. After our first crazy hard day of frogging, we camped at the top of the mountain, and this was the view out over the Hunuas when we first woke up the next morning

Time flies

2 weeks till the semester is over
3 weeks till I'm in the USA

Bug's life!

I realize life is boring around here lately, and I don't have a lot to post about, but bear with me. All we're responsible for right now is cooking our food and writing our papers, so this is what I have left to think about :-)
Anyway, so 2 months ago I was complaining about the monster, twinkie-sized crickets that attacked your legs when you walked to the showers, and now, there are no crickets, and campus is full of praying mantises! (Mantes? Manti? Mantids? Whatever.) Apparently, the crickets take over in the summer, but when the praying mantis babies grow up in fall, they eat them all! Now there isn't any obnoxious chirping when we're trying to sleep, and the walk to the bathroom isn't so terrifying

 There were 8 of these guys on the porch last night, eating all the little bugs who love the light

 :-( wrong side of the glass buddy

BIG ONE

In other buggy news, I still haven't caught the stomach bug! Must be my mono-strengthened immune system . . .

Data analysis

Je déteste Microsoft Excel