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