Koob's New Zealand/Australia Adventures: Week 10

I can’t believe it has been over 2 months. WHAT?! Where has all that time gone? We have done SO much though, it is unbelievable. We have been back at The Quest this past week, where I will remain for the next 5 weeks. No more fun trips, at least not during school time.

We spent last week mostly doing work. We were told of a debate assignment, in which we didn’t get a grade so nobody was very motivated to do anything for it. It turned out well though. They didn’t pick the speakers were going to be until an hour before the debate which was a little annoying and of course with my luck I got picked as a speaker. It was good though. Our topic was about the Clean Streams Accord, we were in favor and lost. Apparently ‘it was close though’, whatevs haha.

We had our final on Thursday, 3 ½ hours of essay-like questions. Boo. It was significantly better than the midterm though, it helps when you don’t have a presentation the day before to prepare for. :) Hopefully I will find out what my grades are soon! 3 classes down, 1 to go! It’s amazing how much less work and stress I had for those 3 classes. I would have like 4 times that for just one class at UNH. Go figure.

After the final we had a four day weekend. Eight of us went down to Taupo and Rotorua for two days of the weekend. In total, I drove over 1000 km in like 2 ½ days, lots of gas money. The ride down to Taupo was SO long but at least there was some good music on the radio for most of the ride. We hit a station that was playing 90’s music the entire weekend. Some dancing and rockin out to Blue and some Backstreet Boys happened. It was awesome. We didn’t get to the campsite till 12 am, after leaving The Quest at like 6:30 pm. Boo. The next morning a smaller group did the Tangariro Crossing hike (8 hours), but I thought that I shouldn’t chance it with my knee. We saw Mt. Doom though!! Pretty awesome, go Lord of the Rings. A couple of us did a smaller waterfall hike which turned out to be pretty awesome then went to a small lake and hung out for awhile. That night we drove up to Rotorua that night and stayed at a camp ground. We found out that New Zealanders take their holidays seriously. The DoC site we were at had TONS of families with tents that seriously had 8 rooms. They were huge. The next morning we went Zorbing! SO MUCH FUN! For those of you who I have not already explained it to, you are basically in a huge plastic ball with some water inside and roll down a hill. We did a zigzagged track, it was so insanely fun! You are literally uncontrollably rolling around getting soaked in water. I want to do it again and apparently they have one in Tennessee. Road trip anyone?

The remaining couple days of the weekend were pretty chill except for the 30 km bike ride I had to do. When we returned the cars we didn’t have anyone to come pick us up, so we rode back. Longest bike ride I’ve ever been on but it really wasn’t that bad. Could be those morning bike rides though. :)

We are starting our DRP’s this week (directed research projects), but I will discuss that more this coming week since I probably won’t have much else to talk about.