For those I never see again

A face on the bus
that one companion
or study buddy.

Travelers on the road
from necessity relationships born
and friendships formed
or not.

And then they are gone.

But the faces remain imprinted
on my mind like footprints
of a long gone wanderer in a
long gone wood.

Fading.

Going home

It has been a long time since Independence Day. I say that because it was on the 4th of July that I boarded a plane and came to New Zealand. Tomorrow I board a plane and return to the US, and all I can say is that it has been a long time since the 4th of July.

It has been a long time since I waved goodbye to my parents at the airport, as the escalator descended into the subway. It has been a long time since I showed up in Palmerston North and they didn't even have a room ready for me. It has been a long time since I started classes, and thought they would be a breeze. It has been a long time since everyone I thought of as friends abandoned me and went to Wellington one weekend early on without even telling me. Since I met up with a crazy American named Jackie, and she invited me to her Christian small group. Since I went tramping with the alpine club. Since I first had to stay up all night to get some of the assignments done. And since I did a million other things which all defined my experiences here.

People ask me if I've had a good time in New Zealand. Of course I have, and of course I tell them that. I know that I most definitely have. And yet, such qualities are tough to measure. When I first left for New Zealand, I was very apprehensive to say the least. At times I wasn't even sure I wanted to go. And now, it is the eve of my return home and I can think of nowhere on Earth I would rather be than home. So if I barely wanted to go, and now I want to be home, how can I possibly say that I had a good time?

I believe the measure of my experience rests in the relationships and bonds I formed. Put aside my 'vacation' around the South Island for a moment. How I really measure and prove that my time in New Zealand was worthwhile was in how difficult it was to leave Palmerston North. The city itself was not very exciting, nor was the weather any good, but out of everything I have done in my entire trip, leaving Palmerston North was the hardest. It was so hard because I had to say so many goodbyes. I tried to deeply imprint the faces of all my friends in my mind so that I would not forget them. I would try to hang out with a group again, just so that some event would not be the last time I saw someone.

I guess what I am saying is that I am very excited to get home, but I will undoubtedly miss Palmerston North. And in someways, I can't even imagine what it will be like to return home.

Life on a farm

A farm? Yes. A farm. A sheep farm at the bottom of the world.

For the past couple days I have taken a break from travelling and settled down on a sheep farm near Invercargill, the southern most city in New Zealand. The farm is run by two people who are old friends of my mother, and coincidentally friends of several other family friends.

This farm is a quiet place in the countryside, and it does provide a much needed rest from travelling. The Kiwi Experience bus I have been on has been very fun. However, seeing sites and travelling every day, and then seeing more sites gets a bit exhausting. On the day I arrived here I had been up since early in the morning either on a bus, or hiking through the rain in the Catlins. That day I got to see seals, sea lions, and a penguin who belonged to the worlds rarest species of penguin.

So here I am on a farm. It is a small farm, only about twelve hundred sheep. We are in a quiet house surrounded by rolling green hills dotted with white sheep. The birds sing and the sheep 'baa'. Betty and Gillian (the owners of the farm) have made it my job to feed a group of lambs who have no mothers each night. They always run out to greet me.

Yesterday Betty and Gillian took me out to see some of the southern coastline around here, and I got to see a whole lot more seals, as well as the southern-most point of the southern Island. I have stood at the northernmost point of the North Island, and the southernmost point of the South Island.

Tomorrow I am getting up early. I have a big day, I am travelling from here to Invercargill, then to Te Anau, to Milford Sound, a boat cruise on Milford Sound, and then back to Queenstown. And it's even more amazing to think that I will be home next Monday. Wow.

My big day

Mom, I apologize for the heart attack I'm about to give you. Really.

Think back to a time when you were at a mall, one of those verticle ones with six or seven stories. You are on the top floor with the food court. Now, have you ever looked over the edge, down at that huge drop to the bottom floor, and wondered, just for a second, what it would be like to jump?

Well I just found out. I did a bungy jump. I was at the Kawarau Bridge, 20 min outside of Queenstown. It is the original home of bungy. I got to jump in front of all my friends of the Kiwi Experience bus.  It was a 43 meter drop, and I got a bit wet.

So yeah, check it out.



Words really cannot describe it. Somewhere deep down my subconcscious understood that I was not about to die, so I was not scared for my life. Yet, what I experienced was the sheer and enourmous terror that only such a situation can bring. I was falling down the middle of a canyon. And there were no supports for myself visible. I also knew that I would be hitting the bottom because I would be partially submerged in the water. I'm still a bit rattled by the immensity of the experience.

In other news, I'm writting this from Dunedin. I did my big jump yesterday, and then rolled into Queenie (Queenstown) that afternoon.In the afternoon I went to the top of the gondola. I hiked up because I was far too cheap to pay for the gondola, and the station at the top did not look very far away. At the top I got some beautiful views of the whole area.

That night I had to say goodbye to a lot of the people I knew from the Kiwi Experience bus because I was leaving in the morning. Most people spend a lot more time in Queenstown, but I had a schedule to keep, and my schedule had become even tighter when I missed that bus in Picton. So here I am in Dunedin. Tomorrow I will see that Catlin Islands, and then arrive in Invercargill where I will be staying with some old family friends for a few days. They own a sheep farm.

Again Mom, I'm sorry.

Franz Josef

I spent today exploring the the Franz Josef glacier. It is one of the lowest glaciers in the world, and on either side of it is rain forest. There was a low cloud ceiling, so the best I could do was catch glimpses of the surrounding mountains. Still, it gave whole region a sort of mysterious majesty. I did a six hour hike to get out to my vantage point.

Tomorrow: Wanaka.
 Sunday: Queenstown
Right now: More photos

Photos

I'm writing this near the Franz-Josef glacier. I went kayaking today and I'm going to do a big hike tomorrow. I will tell you all about when I can. In the mean time, enjoy some photos: link

A little more explanation

It always seems like I'm in a hurry. When I wrote that last post I was running off to catch the bus to
Wellington. All day before that I had been running to make sure that I would be able to get things packed on time and be fully prepared for my final.

I have a lot more about the second half of the semester that I want to say. Unfortunately, I learned that keeping up with a blog is harder than it looks. Even now I am counting the 9 minutes left to write this before my time expires. When I get back home I will write a lot more about the second part of the semester, how tiring the assignments were, how wonderful some of my friends were, the awesome christian fellowship I got involved with, and the hours I managed to waste procrastinating so that I had time for nothing else.But not now. 7 minutes left.

So I am travelling the south Island now. Today was a little bit rough, not because of the waves on the water crossing over to the South Island, but because the bus I was going to take to Chch left Picton without me. Long story. Anyway, I got to spend a bunch more money and get things worked out. I gain a day in Christchurch and I lose two in Queenstown. I'm still on track to take a the Kiwi Experience tour bus down the west coast, into Queenstown, around to Dunedin and Invercargill (where I'm saying with some old friends of my mom), and then to Milford Sound and back to Queenstown and back to Christchurch. Easy as.

I'll try to keep this updated whenever I get internet. I even have a USB camera cable so that I should be able to upload pictures before I get home.

And I'm off

I'm off, out for summer, and have a bus to catch in 20 min. I'm heading down to wellington tonight, and then I will spend the next 16 or so days travelling the South Island.

I better get to that bus...

Exploring Middle Earth

Now that my blog is alive again, there are a number of things I have to talk about. But first, I thought I might share most recent adventure, a trip to Wellington to Tour some Lord of the Rings sites.

When I was applying to study abroad, the coordinator said that you had to have a good reason to go where we want to go, and she specifically used the example that you couldn’t go to New Zealand just because you are a fan of Lord of the Rings. I was even required to write an essay about how I was not coming to New Zealand for Lord of the Rings. It’s true, I do have important reasons of my own for coming, reasons like personal development and broadening perspectives.

But on the other hand, I am a huge fan of Lord of the Rings. The front covers are worn off my books, and the first page is also worn off some of them. Adding of wear and tear to the many sets of Lord of the Rings books at my house was a job that my parents began and I have been happy to continue. I, like every other nerd, half-nerd, geek, and sane person out there loved the Peter Jackson movies as soon as they came out. So while I have legitimate reasons to be in New Zealand besides LotR, I was not about to pass up an opportunity to see some of the sites from the movies.

The main movie industry in New Zealand is based out of Wellington, and so that is where we travelled to last weekend. There were six of us who went, all Americans studying abroad except for guy who is from China. We hired a car in Palmy and drove down. I was the one who put the money down and signed for the car, so I did the majority of the driving. On the left side. That was scary.

We got to Wellington, checked into our hostel, and went to explore the Te Papa museum. Among the neat things at the museum was the only captured remains of a Colossal Squid. After Te Papa we drove to the top of Mount Victoria where we got a great view of the entire area. We could have climbed Mount Victoria on foot but we did not quite have the time to do that. We also were looking for a specific turnoff in the road where you can take a short hike in to find the place where they filmed the scene of the hobbits hiding from the Ring Wraith in the woods, but we didn’t have enough time that evening to find it. There were a number of Shire scenes filmed in the Mount Victoria Park. It is rather astonishing that Hobbiton Woods is in actuality a just a city park inside Wellington.

Anyway, that night we got back to our hostel. There was a rugby match on and New Zealand was playing England there in Wellington. We were going to find somewhere to watch the match but then found out that it was a Rugby League match instead of a Rugby Union one. The difference between League and Union is kind of like the difference between Arena Football and normal Football.

The next morning we met up with our tour guide who would show us around to various filming sites. We travelled out of Wellington and first stopped at a large quarry, also known as Helms Deep, also known as Minas Tirith. All of it has since been taken down. Then we travelled to a city park that was used for the outdoor shots of Isengard. You could just barely tell that some of the trees in the background were the same when you saw still frames of the movies. We got to see some other sites such as where Aragorn is washed ashore after falling from the cliff, and then we went to Rivendell.

Or what is left of Rivendell. When the filmmakers built the set, they moved all of the plants to a greenhouse nearby, built Rivendell, filmed there, took Rivendell down, and then replanted every single plant exactly where they found it. Talk about commitment. Also, apparently when they were building the Rivendell set they were in such a hurry that when they finally did the actual filming, the production crews had to instruct the actors not to touch certain parts of the set because the paint was still wet.

Once we returned to Wellington we went to the Weta Cave, connected to Weta Studios which produces all of the props for Peter Jackson. They are the ones responsible for all the handmade armor and weapons in Lord of the Rings, as well as a lot of other work.

We left Weta Cave, had an adventure getting lost in Wellington, finally found our way to the main motorway, and then returned to Palmerston North so that I could get a full night of studying in. I had my first final that tuesday. Pictures from this latest trip are here.

It LIVESSSSS!!!

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. Well, ok, no one could call a day as beautiful as today dreary, nor is it November quite yet, but the words of Mary Schelley in Frankenstein are apt to describe the resurrection of my blog. It’s been almost two months, but now it’s back.

And when I say back, I absolutely mean it. I’ll explain why I didn’t blog for seven weeks soon, but all you have to know is that my blog is back. And I will be updating it every day for the next several days. So add it to your routine now. Tell your kids. Tell your husbands. Tell your wives. And you dog.

First the question of why haven’t I been blogging. Anything I say after this point is going to be pretty much BS because in all honesty, I’m not entirely sure myself. But nonetheless we still ask, why?

This question begins at the end of the mid-semester break. I spent two weeks of break travelling the North Island. When I arrived back on a Saturday night, I had two lab reports due on Monday which I had not started writing. That wasn’t some oversight, I just was busy with a lot of other work until I left for my trip, and then I had everything to do when I got back. And things continued basically in that manner for the whole rest of the semester. I always had very large portions of work on the horizon.

But making a blog entry doesn’t take too long, just an hour here, and hour there, you should have time for it? Well not in my head, and that’s because I had a lot of pictures to upload. I have since learned that there is a link at the bottom of Facebook albums that allow you to share them with everyone despite privacy settings. But prior to figuring that out, I believed that I would be required to take the time to upload all of the photos I wanted to share in my blog to Photobucket, and then format all those so that it wouldn’t take up all the space on my Photobucket account. It did not seem seem to me that I had time to do that, and I did not want to add photo uploading and formatting to my already-long to-do list.

The other reason that I haven’t updated is that I simply have not gotten out of Palmy (Palmerston North) again until last weekend. I had a few cancelled trips, and a few weekends in, and a few weekends with some good friends I have made here. But nothing that seemed urgent enough for me to make a blog post about. I will tell all about the actual content of my time in the next couple days. Finally last weekend I travelled down to Wellington to tour some Lord of the Rings sites, and it has given me sufficient reason to start making updates again.

Sky Tower

The final subject for today is that I left you guys hanging in my last blog post. I was still in Auckland in my mid-semester trip. Here goes the conclusion. The next day in Auckland we went to the Zoo. We were going to go to this volcanic Island in the middle of the harbor but instead all of us were feeling tired because of a cold that was going around, so we didn’t have the motivation to get up in the morning. That night we decided to splurge and go have dinner up in the sky tower, which is like a cooler version of the Space Needle. It is also the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. Afterwards we went to see Inception at the Imax theater.

Group photo in the Bay of Islands.
From left to right: Marty, Hannah,
Myself, Jackie 

The next morning we got up and took the bus up to Northlands and the Bay of Islands. That was pretty freakin cool. It is a bay of around 200 islands and it had warm and sunny beaches. The first day we had a lazy afternoon and I went kayaking. The next day we took a boat tour around, and got to see the famous hole in the rock island. Our boat actually went through the hole. We were supposed to get to see dolphins in our tour, and since we did not see any they gave us all a free voucher to come back and take the tour again. I’ll use it if I ever come back this way in my life.

Famous hole in the rock

That day was my birthday. It was also the last day that Hannah would be with us. She was studying in Christchurch and had to fly back the next day, so she had to get up the next morning and take a bus back to Auckland. When she left in the morning I found myself quite sad because I knew I would probably never see Hannah again. The rest of us, Jackie, Marty, and myself, continued on to take a bus up to explore the northernmost parts of New Zealand. The bus drove 

Ninety Mile Beach

up the beach along Ninety-Mile Beach, and then turned inland so that we could go sand boarding on the dunes. I got to see the Tasman Sea for the first time. Afterwards we continued up to Cape Reinga. The Maori believe that Hine-nui-te-Po guards the Cape Reiga and from there sends souls out to the underworld. Cape Reinga was breathtaking because overlooked the place where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet in a tumultuous cacophony of wind and waves. It had that sort of grey ocean air blowing in your face that years of going to Ocean Park has made me appreciate.

Cape Reinga

After that we bused back to Auckland. The next morning we got up bright and early and spent the entire day on a bus back to Palmerston North. Now, as promised here are pictures. If you are my friend on facebook you have probably seen these already, but if not, here they are. Part 1. Part 2.


I will tell all about my other experiences here in the days to come.

Trip recap coming soon.

But not yet unfortunately. I got back to campus Saturday night and have been working on a pair of lab reports nonstop (and almost nonsleep) ever since. Now that they are done I'm far too exhausted to write much more.

Also we have a bit of a flood going on right now here in Palmy. The main bridge I take to get to campus is currently flooded, broken, and will be gone if we get anymore rain at all. I do remember it raining all last night as I worked on my assignments. At least this isn't like Chicago 2008 when most of the dorms and dining hall had to be evacuated because the transformer was underwater. I did have fun wading barefoot to my 9:00am class though when the water was still low enough to cross.

Finally, Happy Father's Day Dad. Yes, I am about a day late because yesterday was fathers day here, but still, I hope you had a happy Father's Day... er, September 5th.

Mid-Semester Adventure: so far

Right now I am sitting in a hostel in Auckland, and I have been travelling for about the last week. I thought I might simply record everything I have gone and done so far. Again, sorry guys, there's no SD slot on this computer so I can't post any pictures.

I already made a post about the first day in Rotorua. Smelly Rotorua. But to recap that first day I went zorbing and luging. Then I got to see an incredible double rainbow and a whole lot of smelly bubbling pits in the ground. The second day we went for a hike in a forest called The Redwoods, although they were no where near as impressive as the actual redwood forest. But it was a good hike none the less. We went out for dinner that night, and decided that we would go out for dinner once per city we stay at. After dinner we headed over to the some of the hot pools which gave the town its distinct smell, and spent a few hours relaxing in the hot water.

On Thursday the next day, we left Rotorua and made our way to the Coromandel Peninsula. It took a total of four bus changes to get there, but we finally made it to a small town called Tairua. It was a pretty quiet town, very similar to Ocean Park or Longbeach in the winter. And just like those two it was on the ocean. Jackie had a lot of trouble staying in a small quiet town, but I quite enjoyed it. I had myself some good walks on the beach.

On Friday we got up early and took the Coromandel Peninsula shuttle bus around to a couple of awesome sights. In the morning we took a fourty minute hike to Cathedral Cove, the site that you will recognize as the beach in the latest movie version of Prince Caspian. It had the white sand and the cave and everything. Unfortunately, it was cloudy out that day, and when we got there the tide was in so the beach was a little bit smaller. But it was impressive none the less. Then in the afternoon we took the shuttle to a place called "Hot Water Beach." The established spa-type hot pools of Rotorua might have been nice, but they have nothing on Hot Water Beach, which has been my highlight of this spring break trip so far. On this beach there is a thermal zone underneath part of the sand which gets exposed at high tide. You can rent ('hire' as they say here) a shovel for about $5 and then go out onto the beach near low tide and start digging. The hot water itself is a bit too hot to enjoy alone though so you have to dig your pool carefully so that it lets in some hot water but not too much. I would love to show you guys a picture of me relaxing the that perfect hot pool we built, but alas, I cannot yet upload pictures. They tell me that the Hot Water Beach is totally packed in the summer, and while I can believe it, I really think that it is a lot more enjoyable on a cool winter day than a hot summer day.

The next day in the coromandel peninsula was the least eventful of the whole trip. We didn't have any specific plans and we just relaxed in our costal town of Tairua. Three of us took a small hike up the mountain/hill thing that was across the tidal flat from our hostel. It was sunny and beautiful out that day. Everyone here who went to the South Island over spring break is on the wrong island. They are missing out on the sun and light blue, tropical-looking ocean.

Today is Sunday. We got up this morning and got on a bus to Auckland, and now here I am, at a hostel in Auckland.

Also: I only have one more minute of internet left so sorry guys, I did't have time to proof read the last half of this. Take care.

Rotorua!

Wow, that was a pretty incredible first day of this trip. Currently I'm at a backpackers hostel and they have a cheap internet connection. I am not doing much tonight so I thought I would share my experience today. I'd rather be taking a shower right now but my towel is still soaked from when I went zorbing. And sorry guys, I can't do pictures because there's no SD slot on this computer.

My day when something like this:

• Got up
• Went Zorbing
• Whoa!
• No really, whoa. Zorbing is exactly what it sounds like in the way that you cannot even begin to understand. 
• You roll down a hill in a giant ball. And there's water in the ball.
• Then we took the gondola up a mountain.
• From up on the hill we went luging. I thought it was going to be like the Olympic Luge where you are lying down, but instead these were kind of like go-karts with no engines. They went down the mountain on trails of varying steepness and sharpness of turns.
• When you saw a sign that said SLOW in big red letters, then you'd better slow down. You would most definitely flip over if you do not.
• At the bottom of the luge runs there was a chairlift that would take you back to the top. For a moment I wondered if this place was a skiing area in winter, but then I remembered-- it is winter.

Ok, those bullet points are getting a bit ridiculous now. After luging we took the gondola back down the mountain. We were originally going to go on a short hike in the afternoon, but once we got to the bottom we decided to go through the Rainbow Springs Kiwi Wildlife Park. I got to see a real live Tui, Kea, and Kiwi. Kiwi's are bigger and flightless-er* than I had thought.

To get back to town and our hostel we decided to walk instead of take the bus. Rotorua is known for it's geysers, hotpools, bubbling pools of muck, and its smell. On the way back we took a detour through a park full of foul-smelling, bubbling muck. That was pretty neat, and once the smell was overpowering it brought back memories of Yellow Stone I didn't even know I still had. As we were leaving the park, we saw an incredible rainbow in the sky. Five minutes later, it was even better defined, and you could start to see a second rainbow. In another five minutes we could see the the whole rainbow AND the whole second rainbow. Normally I'm not too big on rainbows, but this is probably the best rainbow I've ever seen. It was kind of like this. No joke.

So for the first day of my spring break adventure (not counting the first day of travel), this was pretty awesome. We'll try and spend less money in the days to come though... which wont be as hard because we are hiking tomorrow. And then we get to the Coromandel peninsula the following day, so from there we will be doing stuff like hiking on the beach.

I better get off now because the computer is about to kick me off. Greetings from the beautiful, foul-smelling city of Rotorua everyone.


*I always knew that kiwis were flightless, but in reality they are more like a two legged mammals than a flightless bird. They ware about the size of a large US possum or midsized raccoon.

Touring the North Island

So I'm officially out on spring break now for the next two weeks. It's pretty awesome, or as they say here, sweet as bro!

I am going on a bus trip around the North Island for the next 11 days, so I will be in and out of internet coverage sporadically, but I will update my blog when I can. There are four of us going together, and here is the trip as we have it planned:

Monday 23rd: Leaving Palmerston North and arriving at Rotorua. Rotorua is famous two things, smelling bad (due to sulfur geysers) , having a lots of extreme activities like louging and zorbing. I am very certain I will enjoy one of these two.

Thursday 26th: Leave Rotorua for Tairua in the Coromandel Peninsula. A lot of people have told us that we should not miss the Coromandel Peninsula

Sunday the 29th: Tairua to Auckland. We will stay in Auckland for a couple days.

Tuesday 31st: Leave Auckland and arrive in the Bay of Islands. We are staying in the Bay of Islands for three full days, and on one of the days we will take a trip up to 90 Mile Beach, which is about the northern most beach here in New Zealand. I will also be celebrating my birthday while in the Bay of Islands. I find that I quite often get to celebrate my birthday in an interesting places, and this year will be absolutely no exception. I'm sure the Bay of Islands will rank higher than something like Friday Harbor, but it will have tough time dethroning The Enchantments.

On Friday the 3rd we take a bus back to Auckland, and stay there the night, and then that Saturday we will take the bus back to Palmy.

Whenever I can I will upload pictures and info.

I also have a lot of homework to do over this break, and today I did not get anywhere near as much work as I hoped done. I did however, get a chance to talk to a lot of people from back home. I skyped with my parents and talked to Chris and Micheal (and Paul) who were at my house. At various points in the day I also got to talk to Drew, Ed and Alex via skype and facebook. As much as I am settled in here in New Zealand, I'm really excited for spring semester at North Park and I can't wait to see everyone back home. Hmmmm, I just implied that I thought of Chicago as home.

Ski Trip Cancelled

Due to weather. The Alpine Club was hosting a trip to Mt. Raupehu this weekend. We were planning on staying at their hut, and skiing on Saturday and Sunday (in my case snowboarding). Unfortunately, we got word on Friday that the trip was cancelled because the weather was so bad that most of the runs were going to be closed on Saturday.

The reason I am writing a whole update about this is that I took the news of the cancelled trip rather personally. I was more than annoyed and felt as though I had been left behind in a way. There have been weekends before where everyone has gone off doing things and I have been left alone. This weekend most people are gone a tramp. I know that having a weekend to work on class work is probably a blessing if I want to get any sleep next week, but it didn’t exactly feel like that. This is the time of year when assignments are really piling up because spring break begins in a week.

Part of the reason for my reaction at the trip being cancelled was disappointment because I had been very much looking forward to it. I am the sort of person who secretly wants to throw temper tantrums when things don’t go my way, though apparently I’m told society frowns on that now. But it wasn’t disappointment alone caused my response. I realized that even though I had been feeling secure for awhile and loving it here in New Zealand, part of me is still a little vulnerable.

I really have been feeling a lot more secure and settled in, and I have realized it in the last couple weeks. At the end of last week I wrote this and intended to flesh it out and make it into a whole blog post:

Wow. It has been a month already. How crazy. It’s felt longer though, in a lot of ways. It’s hard to remember that it’s still summer back home. Cars are driving on the correct side of the road now. I’ve even started using words like “carpark,” “keen,” and “reckon.”

One night this week I was walking back to my flat in the evening, and just as I got out of the woods I looked up to see what I see every clear night: the sky ablaze with starlight, the Southern Cross front and center, the Milky Way laying a dull blanket upon brightest part of the sky, and Venus, blazing on the horizon. And I realized then that I longed to stay in New Zealand for a more than a single semester. It wasn’t just the starlight though, it was everything. The people—kiwis and international students, the Alpine Club, my flat, the air, the forest, the sheep, the weather, and everything in between. I know that one day I will have to leave and return home, but that seems like such a strange and alien idea to me now.

And yet, if I were truly settled in, and beyond all the emotional ups and downs of adapting to a new everything, then I wouldn’t have taken the news of a cancelled ski trip quite as I did.

So I guess this is my progress report. I’m pretty well adapted to living in New Zealand now. Almost.

What my life looks like... literally

How is it down here?

I get asked that question whenever I talk to anyone from back home. How are things there? How’s it going? A question like that cannot be answered in a single sentence. I attempted to give one answer to that question in my blog post “How my doing is going” two weeks ago. Not too much has changed since then. I had school work, I’ve watched movies, I’ve talked with my flatmates, and I’ve gone tramping. Actually the tramping itself merits a blog post and I will give it one later this week. It was an awesome–-and wet—tramp to some hot pools. I have facebook images of it up already.

But now however, I would like to attempt to answer the question “How is it down there?” from a different angle. I am going to show you a little of what Massey University looks like, and I am going to show you what my house looks like.

I live in a little log cabin in the woods. Kind of. To get from campus to my flat I have to walk through a park and up the hill. As seen here.

There are 16 flights of stairs, and maybe 150 feet of elevation. Suffice to say, even without specifically exercising I am keeping fit. Now for my flat itself. There are about twenty flats up here total, and there are five people per flat. Each person gets their own room and there is a common area for cooking and a living room. The living room sees little use however, because mostly people keep to their own rooms. It is a lot warmer in your room than in the common room.

Here is my flat:

However, once you go inside the flat you see just how ‘log cabin-esque’ it is. It’s actually pretty awesome. My room:

As you can see, we don't have a drier, we only have racks to dry clothes on. It means that I have to do my laundry at least a day ahead of time.

And the flat even has a back yard!

I know this is a pretty picture heavy blog post, and if you’re on dial-up, well it’s probably time to upgrade. And if you’re a Massey student who’s gone over their 10 gigs this month, well, learn to live without youtube.

Massey is pretty standard as far as universities come. I have to walk through this main concourse several times a day to get to class.

Here are a few more images of what the university looks like.

The Bush Ball

I got to go backpacking last weekend!

If you know anything about me you know that I love hiking. Here they call day hiking a Bush Walk and backpacking Tramping, and from here on out I will use those terms.

I joined the Massey University Alpine Club this week, and I am very excited about it. The Alpine Club has activities almost every weekend, and sometimes multiple activities each weekend.

Their first event of the year was called the Bush Ball. It was a relatively easy tramp in the Tararua Mountain Range, in the Southeast of the Island (I am on the North Island if you didn’t know). This event was more of a getting to know people sort of event. The tramp itself was only 7km (about 4 miles) and took perhaps two hours. Although it was a fairly easy tramp, the forest was still gorgeous. It is just as green if not greener than the forests of the Pacific North West in the winter, and greener than most parts of the US country ever get. Along with the normal undergrowth of ferns there are also much more exotic plants. Here are some images of the wilderness:

I was able to buy a tramping pack at a bargain store for a very good price, and I am very glad that I got some new light hiking boots before I left. With my boots and pack, I felt like I could take on the whole empire myself.

One cool thing about New Zealand is that on tramping trails, instead of just having campsites, they actually have empty huts set up. It costs $5 a night to stay in a hut and it is an awesome idea because you can hike all day and then have a roof over your head while still being in the wilderness. The hut we stayed at had firewood (though you were supposed to chop as much as you use and add it to the pile), a wood stove, space for about 20 people to sleep with mattresses, and even had a hug water tank outside that collected rain water that fell onto the hut. As far as tramping goes, I am totally convinced that huts are an awesome idea. They especially use them here in New Zealand because it rains so often. Take note Washington.

But once we got to the hut then the real fun began. It was kind of a beginning of the year party, and everyone had packed in formal attire. When the sun went down at 6:00 in the evening we broke out our nice clothes and had a party. We even carried in an MP3 player, speakers, and a battery. It was a pretty sweet deal to have such an event in the middle of the wilderness. I really wanted some random hiker to happen to stumble upon our little gathering. Here are some pics:

I’m excited for doing a lot more with this alpine club this semester.

Anyway take care everyone, and greetings from New Zealand. Also, my skype name is andrewjohnson27 so feel free to skype me whenever I am on.

Edit: I found a much easier way to adjust photo sizes. Huzzah!

How my doing is going

I am going to split up this entry into two parts, one about how my life is going here in Palmy, and the other about the awesome Bush Ball tramp I just got back from.

So how am I? Well, I would tell the average person that I’m doing great. But that isn’t necessarily how my “doing is going” as Judy Peterson would say, and I definitely cannot tell you how I am doing in a single syllable.

It’s true that I am having the time of my life here. I just got back from a sweet backpacking trip. Two nights before that I got to see the movie "Inception" on launch day—Inception is AWESOME by the way, if your mind has not been sufficiently blown in the last couple years, get to a theater and go watch it NOW. Earlier in the week I got to see a ridiculous New Zealand horror-spoof movie called “Black Sheep” where genetically altered sheep turn into monsters that start killing everyone. I’ve gotten plenty of time to hang out with people and have fun. So here I am on the other side of the world, experiencing a foreign culture, meeting interesting people, and doing interesting stuff.

But that isn’t the whole story. I’m sure when I look back in the future I won’t remember how stressed I have been all the time trying to coordinate and prepare for different activities. I spent a lot of time last week running around trying to get signed up for the Alpine Club tramp, getting tramping gear, and just coordinating hanging out with people. On my mind I also have to balance doing class work and the usual chores of living on your own. I have to make sure I have a free afternoon each week to take the bus into town to buy food, and I have to do my laundry more than a day in advance of when I need it because there is no dryer here, only drying racks.

I live up in a place called Atawhai Village which is about a ten minute walk from campus. It’s a beautiful flat to live in (I know I promised a blog post about my living space, and I still will post that sometime here), but it’s also a bit removed from campus, and at times it can be difficult to connect with anyone else who is down on campus. If you are a North Parker, think of Atawhai as much better version of Park North. Perhaps the epitome this disconnect was last weekend when I checked my facebook on Saturday morning and found that everyone I normally hang out with had an update about going down to wellington. I would have very much enjoyed a trip to Wellington but no one thought to leave any space in the car for me, and so I had nothing to do but stay home all weekend. I went for a bike ride in the rain. I have always been the sort of person who gets stressed about social interactions, especially in new social situations.

Another interesting thing to note is the weather. It is probably the least of my problems, but it still isn’t easy to get used to winter. It is overcast, rainy, and windy most days (low 50s usually), rather like winter in Seattle, so I’m kind of glad I have experienced plenty of Seattle winters. Also, it gets dark by 6:00 at night. On clear nights it is pretty awesome because I can see the milky way from my front porch by 7:00 in the evening. Other times though, being dark is not so cool. To be fair, I think I am fairly used to the weather. Whenever I hear about anyone from the States doing some outdoor activities right now it does seem a little odd that they would go do stuff at this time of year.

So anyway, there you have about 500 words on how I am actually doing. It’s tough to adjust here, but it’s also incredible.

First week of classes

It’s been almost a week since my last blog update, and in that time I have completed my first week of classes. Since the semester is now going on will not have as much time to work on my blog, but I will definitely try and post at least once per week.

So classes. Papers. I understand now why the classes are called papers now. I went to a building called the Printery and wrote down my paper numbers, and they handed me a stack of documents 1-2 inches thick for each class I had. The documents are course materials. They are also in addition to textbooks, although only two of my papers actually require me to buy a textbook. I guess I saved $100 or more from that.

The papers themselves are structured a bit differently from normal classes I’ve taken back in the States. Papers might meet two or three hours a week for lectures, and then have an hour of discussion time later called tutorial. The times for these lectures and tutorials seem to be chosen at random and follow no specific rhyme or reason. I had to do a bunch of work at the beginning of the week to move my schedule around and change some courses just to get everything to fit without having class times clash with one another.

To illustrate this point, here is my schedule:

Monday: 9-11 Philosophy lecture

Tuesday: 9-10 Math lecture, 1-2 Philosophy tutorial

Wednesday: 2-4 Maori lecture, 4-5 Math lecture

Thursday: 10-11 Maori tutorial, 11-12 Math lecture, 2-5 Physics lab

Friday: 9-10 Math lecture, 3-4 Math tutorial

Confusing enough? And don’t even begin to think that classes would be in the same room twice in a row, because that would just be silly.

The papers themselves seem to be more independent. In the first week the professors pretty much told us when every assignment is due. My math and science classes have maybe six assignments in the semester, and my more fluffy philosophy and Maori studies classes only have two assignments each. To be fair, the philosophy and Maori studies papers are first year papers which I am taking so that I am not bogged down with too many third year courses to enjoy New Zealand as well. That said, the two essays for philosophy are only about 1000 words each, which seems ridiculously easy. It’s good that the class discussions sound quite interesting.

The one physics paper that I am taking is an advanced experimental course, and I will get to perform experiments that North Park could never afford. Just yesterday I spent the afternoon trapping charged drops of oil between two plates of a capacitor in the famous Millikan Oil Drop experiment where physicists were first able to determine the charge on an electron. I seemed like a bit of a newbie at doing experiments because I haven’t done them since my first year in college, and out of all my classes, this physics class seems the most daunting to me.

The math class I am taking is Applied Linear Algebra (basically working with matrices). It’s the next level up from Linear Algebra, which was probably my least favorite math class in college. So why am I taking the next level of it? Because the first level didn’t make too much sense to me. And already I can tell that this paper will be incredibly beneficial. We spent the first week solely going through rigorous mathematical definitions of vectors, vector spaces, matrices, and linear transformations. It was actually pretty cool.

In other news, I got a bike today. Green Bike Trust for the win! (Too bad I have to spell my internet slang out because my only registered followers are people who wouldn’t know what rofl means. *hint hint lurkers*) But my bike. It’s pretty sweet. I’ll get a pic of it up soon. Unfortunately they didn’t offer any road bike rentals, which would have suited my needs much better, but I’m happy with the mountain bike I have for the rest of the semester. I had to buy a helmet as well and make a trip into town to buy a bike lock for it. If the weather is nice tomorrow (which it was today) then I will probably take the bike for a ride up or down the river. I looked up distances and it looks like I’m about 25 miles from the ocean. After a bit of training I’m going to have to bike out to the beach sometime.

Getting more sorted out… and sheep herding

So not only do I have friends now, I seem to have an entire new friend circle. We are going to hang out and watch a movie tonight. If I have learned anything so far on this trip it has been from my experience of needing to be secure and carry on even when I am somewhere foreign and don’t know anyone. It is good to be past that phase however.

I got a new phone yesterday. It was the cheapest one I could buy, but that’s fine. It is also a lot cheaper for me to text than to call someone, and so I will probably end up texting more often than I usually do. One girl was saying found some cheap plan with unlimited texting and no minutes, and I must be getting old because now I am marveling at how times have changed.

I have also been able to get a more food for the past couple days. They sell frozen meat pies at the grocery store for pretty cheap, and I think that will become a staple of my diet here.

Near the end of the international student orientation a couple days ago they let us get out and go do something interesting, they took us to a sheep farm. Sheep farms are very prevalent in New Zealand, and Massey University owns something like 15,000 sheep. So they took us out to one of their farms, and we got to watch the sheep dogs herd the sheep around the paddock and the field. It was actually pretty cool. Here are some pictures:

This is the guy who was showing us the farm. I guess this is how you hold sheep when you shear them.

You can see one of the dogs in the background. It was a special New Zealand breed that barks really loudly. I have a video on the camera of the dog jumping onto the sheep and running over the top of them barking at them.

And finally here is another dog in the field. This dog is known for giving sheep an evil stare.

I have friends!

I’m not all alone.

Orientation for international students started today and I got to meet a lot of people here who were in similar situations as myself. There were a lot of us here from the US, and there must have been well over a hundred international students in total. The biggest nationality represented was China, with about half of all international students being Chinese.

I spent the day saying “Hi, what’s your name?” “Where are you from?” and “What are you studying” and then answering those questions as well. In doing so I got to meet a lot of interesting people. Among my experiences today I made friends with British guy who was also named Andrew and also a physics major. I sat next to a girl from Colorado during the orientation lecture, and when I told her that the university I go to is run by my church denomination she invited me to a bible study here that she was somehow connected with. Sweet.

Everyone I met here couldn’t wait to get out on the weekends to go do all of the outdoor activities New Zealand is so famous for. Honestly, when I decided I wanted to go to New Zealand I had no idea just how outdoorsy the country is. I knew it had beautiful mountains, but I never knew how outdoor oriented life here is. Throughout the semester I am going to have opportunities to go snowboarding, hiking, white-water rafting, kayaking, bungee jumping, biking, mountain biking, and some sport where you roll down hills in a giant ball. I’ll have to look into that last one.

Tomorrow we have another day of orientation and we get to go out to a farm and then into town. Sounds interesting.

Getting my feet on the ground

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day and a half at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on the July 6th through July 7th.


When we last left off our gallant hero was all alone in an unknown world, and pretty down and out about it. But he, that is I, picked myself up and walked into town. My Massey ID also functions as a bus pass, but I did not have the bus schedule because it was locked up with the rest of my stuff. Buses only run about every 40 minutes so instead I just started walking down the road. It took about 45 minutes to walk to downtown Palmy and all the while I was trying to reorient my mind to believe the cars were on the correct side of the road and that I should pass pedestrians coming at me on the sidewalk on the left.

I finally got to the grocery store where I bought some very basic food, because I had forgotten to check if we had a microwave or toaster, and I did not know if the pots in the house were for anyone’s use, or just for whoever owned them. So I bought a loaf of bread, butter, a few cup-o-noodles, and some soda. It was a bargain too, all for under $7 American ($10 NZD). Pak-n-Save seems to be the place to go for food.

I caught a bus home and dropped the food off. By that time the rest of my luggage had arrived at my house. That night, armed with one fresh bus schedule, I made my way into town again so that I could eat dinner at the Burger King there. I deserved it. Over the afternoon and evening I began feeling a lot better.

I accepted that I have no friends here yet. There’s no need for that to bring me down. I have a warm room to myself, food, beautiful forests around me, and nothing pressing that needs to be done at the moment. Campus orientation doesn’t begin until Thursday and so before that it is extremely difficult to find anyone to even talk to. And that doesn’t bother me anymore. Really.

Over the next day I was able to get a NZ bank account set up, get my blog set up, and get into town again to buy some more essentials and a little more food. There is in fact both a microwave and toaster in my house, but I am still unsure on whose pots are here.

Well, now I am all caught up on my blog. Orientation begins tomorrow and then I’m sure activities will pick up. For the rest of the night I have simple, sweet free-time and I will use it to read my book. Will Dresdin be able to find out who killed Tommy Tomm before the White council catches up with him? I just don’t know.

Finally, since I know I have such a rabid fanbase, here’s a preview of just a few things which I will be making blog entries about in the days to come:

-My house (looks a bit like a log cabin from the inside)
-My commute (a walk through the forest and up a big hill)
-The weather (just the kind of wind and rain I like)
-And much, much more!

Down a bit

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day and a half at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on July 6th.


The 6th was my first day here in New Zealand, and I guess it’s not all sunshine and magical adventures*. Especially the sunshine part, it’s been cloudy and drizzly ever since I got here.

Anyway, as my title says, I was feeling down a bit (I can’t wait until I get caught up on blog entries and can stop using the past tense). The weeks before my departure and then my travel and my arrival in New Zealand have been an emotional rollercoaster. My friend Holly, who is also studying abroad next semester, had a great blog post about the rollercoaster feeling of it all. You can find her blog by clicking on my profile, and checking under blogs I follow.

My arrival in New Zealand read a bit like one of those fortunately/unfortunately children’s stories:

Fortunately I was going to New Zealand. Unfortunately I was travelling alone. Fortunately I met someone to travel with on the way there. Unfortunately after Auckland I never saw her again. Fortunately I met another girl on the flight from Auckland to Palmerston North who was also student from the US also going to Massey. Unfortunately I was not sure if anyone would be waiting at the airport to pick us up. Fortunately there was a woman there, and she took us back to campus, gave us our IDs, and took us to the accommodation office. Unfortunately Massey did not have my room ready because they did not realize I was going to be arriving that day. Fortunately they would be able to have my room ready by the afternoon. Unfortunately, I had nothing to do until then. Fortunately they could keep my stuff at their office and then when the woman who had given me a ride to campus from the airport was free in later on she would be able to drive my stuff up to my house. Unfortunately I still had nothing to until the afternoon and I was jet lagged. Fortunately that jet lag was manageable and I still had my book. I was able to find a café in the library to read in until I could get into my room. Unfortunately, when I got to my room none of my stuff was with me so I could not take a shower or even change my clothes. Fortunately one of my roommates was already there. Unfortunately he had a very strong Chinese accent and was very hard to understand, and after greeting me he seemed not at all interested in talking to me. He quickly retreated to his room and it sounded like his girlfriend was there with him.

So there I was sitting in my bare room, in need of a shower and new clothes, without anyone to talk to or even a working phone to contact all of my zero contacts here, and with gray skies and rainy weather outside, I was definitely at the low point of the roller coaster

This is the point in the blog where the credits scroll and it says “to be continued.”


*: The magical adventures may or may not be real, I haven’t been able to tell yet.

Air New Zealand is amazing!

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on July 4th-6th (the 5th didn’t exist for me)

My flight to New Zealand is easily the best long flight I’ve been on. It was a thirteen hour ride from San Francisco to Auckland. They moved me from where I was to a window seat on the other side of the plane because the woman I would have been sitting next to had a baby. Then on the other side of the plane the seat next to me was vacant. More room for me.

Then there is the on board entertainment. There is a TV on the seat in front of you, and the screen must have been about 6’’x4 ½’’. Then at your side was a remote, and instead of just having several channels, they had a menu. Movies, television, music, and flight information. There were somewhere between 50-80 movies to choose from and a whole lot of music to listen to if you had forgotten your iPod. I ended up watching District 9 and How to Train Your Dragon, and for some reason found myself listening to AC/DC. Maybe I should buy some AC/DC. I can honestly say that I would rather take a 13 hour flight on Air New Zealand than an 8 hour flight on United.

But perhaps the best part was as soon as I boarded the plane, it hit me really hard that I was actually going to New Zealand. I was freakin going to New Zealand! I mean, I had known it, but it still hadn’t quite hit me. The last few days had been an emotional rollercoaster, and I was pretty sure that the next few would prove the same, but from the beginning of that flight I was extremely excited about everything.

Also, since I wrote this more than a day after I had landed, I can confirm that the jet lag is not bad at all. The big change is that I am 5 hours behind (and a day ahead), as well having gotten very little sleep the night before. The flight seemed to kick my internal clock out of whack, a bit like digital clock after a power outage. My internal clock was asking to be reset. When I told my body that it was morning, it seemed to be able to accept that. I was able to stay up until 11 o'clock that night without too much trouble. The jet lag flying to Europe is much worse in my opinion.

Thanks Dannie

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order. The events of this post took place on the afternoon of July 4th.


I am dedicating this entry to a girl I met named Dannie. I stepped onto my first flight out of SEATAC in the afternoon on the Fourth of July full of expectation and excitement but also a bit of fear. I found my seat in the very last row of the plane. Then this girl came up and took the seat right next to mine. When she was seated she turned to me and asked, “So where are you going?”

“Well,” I responded, taking a little pause there to savor the fact that I was travelling VERY far over the next twenty-something hours, “I am actually on my way to New Zealand.” And to my surprise she responded “Oh, so am I.”

We exchanged names (I even remember someone’s name for a change!) and info about our trips, and I learned that she was Dannie, the WSU student who was going to be spending a semester studying in Christchurch. We talked for the rest of the flight, and then stuck together when we got to San Francisco. We both had the same four and a half hour layover there.

I gave my parents a call from the San Francisco airport, which was the last time I would be able to use my phone in the USA, and when I did I realized just how fortunate I was not to be sitting in that airport alone. I am about the most introverted person you will meet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate company. And as everyone else, I appreciate having someone who understands exactly what I am going through. One of my biggest fears about this trip was that I was not going to make any good friends and I would be all alone. Yet here I was, not even a quarter of the way to New Zealand, and I had already made a friend who was going through the exact same thing I was.

So here’s to you Dannie.

Afterward: Dannie and I were seated in different parts of the plane on the flight to Auckland, and we talked a little once we landed, but then were split up during customs. I doubt I will ever see her again.

First Post!

Note: I have been in New Zealand for about a day at the time of writing this. Since I did not have the blog up during my day of travel or my first day here at Massey, I will be posting my experiences from those days in chronological order.

The first post will be a little about me. Who I am, what I am doing on such a ridiculous trip, and what you can expect from me.

I grew up as the only child in a quiet household. When I was younger I especially appreciated two things, learning and Star Wars. Now, I still like learning and Star Wars, but I also like, in no particular order: The Cosmos (not just the Carl Sagan documentary, but the actual cosmos), mountains, the ocean, backpacking, any decent scifi movies/shows/books, a good bit of fantasy, computer games, alpine lakes and meadows, snowboarding, parkour, physics, staying up late, sleeping in, and Jesus. One friend has described me as “poetic, in an odd, nerdy sort of way.”

So here I am in New Zealand. I am at Massey University in a city called Palmerston North, which is on the southern end of the north island. I am here for a lot of reasons, but there are perhaps two which stand out the most. First, I wanted to get away. I do not have anything that I need run away from, nor was there anywhere specific that I need to run to, but it is important to me that I must spend time far away from everything that I know. Only then can some parts of my identity truly grow. That reason is also, to some extent, why I chose to go to school out in Chicago rather than back in Seattle.

The other biggest reason that I am here in New Zealand is that I believe understanding our world is important. I have grown up in the United States and I see things from a US perspective. My perspective was greatly widened when I visited Guatemala for two weeks in high school and lived among the people, not as a tourist. Since that trip I have known that my prospective on the world was incomplete, and that I have learn about the world from somewhere outside the States. Now I am spending four months on the other side of the globe, and I am excited to see what I learn and how I grow.

Finally, what you are doing right now is reading my blog. This log of my journey is as much for my sake as it is for yours. I am ever thankful of the fact that I am blessed with so many people who care about me, and part of this blog is me giving back to you all of you. You want to hear what interesting stories have happened to me, and want to know what I am doing out there… here. This blog is also for me as well. Beyond being a way to organize my thoughts I am keeping the blog to have a record of my trip for myself. I could keep a journal you say, but then I remind you that I am not especially fond of writing by hand and I can barely read my own handwriting. In this blog I will be sharing my experiences and thoughts as I spend a semester here in New Zealand

So there you have it. You can probably expect some updates of my travel out here and the first day pretty soon seeing as they have already happened at the time of writing this.