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

stomach bug

The strangest stomach bug has been making its way around campus for the past 2 weeks. So far, 16 of the 25 of us have gotten sick with this 24 hour bug, but no one has gotten it on the same day, it's been hitting us like dominoes. For those lucky enough to be on campus, they at least have a bed to sleep in and a toilet to hurl in (sorry, it's gross), but for everyone who's been in the field or on a camping trip, the virus has been particularly inconvenient. So far so good over here, but my roommate lost it in the aisle of the movie theater yesterday and was sick all last night, so I'm thinking I'm pretty much doomed.

I had a mini sleepover with Annalea and Abby last night to give Kayla the room to herself. We watched Ghettoblaster on VHS, a prime example of why movie-making in the 80s was never a good idea. Fingers crossed for my immune system still!

Happy Easter!

Easter Weekend! Our last break all together before we turn in our papers on May 10! 8 people went hiking in Tongariro (think Mt. Doom, 5 hours south of us) but my hiking boots and all my warm clothes were still soaked from the past week of frogging, so I opted for an opposite of hiking weekend in the city with some of the other girls.

We went to some markets, watched a rugby game, cooked dinner, went out to an underground dance club, got late night diner breakfast, and then went to the movies on Easter (with nothing else being open). I feel kind of guilty for having weekends like this: weekends where you could do almost all of these things in the States, because I feel like I'm not taking advantage of New Zealand during my last month here (25 days left in the country!!!) but honestly, I had so much fun this weekend I don't even really care. With the biggest (and I mean literally biggest) paper of my life to date due in 15 days, I am not going to be having much fun any time soon, so it was nice to let loose for a couple of days.

Also! One of our roomies at the hostel in Auckland said he graduated from Michigan State University in '07! Small world!

The most celebrating we did for Easter itself was to go see a movie, which is kind of sad. But then again, back home I would probably have been eating chocolate, followed by a ham, so the fact that I was sitting in a movie theater, eating chocolate, followed by popcorn was not that different. Easter and Good Friday are a huge deal nationally in NZ apparently, because EVERYTHING was closed or needed a special license to be open on those 2 days, and bars all closed at midnight on Saturday (except for the casino ironically. Not quite sure why they were exempt). Maybe it's not so much that NZ is a Christian nation that the holidays closed businesses though, it could just be that NZ service industry workers like having a few days off :-P

Hope everyone back home enjoyed their jelly beans, ham, chocolate bunnies, church, day off work, and whatever else they did today!!!

Now that I've slept...

The delay in the posting was due to a delay in the sleeping (we woke up at ~5:00am most days of data collection, so when we got back we would all basically shower, eat dinner, pass out, then wake up the next morning to hike all over again)

Frogging in the legitimate jungle

Each day, we'd get dropped off at the base (or as close to the top as you can get a car) of the mountain, and hike up and then down into the riverbed. Each pair of searchers got a map that had the frog search
sites marked on it, and you just hiked around to find them, then searched them for frogs! The hike in usually took about 2 hours, then you and your partner for the day searched between 2-4 transects before hiking back up and out to the car, all of us meeting there at the end of the day.

Sometimes to get out of the streambed, the direction sheet we'd have would say something like, "scramble up bank to find the trail" which sounds easy enough, right? Please refer to the below picture

See behind me? Kayla took this while I was on the walkie relaying our position back, but we're only about halfway up the "bank" and we'd been "scrambling" for about 40 min. SO MUCH MOUNTAINEERING in this trip, we pushed and pulled each other up steeper slopes than I'd ever imagined myself trying, and found our way back to trails (trails were pink triangles nailed to trees that would lead you back to the tree line. Yes, we sang the Weezer song a lot) based on our dinky maps.

My body is pretty bruised right now, my knees are a disaster zone, but I feel a lot stronger as well. Definitely in the best shape of my life--good thing I'll be sitting on my ass on campus doing data entry and writing a 50 page research paper for the next 3 weeks! Wouldn't want to look too different upon my return to the States ;-)

Bruise city

DRP: Day 1 in the field

Today was our first real day working a transect for this whole froggy business (we had a practice run yesterday where we searched without recording or following protocol). There are 6 of us collecting data: Kayla, Lucy, Paul, Josh, Rosy, and myself, and we work together to count, measure, and record the frogs (we each write our own paper and are working on our own project, but we gather the data together). We're eventually going to cover 48 transects (20m long each) over the next 6 days as a group, sleeping in the Hunua Ranges in these mountain huts half the nights, and coming back to campus for the other half.

Our trail leader, John, is the most hardcore guy I've met here so far. He's mega old, but SO wiry and in shape. I think the best way to describe him is angular; everything from his cheekbones to his calf muscles simply juts out in a way that looks almost fake. The tattoo on his right forearm has bled so much from age and sun, it's impossible to see what it used to be (he says it's the steering wheel to a ship. If you say so...) He is around to make sure we don't get lost in the deep bush, and he kind of goes and does his own thing when we're frog-huntin'.

We divided up into teams of 2 to cover each transect, with one person wearing a headlamp searching for frogs and the other recording. Rosy and I searched 2 transects, wading through streams that were sometimes up to our mid-thighs (my hiking boots will NEVER be dry after this week) and found ONE measly frog all afternoon. I guess this should have been expected, considering they're endangered and whatnot, but jeeze. This project is going to be a lesson in patience.

Mt. Lebanon HS Reunion

This past weekend, Diane, my high school BFF and one of my all-around favorite people in the world came all the way to little Kaiaua to visit me! She is studying in Sydney for the semester and has wanted to see New Zealand since she got there, plus we haven't gotten to hang out since December, so it was really great to see her this weekend. With all her big city stories, I felt more than I have this whole trip that I live in the middle of nowhere, (but am a-ok with it) and we had a very rural party kind of weekend.  This included
visiting the local pub, (whose only clientele are old fishermen and us)
an easy hike in the Hunua ranges
camping on the beach
dinner at the best fish n chips in New Zealand (they told us they won this award last year. Not sure I believe them, but it is really freakin good)
and we did a couple of city day trips (one to Auckland, one to Thames) taking advantage of her rental car
Overall just really fun to see her, and has inspired me to keep in touch with people better so I don't have to wait till I see them face-to-face to hear what's going on in my friends' lives!

bandwidth

...we don't have much of it. Apparently when we got back from the South Island and we all jumped online to upload our collective hundreds of photos, we used half of the month's internet in 4 days. Therefore, we have to limit picture uploads, downloads, or any other direction of loads at least until everyone has registered for classes and done a good amount of work on their DRPs, just in case the internet crashes

DRP

After tomorrow, we start our DRPs! (Directed Research Proposals) which we work on for the remainder of the trip. I am PUMPED about my topic, I'm studying the Hochstetter's frog, a tiny, endangered amphibian living in the Hunua mountain ranges (see the pic, they're cute right?). I get to hike through the mountains finding these little buggers, collecting data, and writing a paper and presenting to the local Dept. of Conservation authorities. They said excellent papers in the past have even been published! I am so psyched about this; it's my own data, my own paper, and my own project! For the first time in college as a science major, I finally get to do oringinal research. I'm antsy to finish this poopy final exam and get started!

sniff sniff

For the first time since being here, I have a legitimate cold. It was kind of unavoidable, when one person got sick, the rest of us were bound to ("hey, can I borrow your chapstick?" "hey, are you done with your spoon and cereal bowl?" "hey, wanna finish my ice cream cone?" we are GROSS). It's weird having a cold and it being summer weather outside; seems kind of unfair actually. Anyway, I'm a sniffling, coughing, dripping mess of a person today, and I'm not a fan. My roommate, Kayla, was sent here with about a thousand herbal supplements by her mom, and has started popping a vitamin C every time I blow my nose in an effort to avoid catching the bug.

(Pretend like this was yesterday)

Happy Belated Birthday to my Dad back in the States!

(Looking for this picture just now has reminded me that I should probably upload some more recent family photos to my laptop. This is circa... 2008?)

Time difference

Sunday, April 3, daylight savings ends and New Zealand "falls back." Since the States "spring forward" at this time of year, the time difference between the US and NZ will now be 16 hours (8 hours behind on any given day, but I'm still one day ahead).

Example: at 8pm on Saturday in the States, it is noon on Sunday in NZ.

It's hard for me to wrap my mind around.

South Island week 3: Spring Break

It was kind of hard to write up what we did in Kaikoura and Nelson Lakes, because both of those happened weeks ago. But spring break was just last week, and it was a blast. I'll try not to be such a boring blogger!

We got dropped off in Nelson on Thursday, and all went out as a group that night, before splitting up the next morning for everyone to do their own thing. There were 6 groups, two went hiking in Abel Tasman (this beautiful coastal region on the tip of the S.Island) one group paddled for 3 days, kayaking through the Marlborough Sound, one rented a car to go climbing out west, and one group went across the bay to Wellington. Morgan and I stayed pretty city the first couple days. We stayed at different hostels in Nelson and Picton, whichever were closest to the things we wanted to do. We met so many people traveling this way. Everyone staying in hostels is a 20-something, and usually backpacking.

Yes we're college students on spring break (hence the little black dresses) but yes we have also been backpacking for 3 weeks (hence the rain jackets... dressing for all weather conditions is our everyday fashion statement)

 We met people every day to hang out with at night, including a couple of locals who showed us around Nelson on Friday.

 Hostel in Nelson (Paradiso). $25 a night! Why would you ever stay in a hotel, seriously.

 We cooked every dinner in the hostel kitchens, only going out to eat once (for lunch out on the patio of this Nelson brewery) as a special treat. This meant a lot of fairly romantic meals for two like the one pictured above haha

 Marchfest in Nelson on Saturday (like Oktoberfest, but in NZ! All local breweries. You got the half-pint glass when you came in, and could go to different stalls to fill up throughout the afternoon. We got to try really awesome beers (a huge change from our usual "buy the cheapest 30 rack" style of booze-choosing) with funny names like "mousey tongue," "fuggle hop," "civil disobedience," and "uber pils." 

 Another great thing about festivals: local live music. We saw a couple of bands here, some awesome (The Eastern were an alt-bluegrass group) and some very different (The Barons of Tang, pictured here. 2 sets of drums, a stand-up bass, a sax, a clarinet, a guitar, and a lead singer who thought he was Russell Brand. Self-described genre was "gypsy deathcore" which was actually pretty accurate. Reminded me of what a Tim Burton circus might sound like)

 Hostel #3, The Villa, in Picton. ($26 a night) The whole back was open, with wooden porch furniture, Christmas lights, hanging potted plants, a fire pit, and a hot tub. How I think I'd like my back porch to look when I have a real house.

We went for a bike ride on Sunday, and were going to go fishing before realizing we'd have no idea what to do if we caught a fish. Monday was our most outdoorsy day: we took a boat through the Marlborough Sound and went hiking on the Queen Charlotte Track. Perfect weather and an easy, 5k hike took up the afternoon, and when we got back, we met up with the 6 kayakers! We had tacos with them and went out later to this Irish place with a couple people we picked up at the Villa.

The least outdoorsy-twosome on spring break--though ya couldn't tell from this picture ;-)

 Now for the most exciting part: SKYDIVING ON TUESDAY!!! The last day of break, Kathryn's 21st birthday, and a super warm, cloudless day. Kathryn, Sibley, Kayla, Eli, Annalea, and I went skydiving over Abel Tasman at 13,000 ft.

 tiiight goggles (good thing too, your eyes would dry right off I feel like. Once you open your chute and stop free falling, you take them off so you can see clearly!)

 the dinky little plane that took us up (3 skydivers at a time)

 Look at this badass group!!!

 happy 21st!! (recognize that dress she's wearing? It's mine :)

I want to be 21 toooooo!!

South Island week 2: Nelson Lakes

In Nelson Lakes we learned about beech forest ecology and invasive mammals, doing day hikes through the surrounding forests to look at traps. There were mammal traps ALL over this area, it was supposed to be a high-intensity control area. Basically, they are trying to eradicate every mammal from NZ, we also received a somewhat disturbing speech/video about how they kill deer (it involves a helicopter chasing them around the mountains with a shotgun...)

 This is my favorite view of New Zealand yet. All the coastal cliffs and bluffs are amazing, but the mountains are my FAVORITE part. Pittsburgh is pretty mountainous, but not like this.

Most of the beech tree trunks were covered in this black tree fungus (which loves the honeydew. See all the sugary, silky strings coming off the trunk? There's a sweet drop on the end of each one). It made the forest look very spooky, because all the trunks were black with little bits of white showing through.

Overall, this week was fairly slow compared to other weeks, we were all just kind of antsy to start our spring break and not be supervised for a while.

South Island week 1: Kaikoura

 

Getting super close to seals on the drive to Kaikoura

In Kaikoura, we stayed at a marae (<spiritual house) with the local Maori. I was kind of intimidated going into it, because we learned all these RULES about things that were offensive to Maori.

Don't sit on tables or counters

Don't drink or eat in certain rooms

Don't wear your shoes inside

Greet people with a forehead/nose tap, and grasp their arm above the elbow

So I was just so nervous about the whole situation, thinking it was going to be high-stress. It ended up being totally the opposite though, it was the most comfortable I've felt this whole trip actually. They're big on singing and belonging as part of their culture. All 25 of us slept in this big room called the Wharenui (fair-a-new-ee) which was so cool, every wall panel was a neon-colorfully painted carving that told a story of a part of their past, and we slept in rows on the floor like a slumber party. It was cool to be able to talk to everyone before we fell asleep, but if you weren't one of the first asleep, you lay there awake amid a cacophony of snoring and sleep noises forEVER (as I soon discovered). I would have loved to take pictures of this, but we weren't allowed for religious reasons. The whole marae was on a cliff facing the ocean (whale-watching is Kaikoura's #1 industry) and the buildings were surrounded by patios, rose bushes, peach trees, and giant, bird-like statues. A sweet spot.

The last night, everyone had to participate in this goodbye celebration, talent-show sort of deal. Morgan and I did a duet with her playing the guitar ("Anyone Else But You" by the Moldy Peaches. Pretty freaking adorable) which was slightly terrifying. I don't like singing in front of people, but the group is SO tight by this point, I could've been the world's worst singer and they still would've cheered and told me I was alright. 

The next day we went on a boat out into the deep ocean to look at pelagic seabirds. We loaded up onto 2 boats with wetsuits and a kiwi skipper on each to look at albatross: a GIANT bird that feeds on the water, they are huge, with wingspans of over 3m on the males (I'm 1.64m tall, to give you an idea). When we were out there though, we found a huge pod of dusky dolphins!! We killed the motor, suited up, and then SWAM with wild dolphins in the ocean!!!!

(I tried to upload a video here, but even after 8 hours of uploading, EcoQuest's second rate internet still just could not handle it)

Dolphins are super smart, and super cool. The jumps and flips and all that they do are just for fun! They don't play any other natural role. Very cool. They were playing with us under the water, and if you dove down, they'd circle around you. They probably thought we were mentally-retarded seals or something, who didn't know how to swim very well and made more squeaking noises than they did. It was fantastic

 See the town on the peninsula? (click the picture for a bigger version I believe) This is from our hike. So pretty, and the waters around Kaikoura are teeming with orcas, dolphins, seals, and giant seabirds. The whole economy of the town depends on those guys.

 And more of our hike, this above picture is so typical NZ I hardly know what to do with myself. Watch where you step.

'ello gulls (mine?)

We spent our weekend off in Hanmer Springs, where I only took dumb pictures of us doing stupid stuff, so I don't really think any of them are worth posting. But Hanmer Springs was just surrounded by green mountains, everywhere you looked. I couldn't get enough of it. Everyone in our little group said Hanmer looked just like Colorado. My original life plan was to live somewhere, anywhere warm as soon as I got the chance, but this trip has changed my mind. I am headed for Colorado. I want to live in the mountains, I'm serious about this. Maybe I'll winter somewhere warm... or take up skiing or something. This trip to the South Island has made me realize I want to live somewhere where I can look off the porch and see beautiful things every day (and there are worse things than cozy hats and thermals)

South Island: getting there

3 weeks in the South Island is a long time to write in one post, so I figured I'd break it up.

Getting from Kaiaua to Kaikoura (north of the North to north of the South) took a couple of days in itself. After everyone had packed for 3 weeks and was in the vans, we drove for 12 hours down to Wellington... that is a LONG time to be in a van. Lots of crafts, eating, and napping. We stopped when there were things we wanted to look at, like this building shaped like a sheep:

Or Mt. Doom from Lord of the Rings!

We spent the night in Wellington, which is a very cool coastal city at the bottom of the North Island. And then woke up mega early to catch the ferry from the North Island to the South Island. It was this GIANT, titanic-like boat that takes 3 hours (to take hundreds of people and their cars) to cross that waterway between the islands. The ferry was cool, so luxurious inside with lounges where all these recliner chairs faced large glass windows (like in WALL-E!) and cafes, bars, sundecks, etc. The car park downstairs was full of cool stuff too, like a professional race car, a bus, a trailer that said "Caution! Miniature horses in transit" and a collection of funny-looking foreign cars.

Once the ferry got into the Marlborough Sound was when it finally hit me how beautiful the South Island was going to be. We passed green islands all over, with rocky outcroppings, lone houses on the slopes, and with the bluest water you've ever seen.

Abby on the boat, that's Wellington in the background

We saw penguins here! Although they didn't show up in this picture. There was a little pair of them, swimmin together! (note: penguins mate for life, making our little pair that much cuter)