Welcome to Lincoln!

A brief tour of Lincoln University for you! And by brief I mean this is literally all you need to see...

Earthquake damage. A lot of buildings around the city have these metal support bars literally holding them up.

The cricket field! Looks like it'd be great for polo...

My dorm: Stevens Hall.

Ivey Hall aka the library. It has free wifi, so this is where I am currently sitting as I type this.

And now you've seen it all! 

Back in school!

It's my first day of school (finally)! My earliest class is at 8:30am. A lot of days I'm done by 1:30pm... sometimes later if I have a lab. But those labs vary.. as they can sometimes be "tutorials" instead, which are basically extra help. So on days that they are tutorials they are optional, which is nice. Also, there are designated field trip days and if you don't have a field trip scheduled you don't have class. The teachers claim that about half of your 150 total hours of work for the class are outside of the classroom... but at Poly we all know that no one follows the suggested 25-35 hours of studying a week, so we'll see what is ACTUALLY necessary. The only bummer so far is that your finals are worth at least 50% of your final grade, which is a bit rough.

Each class today started with an earthquake safety brief. The current method is to duck, cover and hold (like under a desk). No more standing in door ways. Apparently there have already been two small earthquakes since I've been here... I haven't felt either of them. The kiwis here joke that it has to be at least a 5 for people to even recognize it. There are a lot of closed buildings and construction on campus due to the earthquakes. For example, the dining hall is temporarily on a basketball court at the rec center. Although the new dining hall is supposed to be completed by next semester.

The best part about a small school is how quick it is to walk everywhere... 5 mins tops anywhere on campus. It's also weird just how many people I recognize walking around. I think it'll be fun once I get to know more people.

I'll get some pictures of campus soon!

The epicenter

Finally visited Christchurch.. and by finally I mean on day two haha. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but I'll be back. We unintentionally visited on the one year anniversary of the earthquake. The city was pretty shocking, even still. The entire center of the city, called "the red zone," is blocked off to people... the buildings are crumbled, debris on the ground, and windows shattered and boarded up. The most heart-wrenching thing for me was still seeing the spray paint on the doors of the buildings saying that they had been searched and cleared. Usually they were dated 3-4 days after the quake happened. There were a lot of memorials with flowers and letters; it was an incredible site.

As a way to rebuild the city many shops had relocated to shipping containers. It was actually really interesting and creative. The sides had been taken out and filled with glass, like a store front, and they had electricity and everything. It was quite a sight.

We had been hoping to eat dinner in Christchurch but soon discovered that it was more or less a ghost town and had to walk to nearby Riccarton to get food. Afterwards we had some bus complications and ended up having to wait an extra hour for the bus, but did find a store where we were able to get some necessary items like a power strip and laundry detergent. We spent 5 hours on this adventure... most of it unintentional, but good did come out of it. I'm certainly glad I went to see the city, it put a lot into perspective.

Choice as!

Adventure day today! Our day started at 8am and we got back around 5pm. Our group drove to a geothermal park and we walked around the park on a marked path for about an hour viewing all the different sulfur and mud pools. There was also a geyser that we learned they actually have to induce with soap to get it to erupt on a timely manner for tourists. 

This green pool was really neat, and truly was bright, neon green from the high concentration of sulfur. 

Next we went jet-boating! Essentially it was white water rafting in a jet boat... so we jumped the rapids and did batman turns. I was wearing my rain jacket so I stayed pretty dry until our driver proceeded to dump gallons of water over us all. All my clothes were soaked and none of us had brought a change of clothes, so needless to say I was wet for the rest of the day. Afterwards we went luging and our super cool bus driver, Thomas, came with us! He told us all about the area and things to say in New Zealand. We all already knew "sweet as," but apparently "choice" is popular as well... so we combined the two and came up with "choice as" which Thomas found pretty amusing. Thomas was the fastest luger of all of us and enjoyed passing us and running us off the track haha. Overall it was great day! Tomorrow morning we leave for the airport and our schools - time to start my adventure on the south island!

Constipation Crack

Waitomo Caves = ONE OF THE COOLEST THINGS I’VE EVER DONE.

What an amazing experience... We spent 2 hours in an underground cave, full of stalactites, which FYI grow 1cm every 100 years. We got to wear stylish, thick wetsuits, rubber boots and helmets with headlamps. 

The caving started with a narrow climb down a long ladder and then we were in! We spent a good while walking/crawling through the cave before we reached the underground river. Most of the crawl spaces and other obstacles had hilarious names, a few of the best being: the rebirthing canal, ankle-breaker alley, and constipation crack. 

Before we got in the water we had to smear mud all over our faces to camouflage ourselves from the Taniwha (pronounced tawn-ee-fa), a Maori water monster. Just myth, although there ARE eels living in the water… a bit creepy… thankfully, I did not encounter one. The water was cold but we had thick wetsuits on, which our guides gladly helped us break in by unexpectedly dunking us all. After more wading and climbing we reached the tubes!! Yes, underwater cave tubing! Given our young, adventurous spirits we were all required to jump from high off the cave walls with our tubes into the river, with the option of doing a flip. Kiwis are awesome in that they let you do things that would easily be a liability in the US ;) makes everything more fun! We floated in the tubes with our headlamps off and watched the glowworms on the ceiling while singing songs, the finale being “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, very much reminded me of Disneyland. The whole experience was incredible and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. 

A picture with our group and the guides, Russ and Chris, top left and laying on the ground.

The land of many round-a-bouts.

New Zealand history lesson: When the country originally formed there were no mammals on it at all, only birds and insects. The plant life was unique in that bees did not pollinate it (as there was none), but instead moths and birds... and so there were no brightly colored flowers, only red for the birds and white for the moths. When the British came they introduced rabbits into the country for sport, and with no predators their numbers skyrocketed. So they then thought it might be a good idea to introduce stoat (a small weasel) to kill the rabbits, but in turn the stoats killed the native ground dwelling birds. Today half of New Zealand’s plants are invasive, exotic species… and their native bird numbers are dwindling.

So today we volunteered at an up and coming bird sanctuary to reintroduce natural plants and thus attract the birds. We planted Swamp Flax as well as pulling out plants that shouldn’t be there. It was really rewarding and interesting to learn about the country’s unique ecosystem. We were also able to see a kiwi fruit orchard that surprisingly looks a lot like a vineyard. The entire orchard was surrounded by 50ft tall hedges… very Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire-esque.

This evening we went to a traditional Maori dinner and got to learn about their culture, play games and eat great food that was cooked in the ground, somewhat similar to a luau. 

Easily the highlight of the evening… on the way back from the dinner our bus driver got us all singing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain” and then proceeded to drive around the round-a-bout about 10 times. HAHA. It was awesome. 

Cows?

So I've concluded that New Zealand reminds me of a combination between California and Hawaii.. with a greater emphasis on Hawaii. With the big, green hills and tropical plants.. it's very Hawaii-ish. 

Today we spent 3 hours driving to Rotorua through the country. We stopped for about 15 minutes in Matamata, which is now Hobbiton. 

Surprisingly, thus far I have seen way more cows than sheep. Rotorua is a really neat town full of geothermal activity... which is really cool, except that the whole town smells like rotten eggs. We got to learn the Haka which was reallyyyy fun. I learned that the Haka is a war dance that emphasizes finding your inner strength and courage in the moments that matter most. The words to the Haka are in the traditional Maori language and the dance incorporates hand motions that represent the meanings of the words. So naturally when it came time for our debut we were dressed in traditional clothing and face paint. This is a picture of the boys' war face.

Afterwards we went to Blue Lakes for the rest of the day. It was really pretty and reminded me of Jurassic Park. Fog was settling in the hills and they were so lush and green. We had a BBQ on the beach and played ultimate frisbee and learned rugby. I went in the lake... which wasn't horribly cold, but certainly chilly. It was a great day! 

Kia Ora!

I'm finally here and it has already been quite the adventure.

First off, the flight was way better and easier than I expected. We were on a brand new "All Blacks" version 777. The plane was an awesome looking black beast and when we walked on it was lit up with purple lighting that reminded me of something you'd see in a night club. The entertainment was incredible - there were over 80 movies to choose from and full seasons of tv shows, all free of course. I watched 2 movies and then slept for 4-5 hours and watched another one when I got up... it all went by pretty quick. I ended up having some problems in customs as I learned that dirt on your shoes/boots is a no no... Needless to say I should've cleaned them off first, as they are no sopping wet from biosecurity - it happens.

We drove straight to Auckland (on the wrong side of the road) and quickly set off to explore. We had three hours in the city to ourselves and were told to meet back at the hotel after... with no sense of direction or where we were, our advice was to head towards the sky tower. It was fun to not have a plan. We ate breakfast at a cafe near the harbor and went in some shops, overwhelmed at the prices. There are 60 people in my group and they are all going to the University of Otago except myself and one other person - I guess Lincoln is small!

I got a phone today... which is so simple that its impossible to use, and just finished dinner. I'm going to stay up a couple more hours to help my jet lag and then its off to bed for me!

We stumbled upon this park with really neat trees with huge overhanging branches. We discovered that the park bordered the University of Auckland.