Days 2 - 4

New Zealand is amazing, as in, I am speechless. Everything is so beautiful. You can drive 5 minutes and go from the ocean coast to grassland pastures to the jungle-like forest. I find it humorous that the pastures that surround us look almost identical to what I saw growing up in Oklahoma, except apparently adding some hills, sheep and interesting trees makes all the difference.

Upon our arrival in Auckland at 4:30am and once we made it through customs and security, we were met by the Ecoquest staff. From there we were piled into vans with our mountains of luggage and were told that each van had to come up with a song to sing for the staff and other students once we get to the campus base in Whakatiwai. My van ended up doing a round I learned at Shoals last summer which was pretty awesome. The rest of the first day as well as the second were orientation to the campus, staff, activities, duties and academics.

Although I have only been here 4 days, it feels like it has been weeks. Our group seems to be meshing well and everyone is getting to know each other pretty easily. The staff is wonderful and has gone above and beyond to make everyone feel welcome and comfortable

Day 3 was more talks and activities introducing us to how the academics will be run, what we will learn and how everything is somewhat situated throughout the semester. Everyone is slightly bummed about realizing we are actually here for school since upon our arrival it has basically felt like summer camp. That is, a summer camp that is half way around the world. We also have started to learn some of the Maori language which I think is spectacular. We are going to the Maori on Wednesday where we will show our ‘skills’ in speaking and singing, hopefully we don’t completely embarrass ourselves.

Today I somehow survived an 8 hour hike, ~10.5 km through the Hunua Ranges without my knee going out and without ANY asthma/breathing problems at all. It was a good day. My group had an uphill climb more than the second group, which had more downhill, but since downhill is MUCH worse on my knee it was totally fine by me. The hike was amazingly gorgeous and not quite as hard as I was expecting. After some really steep parts a flatter section would let me catch my breath and recover before going up again. The views were beautiful, but the pictures do not even remotely do it justice.


We stopped here on our way to the campus from the airport


My backyard, literally. More pics of the campus to come soon.


8 hour hike. Hauna Ranges. SO BEAUTIFUL.


Jurasic Park jungle-like forest.



Fun Fact:
- NZ human population: 4.5 million
- NZ sheep population: 35 million
- NZ possum population: 70 million

Day 1: San Fran

So what is the advice my father gives me when I arrive in San Francisco? “Don’t get lost”, so what do we do? We get lost. Instead of waiting for the adventure to begin in New Zealand we apparently decided it should happen a couple days early. Usually when you arrive at an airport, get your baggage and even meet up with friends you leave the airport within the hour of when you landed. Usually. However, this trip happened to be a little different. Not only did we not leave the airport in the normal amount of time, we walked around it numerous times with roughly 60lbs of luggage, got lost with a map and directions, were unable to find our hotel shuttle and (if that wasn't enough) we ended up returning to the airport later the same day. The adventure began.

San Francisco isn’t exactly what I was expecting, although I don’t know what I was particularly expecting anyways. There were definitely hills. When you didn’t think they could get any steeper, they did. And when it looked like your destination was roughly a half mile away, you passed over the top of a hill to find that it was in fact miles and miles away. We ended up spending more on transportation that day than anything else. A $40 10-15 minute cab ride to start it off and to end a $10 subway ride to the airport (just to catch the free shuttle to the hotel) when it should have been about $4. Despite the over-priced transportation, walking aimlessly and getting somewhat lost in San Francisco is quite the adventure. We ate at a great diner with the best burger and milkshake I’ve had in awhile. And to top off the day we ended up staying in the hotel hot tub for a couple hours once we finally got back. :)

Somehow the flight from San Francisco to Auckland seemed significantly shorter than the flight to San Fran from Albany despite the additional 7 hours it took to get to New Zealand. Also, it was entirely less stressful to fly internationally than it is to fly domestic US despite extra scanning, passports/documentation and bio-security. How does that happen? Regardless of how it happens, I feel as though it is a plausible excuse to travel internationally more often and if at all possible, I will definitely be doing so.

And so it begins...

After always saying I would never create a blog, having had no rhyme or reason to do so, I find I am currently in the position of writing one. I have never particularly thought I would have anything to say in a blog that would be of any use to the blogging world and with an ever-growing issue of procrastination, it wouldn’t be of much use to me either. I have always thought of blogging as taking up time, a precious commodity in this fast-paced world. Also, I never could think of what I could possibly write that people would want to read about. However, after a couple years of planning and building anticipation, I am on my way to the other side of the world. So why not keep a blog of my escapades? With limited calling abilities and my ever-growing memory problems, I have come to see it will be an excellent way to let family and friends know what I have been up to as well as keep a record for myself. I will try to keep this as updated as possible for anyone who cares to read, but I guess we will see if my procrastination and memory problems will get the best of me. ;) ERK