Kiwi Green

In honor of the Ecology final exam that I have tomorrow, here is...

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:49:00 -0400

In honor of the Ecology final exam that I have tomorrow, here is a crazy video that my lecturer put into our exam study guide.

In honor of the completion of my Contemporary Pacific Art exam,...

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:44:02 -0400

In honor of the completion of my Contemporary Pacific Art exam, here is a beautiful performance art piece by the amazing Shigeyuki Kihara. It is titled “Taualuga: The Last Dance”.

BBC News- Antarctic Penguin in New Zealand

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:37:09 -0400

BBC News- Antarctic Penguin in New Zealand:

So cute! Wish I was there to see this!

WWOOF WWOOF: Dog Days in Matakana

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:25:00 -0400

The Pacific Dancers: Janka, Tara, Alena

View out the window in Matakana

Early sleeping on the spa in the garden

Matakana Village Farmers Market

Bree and Smudge

Bree and Carrie: Cookie Artists!

Dogs enjoying Omaha Beach

Miga taking a nap

Goat Island Marine Reserve

Goat Island Marine Reserve

WWOOF WWOOF: Dog Days in Matakana

WWOOFing with the Woollers

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:53:50 -0400

So I have just arrived home from a little over a week living with a family in Matakana, working in their organic gardens. WWOOF, standing for “Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms”, or “Willing Workers on Organic Farms”, is an organization that pairs travelers visiting different countries with small farms, where they work for a set number of hours each day, and in exchange they receive free food, housing, and experience the culture of the country first-hand. I have been wanting to try WWOOFing for quite a while because of my interest in sustainability, and I finally got the opportunity now that classed have ended for the semester. Somehow, due to the scheduling of my exams, I had a week and a half without any classes. This was perfect timing to escape the hustle and bustle of Auckland for a while and go experience the real New Zealand by staying with a Kiwi family and working in their organic gardens.

On Tuesday the 7^th, I went to see Alena, Janka and Tara’s Pacific dance show. They all took a Pacific Music and Dance class this semester and worked really hard to learn all the cool dances. The show was amazing, with elaborate costumes and beautiful singing and dancing. It was a lot of fun to watch and made me want to get up and dance with them! Right after the show, I grabbed my bags from the apartment and bused in to Warkworth in the evening to meet my new family for the next week.

The Woollers are a vivacious family of five. Tia, the “mum”, is a Montessori pre-school teacher and runs a preschool from their property in Matakana. Mark is and artist and an excellent gardener. He is an amazingly talented painter, and his fantastic paintings can be viewed here: http://www.markwooller.com/. The kids are Cullen, 17; Bree, 14; and Carrie, 12. There was also a dog- Miga, two cats- Early and Smudge, chickens, a beehive, and of course the beautiful gardens. The family made me feel right at home, with my own cozy room and delicious home-cooked (and conveniently vegetarian) meals. Oh the food- so much of it was either from their gardens or organic from their local market. They made their own bread and muesli and the meals were all hearty and delicious. I was definitely spoiled when it came to food!

I spent a lot of my first two days working in the gardens, weeding and pruning. It felt so good to work with my hands and be outside surrounded by trees and quiet. I worked long hours until my back hurt- I was enjoying it all too much to stop! At the end of the day I would go help clean up the pre-school. The small school was so adorable and really very well organized, so it wasn’t much work to tidy it up and vacuum at the end of the day. Unfortunately, Tia had to go to Sydney for a conference for the majority of the time I was in Matakana. Before she left, she took me in to Warkworth where I got to explore the town a little while she ran some errands. I had fun looking in the bookshops and galleries and got a cup of coffee at a cute little café called “Ginger”. In one of the galleries, I met a nice woman from Canada who had moved to the area to retire and had taken up photography. It was fun talking to her for a while about the town and what it was like moving from North America to New Zealand. On Thursday, I went to Pilates with Bree in the evening. It was a small class that reminded me of the Yoga class I go to with Mom when I’m home in Tallahassee and it felt good to stretch out my sore muscles from working in the garden all day.

On Friday it rained all day, so I found things to do inside, like organizing cabinets and cutting up apple slices to put in their fruit drier. In the evening, Mark had a talk at a gallery in Auckland, so I ended up making dinner for the kids. It was fun making up a pasta recipe and talking with the kids at dinner. Carrie is quite the character, and came up with a long list of things I should try throwing out my apartment window in New York, including marshmallows, water balloons, a dollar bill on fishing line that you pull up whenever someone reaches for it, and yellow food coloring when it is snowing. We watched New Zealand’s Next Top Model in the evening, a weekly tradition for all the girls in the family. When New Zealand’s Next Top Model isn’t on, they watch Glee.

On Saturday morning, Mark ,Bree, Carrie and I went to the Matakana Village Farmers Market. Matakana is a tiny town, but the market draws visitors all the way from Auckland every Saturday. I felt like I was stepping back in time as I walked through the beautiful wooden shop stalls where they were selling all kinds of fruits and vegetables, honey, vinegars and olive oils, fish, nuts, wines, and chocolates. The market is surrounded by a lovely little shopping center with lots of different types of shops and a beautiful cinema. The cinema is independently owned and each theatre was elaborately decorated and completely different from the next. One theatre had long colorful sheets billowing from the ceiling. Another had an elaborate chandelier. My favorite theatre had a ceiling completely covered by tens of thousands of paper roses, each individually put there by hand, with models of the native birds Tui and Fantail along the aisles. We got coffees at the local café called “Love Shack”, and went to a movie in the called “Queen of the Sun”- a documentary about honeybees. It was a fascinating film and really made me want to start keeping bees. After the market, we returned to the house, where we baked shortbread cookies with the cat-shaped cookie cutter that Bree found at the market. We elaborately decorated each cookie with icing and sprinkles. It was great spending time with the girls- they are so smart and fun to be around. Bree bakes shortbread cookies that are sold at the café in the cinema, and Cullen works there as a barista on the weekends. We took some of the shortbread there in the evening, and Cullen, Bree and I were able to go see “Super 8” in the cinema for free. It was a really cute film, a good balance of action, humor, heart, and absurdity. Two movies in one day- sounds like I was working real hard…

On Sunday morning I went to walk Miga on Omaha beach with Mark. The beach was so beautiful and it was such a relaxing way to start the day. Miga had a blast socializing with all the other dogs on the beach. She is such a well-behaved little chocolate labrador. She barks when strangers approach the house, but she is really a sweetheart. She quickly discovered that I am a pushover and learned to run up to me whenever I came home and flip over on her back for belly rubs. I bonded with the two cats as well. In the evenings I liked to sit in front of the Stanley oven and read with one of the cats curled up warm on my lap. My last night at the house, Smudge even found a way to push my bedroom door open and sleep in my room. I was so surprised to wake up in the middle of the night with Smudge sitting on my chest, purring like a motorboat with her nose in my face. The rest of Sunday, I did some more gardening, and in the evening, the kids and I all played a Harry Potter version of Clue, which Carrie had created. Did you know that Clue is called Cluedo in New Zealand? Weird.

That night we got a call from Theresa, the co-owner of the pre-school. At the last minute, the substitute teachers arranged to replace Tia were unable to work on Monday and Tuesday. It is against the law for there to only be one adult at the pre-school, so I became a teacher for two days! It was quite an adventure being a pre-school teacher. I had no idea was to expect. It ended up being a really fun- if exhausting experience. I had to constantly be alert, making sure the kids were doing the activities they were supposed to and not misbehaving. There were about 20 kids the first day and maybe 27 or so the next day, so it was very, very busy. It was so much fun watching the kids learn. I especially liked helping them with the spelling games, where some of the older kids would write out a sentence with blocks and then copy it down. I would help them sound out each word so they could make their best guess.

The children had such bright, vivacious personalities. There was one girl who was the natural leader of the bunch, a happy-go-lucky girl who could spout out facts about Sumatran Tigers and Coccidian and Mycobacterium. There was a little girl who insisted on always sitting on my lap and wanted to show me how she did every activity. She also liked to take of her pants and go running around outside half-naked. There was a little boy who told me that one of the girls was his girlfriend and made a card for her. He even asked the little girl’s mother if he could marry her- which reminded me a lot of pre-school Nathan.

I loved watching the games that the kids would make up on the playground. Sometimes they were flying unicorns, dragons or racehorses. Other times the were godwit birds, making nests out of rocks and grass which they would patiently sit on, waiting for their “eggs” the hatch and then fly from Alaska to New Zealand. I always had to break it up if some of the boys decided they wanted to play “baddies”, where they would run around chasing the other kids with sticks, pretending they were guns. “Why don’t you play ‘goodies’?” I would say.

Some parts of the day were hard, especially if there were three kids crying on the playground from three different directions, or when two of the boys decided to refuse to come inside for story time, or when one rambunctious little girl decided it was a good idea to cut her own hair- but it was still a very rewarding experience and I was so glad I got to try it out. I was so tired when the day was over, but still managed to fit in a little gardening before coming in for a delicious dinner and then hanging out with the family in the evening.

Tia came home at nearly three in the morning on Tuesday, somehow magically avoiding the hundreds of flight cancellations between Australia and New Zealand due to the ash clouds that blew all the way over here from South America. It was definitely nice to have her back and I was sad I wouldn’t get to spend more time with her.

Today, I finished up a little gardening in the morning, packed up my stuff into the car, and then went to Goat Island Marine Reserve. Mark had an appointment nearby, so he dropped me off at the reserve before his appointment and then picked me up afterwards. At the marine reserve, I enjoyed climbed along the rocky beach, peeking into tide pools and taking heaps of pictures. I was so glad to get to explore the reserve for a little. It was on my list of things to do in New Zealand but had not made it over yet. There was a lot of cool fish, crabs, snails, limpets, barnacles, cliffs and waterfalls all along my walk. Goat Island Marine Reserve is monitored by Leigh Marine Lab, the marine biology lab associated with the University of Auckland. I’d love to go and have a look at the labs there sometime. We then went and picked up Carrie from school. Carrie had an orthodontist appointment in Auckland, so Mark dropped me off at my apartment on the way.

Now, here I am back in Auckland. It has been such a memorable week. What a wonderful, loving, open, giving family! They were so fun and affectionate and got along so well. I really felt close to them all by the end of my stay-like I was the “big sister” of the family. I loved playing games with Carrie, hanging out talking about clothes and boys with Bree, and staying up late talking about everything from politics to TV shows with Cullen. During my breaks for tea during the day, I liked talking about art with Mark and about his adventures living in California, or biking around Europe. It was so sad saying goodbye to everyone today. I will definitely always remember my WWOOF experience with them fondly and will have to come visit when I come back to New Zealand someday. Who knows? - Maybe they will come see me in Florida or New York someday as well!

Waiheke Island, Surf School, and the Blues

Fri, 27 May 2011 22:58:00 -0400

These last couple weeks have consisted of a lot of work. Again, it is that time of year where suddenly all the big assignments are due all at once. Still, I managed to fit in some fun things in between writing reports, including a trip to Waiheke Island, a rugby game (GO BLUES) and surfing lessons at the famous Piha Beach.

Two weekends ago, Alena and I headed off to Waiheke Island for the day. We took a lovely ferry ride over and rented bicycles at a shop near the pier. The man at the rental place pointed out some good paths to take on a map and assured us that it would be a very nice, easy ride. Little did we know that Waiheke Island consists of lots and lots and lots of hills. Alena, of course, had no problem riding up them, but I had to take a lot of breaks. My ride consisted mostly of walking the bike up the hill and then riding it down. (The riding downhill part was fun though!)

We parked our bikes when we got to the village of Oneroa and explored the town for a while. We had fun looking through several shops, art galleries and bookstores. In one gallery, we met a very interesting Maori stone sculptor. When we told him we were earth science students, he got very excited and told us what he knew about various types of rocks found in New Zealand. He claimed to be uneducated, but from his sculpting he clearly has learned all about New Zealand geology and was so refreshingly enthusiastic about it. He was a lot of fun to talk to and suggested a café where all the locals hang out, which is where we stopped to eat lunch.

After lunch, we hopped back on our bikes and headed over to Onetangi Beach. I was SO relieved when we got there. We went on a walk down the beach, admiring all the seashells and the adorable dogs running around and chasing each other through the sand. The weather was perfect, so we decided to jump into the cold water for a swim. It felt so great after the long bike ride.

After another walk on the beach we got changed and biked over to a scenic winery right near the beach called Miro. The vineyard had a small tapas restaurant with a beautiful garden and unique Spanish-style tile work all along the walls. We ordered a wine tasting and really enjoyed the wines. We stayed there a very long time talking. The winemakers were a lot of fun to talk with and ended up giving us three extra tastings for free!

We made it back just in time for the ferry ride back to Auckland. We befriended a bunch of rugby players who just lost a game and had a great time talking to them on the trip back.

Now that we are on the topic of rugby, last Friday, our TA Lena and her boyfriend Brandon came back into town for the week and got us all tickets to an Auckland Blues game. The game was a lot of fun! We had excellent seats and it was really interesting to watch all the fans get so into the game. The Blues were playing the Stormers- a team from South Africa. The game was really exciting. I think I might like rugby better than football. It is much faster paced. When someone gets tackled in rugby, they slip the ball out of the pile to pass it to a teammate and the teammate starts running. It is refreshingly different than in football, where when someone gets tackled, they stop the game, and everyone gets up and loiters around until they finish the commercial break. Unfortunately, the Blues lost the game at the very end. I didn’t mind too much though, because on the train ride back into the city, all the Stormers fans, dressed up in South African flags and colors, played drums, danced and sang on the train in celebration. They were really quite good, and all the avid Blues fans on the train actually seemed to enjoy the fans’ celebration. No one got in fights, taunted or got mad at each other. How I love New Zealand!

On Sunday, we finally redeemed the coupons we won for our Vegemite costumes at the beginning of the semester, and went to surf school. We were picked up in the morning and driven out to Piha beach, where we were fitted with wetsuits and surfboards. The instructors were really friendly and laid back. After a short introduction of safety and surfing techniques on shore, we were released into the waves. It was quite challenging fighting the waves to get far back enough to try surfing, but once you get out there, it is awesome! The first time I caught one of the waves, I couldn’t believe how incredible it felt! Gliding over the water, I really felt like I was part of the ocean, at one with the wave itself. I can completely understand how people can dedicate their lives to this sport and how it has become a way of life for so many people, or “surfies” as they call them here.

The first board I used was very flat, which makes it difficult to surf with because it nose-dives with the slightest movement. That, combined with getting beat up by every wave that went by, was very frustrating for a while. The instructors were there in the water the whole time, giving tips and sometimes dragging me and the board out themselves when I was having trouble swimming out far enough. One of the instructors told me all about the beach’s natural history. There is a huge rock there called Lion Rock that used to be a part of the cliff but water erosion had cut it off long ago. The Maori in the area used to stand on top of the rock to see far out to sea, keeping a lookout for their people arriving on canoes. He had some really interesting stories.

I was finally able to stand up on the board when I switched to a board with a higher lip, and by the end of the day I was standing up whenever I caught a wave! Surfing was a great workout. We were all exhausted and bruised up by the time we got home- but so happy and content! It had been such a great, relaxing day.

There is only one week of classes left in the semester. It’s crazy to think about. The whole semester has flown by so quickly!

What an amazing ride it has been!

A Kiwi friend of mine introduced me to this song by the New...

Fri, 27 May 2011 01:25:47 -0400

A Kiwi friend of mine introduced me to this song by the New Zealand band Goodshirt. The song is called “Sophie”- how perfect! Enjoy! :)

Kiwis are quite amazing birds! - click this link

Tue, 10 May 2011 15:30:00 -0400

Kiwis are quite amazing birds! - click this link

Mount Cook and Lake Tekapo

Sun, 08 May 2011 02:57:07 -0400

Mount Cook

"Historic" church at Lake Tekapo

Lake Tekapo

A monument to dogs.

Lake Tekapo

Mount Cook and Lake Tekapo

From Franz Josef to Wanaka

Sat, 07 May 2011 21:44:56 -0400

Franz Josef Glacier

Inscribed rocks along a West Coast Beach

Beach on the West Coast

View out my window in Wanaka

Rose Garden outside Wanaka

From Franz Josef to Wanaka

Routeburn Track- Day 3

Sat, 07 May 2011 20:24:04 -0400

Routeburn Track- Day 3

Routeburn Track- Day 2

Sat, 07 May 2011 19:54:44 -0400

Routeburn Track- Day 2

Queenstown Hang Gliding and the Routeburn Track- Day 1.

Sat, 07 May 2011 19:27:07 -0400

The cliff I jumped off for hang gliding.

Alena getting ready to hang glide.

Hang gliding!

Routeburn Track Day 1

Warming up in the hut by the wood stove.

Queenstown Hang Gliding and the Routeburn Track- Day 1.

Roadtripin’ to the South (longest post yet?)

Sat, 07 May 2011 19:05:00 -0400

I usually like to be organized. It is comforting for me to have the details planned out, all uncertainty accounted for. This is not how things worked for my adventure with Tom and Alena to the South Island for our mid-semester break. We had almost nothing planned. I had managed to buy plane tickets and reserve a rental car to pick up in Picton. I even bought some tickets for the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks”. Otherwise, however, we had no concrete arrangements for this trip. The last week before the break was a stressful mesh of papers and exams and I hadn’t managed to find much time to sit down and plan the expedition. April 9^th arrived anyway and we boarded the plane for Wellington for what turned out to be an amazing adventure!

Wellington is on the southern part of the North Island. The country’s capital, it is a small city permeating with a creative vibe. Alena and I took a cab from the airport to my friend Barney’s house. I met Barney and his mother Suzie tagging Kiwis on Ponui Island and they graciously invited us to stay with them while in Wellington. We were elated as the cab pulled up to their beautiful bright red house, situated on a hill overlooking Houghton Bay, the “best surfing beach in Wellington”. The house was a dream house with wood floors, big windows and a beautiful garden. It is exactly the kind of house I picture myself living in one day. And oh, the view of the beach- it was breathtaking! We spent the early afternoon baking banana muffins and making pasta in the beautiful kitchen and walking their adorable dog Fern on the beach. We then headed into town to explore. We had a lot of fun wandering through the shops and coffeehouses on Cuba Street. Buskers were playing music at every corner and we met many interesting people, including an guy from Oregon selling handmade bracelets and an overly friendly cashier who had traveled all over the states. In the evening, we met up with some of Tom’s friends from his program that were going to school in Wellington for the semester, along with some of their Kiwi friends. They showed us all the cool places to hang out in Wellington and we had fun spending the evening with them.

The next morning Suzie took me to the yoga studio that she co-owns and gave me a free yoga lesson. It felt so good and was some must needed stress relief. She then took Barney and me out to brunch in town at an adorable café called Olive. It was delicious- especially the coffee! After brunch, we split off and Barney and I went to meet up with one of his friends for tea at another café. She is an art student also studying in Auckland and was a lot of fun to talk to. Barney then showed me around the beautiful city waterfront, where we stopped in the art museum. There were some cool exhibits going on, including a cute one about the illustrator Graham Percy and a photography exhibit by Neil Pardington about the behind the scenes storage facilities at museums. They were really interesting. Alena then met us in town to go to Te Papa- the National Museum of New Zealand. There were some cool natural history exhibits there about earthquakes and other geological events and about Maori history. The museum was HUGE and we couldn’t possibly have seen it all in one day. We then returned to the apartment and made a delicious quiche dinner. Tom was not feeling well all day so we spent the evening in, hanging out and trading music. Barney gave me some great suggestions of Kiwi artists to look up. We were sad to leave Wellington the next morning, but were excited for out ferryboat ride into Pictin.

The ferry ride was beautiful. The boat wandered along the coast of Wellington and we waved at what we thought was Suzie and Barney’s house as we went by. The boat meandered through the Marlborough Sounds surrounded by beautiful green hills. In Picton, we eventually found our rental car place and then headed into town for lunch by the water. We walked around the town center for a bit, stopping in the Public Library to steal some internet to find a place to stay for the night. We decided on a campsite a bit north of Westport and then piled into the car. It is so scary to drive on the left side of the road! After a few hours of me driving sloooowly, Tom and Alena decided that it was best for Tom to do most of the driving for the rest of the trip. The campsite was beautiful- right on the beach. It was next to a cute café called the Cowshed that we spent a lot of time in to keep warm. The next morning we headed on down the West Coast without any plans. Pretty soon we came across a sigh that read “Seal Colony” so we decided to check it out. We did a short hike up a beautiful seaside cliff, looking over at baby seals playing along the rocks. They were so cute the way they hopped around from rock to rock! The drive down the West Coast is breathtaking. On the left, there is a steep cliff overlooking the sea, and on the right are towering mountains. It was amazing just driving. We came to a sign for Paparoa National Park and decided to check it out. We drove along a dirt road for what felt like ages until we came to a sign for some hikes. We started walking, not really knowing what to expect, when we came to a river filled with huge, amazing boulders and karst caves. We spent the afternoon climbing the immense rocks and exploring before heading back to the car and driving to Franz Josef. Before we hit Franz Josef, we stopped at a hidden beach for dinner. The beach was a protected area for penguins and covered with driftwood and smooth green stones. It was a lovely end to an amazing day.

We found a hostel in Franz Josef called Montrose where we decided to stay for the night and I woke up in the morning to a view of the glacier from my window. We got up and went on a hike to the famous Franz Josef glacier. The glacier was massive and the walk to it was lined with lofty waterfalls. At the glacier we climbed down to the part where the water from the glacier formed a river and we filled our water bottles with glacier water. It was delicious!

After exploring the town of Franz Josef a little more, we headed down to Wanaka. On our way we stopped at several beaches to take walks. One beach we found was completely covered in stones, each with something written on it. People wrote about the people they love, about friendships, about trips, and about those they lost. It was truly a memorial to love, loss and adventure! We wrote on a couple rocks and let a group of people we met borrow our sharpie to write on one as well. They were from Bangladesh and had been friends for over 30 years. Unfortunately, the beach was also covered in sand flies. Sand flies are tiny, but they swarm at you and bite you like mosquitoes. I declared myself sand fly assassin and spent a good part of the car trip attacking the sand flies in the car with a rolled-up map. Tom is very in to photography so we stopped a lot of places to take pictures. We stopped at one bridge where I found a trail to a sandy riverbed below. It was fun to walk along the river skipping stones and sitting in the sand.

While in Wellington staying with Barney and Suzie, we told them of our plans to drive down the South Island. Suzie told us that they had a batch (country home) in Wanaka, and handed us the key! I cannot get over the amazing amount of trust and generosity it took to offer your home to a few college students you have only known for a few days. We loved the house, which was right on the lake. The trees outside were all changing colors for the fall and we could see snowcapped mountains in the distance. Each of us was able to have our own room with our own big beds. There was a full kitchen and even a wood stove in the living room, which Tom lit every night. For a trip we barely planned, we sure were traveling in luxury!

The next morning we headed to Queenstown- the adventure capital of the world! We stopped at a cute farm stand on the way, where were tried delicious samples of fresh produce and wandered around their stunning rose garden. In Queenstown, Tom went off to bungee jump the Nevis, the second highest bungee in the world, while Alena and I went HANG-GLIDING. That’s right, we jumped off a mountain holding on to a pair of wings. It was AMAZING! I felt like I was a bird, souring over the beautiful valley. Of course, we had trained professionals with us to control take off and landing. They were really fun and even did tricks in the air with us. I was sad when it was over. Back in Queenstown, we ate delicious gelato, had dinner at the famous Ferg Berger, and ran into just about everyone we knew from Auckland. We saw Fady and his group, ran in to Rachel and her sister, and saw various people from different clubs and classes at school. It was ridiculous.

The next day we headed out to do the Routeburn Track! We met up in the morning first with a man we were hiring to drive our car from one end of the track to the other. He ended up being one of the most interesting people I have ever met. He invited us into his home, where he ran his business. It was a beautiful bungalow up on a hill with a garden looking out to the lake. He told us about all the different trees and plants and showed us which plants could be used to relieve itching from sand fly bites. I was amazed when he told us how his business works. He drives people’s cars to the other side of the track, and then he runs the entire track back to his car- in 3 hours. For some context, it took us 3 days to walk the track. That is pretty remarkable. To top things off, he even did handstands for us before we left, which he often uses to entertain kids in his day job as a school bus driver. It was a bizarre but really fun experience. We drove out to the Routeburn and with all our clothes, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, food and tent on our backs we started walking. The first day was pretty easy, just a couple hours to the campsite. We walked through lush green forest- the greenest forest I have ever seen in my life. A dense layer of emerald moss covered everything, and I kept expecting elves or dinosaurs to wander by any second. The campsite marked a sudden change of terrain- golden grasses lining a river with towering mountains in the background. I enjoyed walking along the river skipping stones. The camp warden was a nice older man who said we could hang out in the hut in the evening because there weren’t many guests. Inside the hut we met a group of Americans from Auckland who were walking the Routeburn from the opposite direction. One of the guys happened to have been born in Tallahassee, grew up in Gainesville, and went to college in New York. He was studying marine biology at Stony Brook University. It was a pretty crazy coincidence. For most of the evening, Alena and I hung out with three Kiwi guys who had started their own filmmaking business. They had just been hired by the department of conservation to film the Great Walks. I cannot think of a better job- they were getting paid to walk and film the beautiful wilderness and get flown in a helicopter from track to track. We had fun looking at there footage from the day and the next day they interviewed us about our experiences on the track so far. Sometime you may all see me in a video about the Great Walks of New Zealand!

Our tent was cold, not waterproof, and had a hole in the bottom. This allowed for very little sleep during the rainy night, but we managed to get a little sleep and then head off in the morning for the longest part of the track. This part involved climbing steep rocky cliffs with amazing views of river valleys and snowy mountains. We met lots of interesting people, including a Czech family, a couple from Boston who had just decided to quit their jobs and travel the world, and a Kiwi couple who decided that they had not seen enough of their own country and so were setting out to do all the Great Walks. After a while, Alena, Tom and I decided to split off and each do the track at our own pace. It was really cool to be so alone on the trail. I really felt like I saw things more clearly- it was so refreshing! I made my way down another lush green forest to the second campsite, situated on a Lake Mackenzie. I arrived a few hours before Tom and Alena did, so I went on another short hike and then wandered off the trail to climb the rocks around the lake. There was some difficult rock climbing involved but it was a lot of fun and wore me out by the time I made it back to the campsite. We spent the evening talking to the other campers at the campsite, especially a pair of South African friends who taught biology at a high school in Auckland.

That night it really poured and I slept in a puddle, but I still managed to get a little sleep. The final hike had a pretty difficult incline and was lined with breathtaking waterfalls. We eventually made it to the end of the track where our car was waiting. We were exhausted and sweaty but so satisfied. It had been an amazingly beautiful adventure and we all felt very accomplished. We drove back to Wanaka- stopping at the Mirror Lakes to take some pictures on the way and driving through the Remarkables- a beautiful mountain range. Despite how fun the tramp was, we were relieved to get back to the house in Wanaka, especially to shower! We made pancakes and eggs for dinner and then we all fell into an exhausted sleep in our nice, warm, dry beds!

The next day we finally got to explore Wanaka thoroughly. We wandered around the town, visiting the coffee shops and art galleries. We visited a place called “Puzzling World” which had mazes and sideways rooms and fun mind games like that. We hiked to the top of Mount Iron and walked along the lake. What a beautiful town! It has to be my favorite town we visited on the South Island. We ended the day trying to find a good winery to visit but they all appeared to be closed, which was too bad. We ended up going to a fun Mexican Restaurant instead, where the Frida movie soundtrack played in the background and the friendly Australian waitress suggested places for us to visit on our way up to Christchurch the next couple days.

The next morning we headed up to Lake Tekapo. On the way we stopped at a beautiful lookout of Mount Cook across a frosty blue lake. It was spectacular! In Tekapo we checked into a hostel and then explored the tiny town. The town consisted mostly of a few wool-clothing shops, a couple coffeehouses and bars and a tiny “historic” church. The lake was a beautiful blue and I enjoyed walking along it. While making dinner in the hostel’s communal kitchen, we met a father with three small children staying there. They were having a family dinner, and as it is unusual to see a young family in a hostel, we started a conversation with them. The family was from Christchurch and had lost their home in the earthquake. The mother was still in Christchurch, making arrangements for a new house. It was so interesting talking with them about their experiences, and the father gave us lots of advice on places to visit in New Zealand and wines to try. It was sad hearing their story, but their optimism and resourcefulness was inspiring.

We also met two girls in the hostel traveling together- one from Holland and one from Sweden. They were planning on hitchhiking to Christchurch in the morning, so we offered to give them a ride and ended up hanging out with them until we went back to Auckland. We somehow piled all five of us and all our suitcases and food into the car in the morning and headed to Christchurch. I was shocked by what I saw there. I knew the earthquake had been bad, but I wasn’t aware of the extent of the damage that would still be there after a couple months of rebuilding. Buildings were crumbled and tilted and whole sections of the city were completely shut down. It was hard to navigate with all the closed streets. We managed to park at a grocery store and walk until we found a hostel to stay at. By the time we checked into the hostel I had seen enough of Christchurch. Tom went out to take pictures, but I didn’t feel comfortable doing so. It was so depressing there- like being in a ghost town. Alena and I rented Fried Green Tomatoes from the hostel’s selection of DVDs, drank wine and ate ice cream until it was time for bed.

In the morning we returned the car and flew back to Auckland. It is amazing how smooth flying is here. You don’t have to weigh your suitcases, you just print out a tag and put them on a moving belt. Then you walk through security without having to take off your shoes or anything. All the flights were on time and I never had to wait long for my luggage. Those of you who know my terrible flying luck would be amazed. It was nice coming back from Auckland but I was sad to leave the South Island. It was so beautiful there and I had met so many amazing people! While walking back to my apartment from the bus I heard someone call my name. It was Crosby- a friend of mine from my program who had dropped out of the program to travel after the earthquake in Christchurch. He ended up staying with us for a couple days before returning to the South Island to meet up with his brothers who were coming to visit. It was really nice catching up with him. For the rest of the week I caught up on work and hung out with Alena and her parents who were in town. They invited me to dinner a couple nights and even let us use the hot tub at their hotel- nice!

Now school has started up again. I turned in a big report for environmental science and had a biology exam. Last weekend, I had a field trip to Rangitoto with my biology class. Rangitoto is a volcanic island right off the coast of Auckland. We took a ferry there and looked at islands of vegetation growing in patches on the scoria. We were testing the theory that species diversity would increase with island area and that the composition of vegetation would change depending on north-to-south orientation. I partnered up with Tammy and Olivia, my partners from the last field trip, and we had a lot of fun. It was a very long day though, and I was exhausted by the time I got back.

This weekend I attempted to do the Torgariro Northern Circuit- a three-day backpacking trip, with Tara and Alena. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible and the DOC deemed it too dangerous to do the climb. Instead, we did a hike to Silica Rapids near Tongariro, which was really cool. The andesite under the lava flow leeched out aluminum silicate, which coated all the rocks in the stream with a cool yellow color. We then headed up to Taupo, where we did a hike to the Huka Waterfalls, which were massive and amazing, and stopped to swim in some natural hot springs on the way back. The next day we visited the Taupo Botanical Gardens and the beautiful and fragrant Taupo Rose Gardens. We then headed to the “Craters of the Moon” geothermal park, where entrance was free for the park’s 20^th anniversary. The park was really cool and the celebration involved live music and lots of free food and ice cream. We ended our Taupo trip at the Huka Honey Hive, where we had free honey and mead tastings and they had a live honeybee hive display. Now we are back in Auckland, but since we still have the rental car for another day, we may head up to the beach for the day.

Exciting news! I’m going to Europe for a couple weeks after I finish my semester here in Auckland. My friends Meredith, Morgan, Julia and Suzanne from Barnard are all going together because Morgan has spent the year studying in Oxford and Julia in Paris. It sounds like it will be so much fun and I can’t wait to join them!

Well, that’s all for now. I’m finally all caught up on blog posts! Sorry for the delay and thanks for reading!

Driving down the West Coast of the South Island- Seal Colony...

Sun, 01 May 2011 20:40:00 -0400

Seal colony beach

Weka!

Seal colony beach

Seals!

I miss you New York!

Seal colony beach

Paparoa National Park

Ferns!

Boulder-filled stream in Paparoa

Trail to Paparoa

Driving down the West Coast of the South Island- Seal Colony near Westport and Paparoa National Park

Wellington and the ferry ride to Picton through the Marlborough...

Sun, 01 May 2011 05:39:48 -0400

Inside a "blue whale heart" at Te Papa

Wellington Waterfront

Ferry through Marlborough Sounds

Driving on the left side of the road!

Driving past vineyards

Sheep!

Wellington and the ferry ride to Picton through the Marlborough Sounds

Images from Ponui Island

Sun, 01 May 2011 04:17:20 -0400

Sunset on the barge to Ponui

Sunset on the barge to Ponui

Beautiful field on Ponui Island

Beautiful field on Ponui Island

Gotham- the baby Kiwi!

Me holding the adorable baby Gotham!

Barney and Isabel using telemetry

Ponui feral donkeys!

An overly friendly cormorant

Seagulls along the island shore

Images from Ponui Island

Playing with Kiwis on Ponui Island

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:36:00 -0400

When I last wrote, I was about to leave to spend a week on Ponui Island to work with ornithologists to catch and change the transmitters on kiwis. Well, it has been quite a while since that week, but the adventure feels like it all happened yesterday.

Ponui Isand is a privately owned island southeast of Waiheke. The island is mostly farmland (so we got to play with the cows, chickens and horses) but also has a lot of native bush, popular for several church summer camps. North Island Brown Kiwis were introduced there because there are no invasive predators on the island other than some feral cats and rats. The population of kiwi has shot up since then, and the island is said to have the highest density of kiwi in New Zealand. There are also many other species of birds endemic to New Zealand there, as well as a breed of feral donkeys.

On Sunday March 20th I caught a bus to Papakura. The bus ride went smoothly and I ended up arriving quite a bit earlier then expected. I sat down next to the pool complex to wait for someone- I had no idea who- to pick me up and take me to Kawakawa Bay to get picked up by a boat and taken to Ponui. This was the extent of what I knew would happen on this trip. I guess I looked pretty bored and a little bit out of place waiting there with my bags outside the pool complex, as two boys, probably about 13 years old, decided to skateboard over and talk to me. They were quite the characters, teasing each other, trying and failing to do skateboard tricks, and flirting with me as much as 13-year-old boys can. It really struck me how friendly they were. They had no idea who I was but spent a good 45 minutes or so ignoring their “mums’” text messages to talk to me because, as one of the boys said “you looked lonely sitting over there by yourself so we thought we would keep you company”. This seems to be very much the mentality in New Zealand. Strangers are always very much thought of as people who deserve the attention, help, and friendliness that you would give to your close friends. Later on, during my road trip on the South Island last week, I learned this to be even more true.

Eventually another member of the Ponui team showed up on the train. His name is Andrew and he is a PhD candidate in Wellington, studying the acoustics of little spotted kiwis. Soon, Isabel, the originator of the kiwi research on Ponui and our fearless leader, drove up with Sally, Juan Carlos, and Hazel, the dog. We got coffee around the corner in Papakura until Alex and Katy showed up as well. I drove with Alex and Katy to the Kawakawa Bay where we met up with the rest of the group and Dave Chamberlain, the owner of our study site on Ponui, took us on his barge across to the island. The barge ride was stunning, with a brilliant sunset draping the sky and little blue penguins swimming in the water. We arrived on the island, made dinner and settled in. I stayed in an old bus fitted with bunk beds. My roommate Barney was from Wellington. He has come to Ponui for “kiwi catch week” several times with his mother, Suzie, who is a close friend of Isabel. Barney was a great person to talk to and we became good friends on the trip. Suzie was a warm woman who did a lot of the organization for the group. She works in lab where she is basically finding out how to cure cancer, which is pretty awesome.

The next day we began our kiwi catching. We had several sets of telemetry gear. Handheld antennas attached to receivers listened for the specific radio signals assigned to each bird. The louder the signal, the closer proximity you are to the bird. Kiwis are nocturnal, and typically hang out in their burrows during the day. This makes it easier for us to catch them during the day, when they are not moving around. We first found the burrow of a female kiwi named Dorothy. Katy caught her and I got to hold her while Isabel measured her, weighed her, changed her transmitter and took some samples of feathers and ticks for several research projects going on. It was so exciting to get to hold a kiwi! They are quite large with very hairy feathers and strong feet. If you have a good grip of the feet though, they won’t give too much of a fight, and like most birds, if you cover their head with a cloth, the dark will calm them down a lot. We continued finding kiwis all day, catching a total of 10 the first day.

For the rest of the trip, the kiwi-catching was harder. We had caught all the birds that were easy to find the first day and were left with the birds that favored burrows that were too deep to reach them in. We split up into groups and managed to slowly catch each kiwi- one by one. One of my favorite catches was one bird that was hiding in a long hollow tree- too far to reach from either end. Andrew used a long stick to gently encourage the bird to move towards the other end. Barney had his arm through a hole further down the tree and caught her by the feet, then passing her through the tree to Isabel, who was at the entrance at the end of the tree. It was quite a process and Barney almost lost an arm- but we caught her!

One of my proudest moments was on our second day of kiwi catching, with one kiwi that was hiding in a burrow within a huge kauri tree. First, Andrew tried to catch him, but couldn’t reach him. Then Isabel tried and finally Juan Carlos, but neither of them could reach him either. I had never caught a kiwi before, but because I am generally long and thin, I thought I would give it a try. I lay down next to the tree and reached my arm in. I reached and strained and reached and strained until I thought my arm would fall off- and suddenly I felt feathers! I felt around for a pair of feet and grabbed as quickly as I could. I caught him! I slowly pulled him out of the burrow and held him for his examination. By then, I had memorized the process. Isabel is a friendly and happy woman, but also very intelligent and intense about her research. This combination of characteristics made me really want to be helpful and live up to her expectations. When she finished checking the bird and changing the transmitter she told me I could put him back into the burrow. I noticed that she had forgotten the measure the beak, and pointed this out. I guess the combination of catching the uncatchable bird and knowing the procedure impressed her and she told me “Sophie, you can come in the field with me anytime!” I was beaming.

Another proud moment was later in the week when I used the telemetry gear to find and pull out a kiwi very quickly. I had used the telemetry a few times and caught a bunch of kiwis, but this time it was so quick and efficient that I couldn’t help but feel like I was finally getting a hang of this kiwi-catching thing!

Other activities during the week included pit-fall traps. Throughout the bush, there were cups set up underground filled with antifreeze. Whenever invertebrates such as insects walked by, they would fall into the trap and get stuck. We went around and collected these samples. As kiwis primarily eat ground-dwelling invertebrates, these collection sites are important for our knowledge of what the kiwis are eating compared to what food is available to them. It was a lot of work tramping all over the bush through prickly bushes and cutty grass to find the traps, especially in the rain, but I still enjoyed it.

In the evenings we would make dinner together and spend time talking. It was such an amazing and diverse group of people on the island. There was Isabel, our leader, and the nicest, funniest person- whose birthday we celebrated while on the island with cake and balloons and champagne. Juan Carlos was her grad student, and as both were from Colombia, I got to practice some of my Spanish around them. Alex and Katy were both really cool. Alex is a master’s student studying chick behavior and Katy just recently graduated with a degree in zoology. They were really hilarious and fun to be around. Katy invited me to come visit her family in Mangawhai- and I think I will take her up on that soon! There was a friend of Isabel’s and his 11-year-old daughter named Daisy- the smartest little girl I have ever met, who knew everything one could possibly know about animals and natural history, and with whom I was in an ongoing debate about whose cat is cooler. One day we took both Daisy and Dave’s 7-year-old granddaughter Annabel out to catch kiwis, and I was amazed at how quickly both of them learned to master the telemetry. Annabel even found a kiwi that wasn’t tagged, just by looking into a random hole in the ground. Sally was an older woman, whose son worked with kiwi in the past. She impressed me so much by how hardy she was on all the steep hikes without trails. She could do it all! There was also Barney, Suzie, and Andrew as mentioned before, along with various other scientists that stopped by for a few days, such as an UoA ecology field researcher and a wildlife veterinarian. On the final day on the island everyone came together to present the research they have been working on. Some bigwigs from the government and grant agencies were there as well. It was fun to learn about everyone’s research and also see the support of the family that owns the land on the island. Most everyone involved had known each other for years. Isabel had seen Dave’s kids grow up. They were all like a big family and it felt really special to be a part of it.

I was sad to go back to Auckland when the week was over. Once I got back, I was swamped with work. I caught up on the reading and lectures I missed from my classes. I wrote a research paper for my ecology class based on a fieldtrip we had on Davenport before I went to Ponui. The field trip had been a lot of fun, looking at the species diversity of intertidal communities in North head, and I met a lot of really cool people on the trip, but the report was a lot of work for a short period of time. I also wrote a project proposal for my GPR project I am working on in Dan’s class. I met with Amy and learned how to start processing the GPR data. I also met with a really cool guy in my environmental science class named Dominic to work on a water quality project. We went to Oakley Stream, which is near where he lives in Mount Albert. He knew a lot about the area and what kinds of things could be affecting the stream water quality. He even gave me a bag of feijoa from his garden-they were delicious! Finally, I turned in all my work that was due and took an art history test and it was our mid-semester break! For break I went on an adventure to Wellington and the South Island with Alena and Tom, which I will tell you all about in my next post- coming soon!

Auckland Photos! 1. Our prize-winning Vegemite (and Marmite)...

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:13:18 -0400

Auckland Photos!

1. Our prize-winning Vegemite (and Marmite) costumes at the “Bad Taste Party”

2. Rachel, Jesse, Alena and I at the top of the Sky Tower

3. Overcast Piha beach

4. Climbing up Mount Eden to watch the sun set over the skyline

5. Black Swan at Western Springs Park

6. Three little girls showing off their dancing skills at the Pasifika Festival

7. My new Kiwi friend Natalie and I on the Te Henga Coastal Walkway

8. Trudging up the Te Henga Coastal Walkway

9. More Te Henga Coastal Walkway

10. The dramatic coastline along the Te Henga Coastal Walkway

sweet as.

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:25:00 -0400

I apologize ahead of time- this will be a long post!

We’ve just finished our first couple weeks of school and things are starting to get busy. I’ve been enjoying my classes a lot, though they are very different than any of the classes I’ve taken at Barnard. For one, they all are very large classes, the largest of which is over 370 people. This is a bit disconcerting compared to my tiny seminar-like Barnard classes, but it’s interesting to see the diversity of people attending the lectures. Another difference I’ve noticed is the orientation to which the classes are taught. Rather than basing the course strictly on material, professors teach the courses at a practical level in which all the material is described in the context of application. Because Barnard is a liberal arts school, we learn a wide range of material from many disciplines with the goal of being well-rounded people, in whatever discipline we choose. At UoA, students know what discipline they are going into from the start of college, and typically only take classes from within that discipline. I think that the classes are likely oriented towards application because students know what careers they want to go into in the future and are taking classes strictly based on what is required by that career. I don’t think either system is really better than the other, but it’s interesting to see the differences between our two modes of education.

Apart from school, I’ve been having a great time doing as much as possible on the weekends. Last weekend I went on a hike (or ‘tramp’ as they call it here) in the Waitakare Ranges with the Tramping Club. It was the orientation trip and at least 80 people came along. We arrived at a part of the Waitakares called the Cascades, where we divided into seven hiking groups of different levels and made our way to a cabin that the club owns called Ongaruanuku. I joined the medium-level group, but we accidently went the wrong way on the trail and ended up arriving at the cabin really early, an hour before the easy group even arrived. Still, it was heaps of fun and I really enjoyed meeting and talking to the Kiwis. Because we arrived so early, we had a lot of time to hang out and get to know each other, playing card games and such. I quickly earned the nickname “The President” because I kept winning a card game called “Scum” where the winner is made “President” for the next game. We spent the evening eating spaghetti, dancing to speakers powered by a car battery that someone actually schlepped up the mountain, and playing silly Kiwi party games like- “let’s see how many phonebooks we can stand on at one time without falling and breaking our ankles”, and “climb all the way under and around a table without touching the ground”.

The next day we woke up early to hike to Piha Beach. I decided to join the hard level hiking group and it definitely lived up to its name. After crossing a stream and heading up a mountain for a while, we realized that we no longer saw any trail markers. We found pink tags indicating tree research and decided to follow them; thinking that whoever tagged the trees probably came from a trail. An hour or so later, we realized we had been heading in the opposite direction that we were supposed to. Janka had a compass, we attempted to orient ourselves on a map and then headed straight in the direction of the ocean, bush bashing the whole way. We bashed our way down steep slopes, through thick forest, getting scratches all over from “cutty grass”, and even climbed over clearings of fallen, decaying trees where you couldn’t tell if your foot would hit something solid or fall all the way through. It was AWESOME and such a fun adventure! After walking a steep slippery ledge over a river, we eventually found our trail and quickly made it to Piha. Piha is the most famous surfing beach in NZ and is absolutely GORGOUS. (A little shout out to Morgan- Piha is where they filmed ‘The Piano’!) It was a bit windy and cold, but we went for a swim anyways. The swim felt great but the waves were huge and rough and pulled us around at their will. It was overall a great weekend trip.

Moving on- last week’s theme was wine. Last Tuesday I attended a free New Zealand wine tasting for international students. We tried six different wines, four white and two red. A man who worked for one of the wine companies taught us how to taste the wines, what flavors to look for, and described all the regions they came from, showing us the locations on a map. It was really informative, a bit cheesy, and a lot of fun. On Thursday, the tramping club all hiked up Mount Eden to watch the sunset and have wine and cheese on the top. It was a really relaxing evening and nice to meet up again with all the people I met on the orientation trip.

This past weekend, I spent Saturday at the Pacifika Festival. The festival took place at Western Springs Park, which was huge and divided into different areas for each of the different Pasific Island nations. Each section had a stage with dance and music performances and tons of tents set up with native food and crafts for sale. It was definitely an interesting look into the different Pacific cultures, and especially fun to see the Cook Islands section and reminisce about the goods times we had at Rarotonga. Saturday night was “White Night” for the Auckland Arts Festival, where all of the museums opened up late at night with free admission. Alena, Janka and I went to the Maritime museum and had a great tour of all of New Zealand’s maritime history, starting with the Maori canoes that discovered New Zealand, all the way to the America’s Cup and New Zealand’s modern sailing heroes. Our guide had traveled by boat all over the world and was filled with great stories. I definitely will want to check out the museum again! We ended the night listening to live music in a bar called “The Fiddler”. The band played a lot of 90s songs that I love and we had a great time singing along before heading home.

On Sunday, I went on another tramp, this time to the Te Henga Coastal Walkway. We walked along the stark, beautiful cliffs near Piha, looking over at endless North Shore beaches, free from any development, or even very many people. We stopped for a swim before heading back, and the water was perfect, with large but gentle waves. We then hiked along a stream and made it to a series of giant sand dunes, away from the ocean, expanding out like an endless desert. The sand was so soft and we had fun running and sliding down the slopes. On the other side of the dunes was a secluded freshwater lake, where we stopped for another swim, cooling off from the hot sand before heading back. Beaches, cliffs, sand dunes, streams lakes… what an ideal day!

Yesterday I had a fieldtrip with my Environmental Effects and Management class. We drove along a huge highway, which is in the process of being built to connect several Auckland suburbs. The area was designated for the highway 50 years ago, but has since filled up with houses, neighborhoods and parks. We are working on projects to analyze the potential environmental effects of building this highway, along with effects on economy and community. I think it will be an interesting project.

As for the rest of the week, tomorrow is “Girls Night Out” with the Tramping Club, Saturday I have a fieldtrip to Devonport with my New Zealand Ecology and Conservation class, and Sunday I leave for Ponui Island! Thanks to Fabiana, I get the exciting opportunity to work with Professor Castro of Massey University on a project tagging kiwi birds on the island for a week. It should be an awesome way to learn about New Zealand ecology and conservation first-hand! I can’t wait!