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!