Public Transit, Big Purchase, Bigger Beauty (July 13- 21)

Sometimes,  dependence on public transportation can give you some funny stories.

A few of my friends and I had all been wanting to go hiking since we got here, but haven't figured out a way to get to a park or reserve. After a little research online, I found out about an arboretum on the outskirts of Hamilton. According to google maps it was only a twenty minute bus ride plus a twenty minute walk to get there. We all decided on Friday that forty minutes of transit would be totally worth a day outside, so we planned to leave campus at 7:30 am the next day. I noticed on the map that the walking portion didn't appear to be on any road, but decided not to think about it.

"Then you just kinda.. walk" - Google Maps

Naturally, half of us missed the 7:30 bus. That, combined with the consequences of decisions made the night before, meant that we didn't get off the bus until ten. We got off at the stop google maps told us to, but we were in the middle of a pleasant looking residential neighborhood. Not exactly where you would expect to find an arboretum. We looked up how to walk there on Kevin's iphone (thank goodness for that) and saw that it would take two hours to walk from our current position to the arboretum IF we stayed on roads. It didn't take us long to decide that cutting across private farms would be the far better option. Kevin and I had some reservations about it, so we looked up local trespassing laws. We crawled over barbed wire fences and tried to avoid the electric ones and overly curious cows. I can tell you with full confidence that what looks like a very short distance to cross on a map ends up feeling much longer when it's land you're not supposed to be on.

Eventually we made it to the Taitua Arboretum. It really nice to be there, outside and with a good group of people. I definitely wouldn't consider that part of the day hiking, but there were a lot of chickens and a surprising number of flowers for winter. I plan on coming back again in spring when everything will be in bloom. One of the highlights for me was the California Redwoods! They smelled like home.

 We probably spent less than two hours total walking around before we started figuring out home to get home. I proposed that we try to hitchhike into town after splitting into smaller groups (because there were six of us total). From the parking lot I asked a local for a ride and told us there was a trail that would take us back into town in fifteen minutes. Sure enough, we followed the trail and it lead us through the fields (legally this time) and into town, right to a bus stop. We couldn't help but laugh about the whole situation as we got on the bus back to town.

Three of us decided that we wanted to just stay in town to go to the night market. Our feet, however, were totally exhausted and soaked through from walking in water on the farms of strangers, so we bought cheap slippers and cheaper socks to give ourselves some relief for the evening. The night market was so cool! It's every Saturday night and had the cheapest most exotic foods I've seen so far. The air was full of steam and good smells, so we bought a ton of food before heading back to campus. The walk from town to campus is about thirty minutes, but it's a flat and fairly interesting thirty minutes. The best part is the bridge across the Waikato River, the longest river in New Zealand and the namesake of the region and my uni.

It's been my intent to get a car here since the very beginning and it's been hard to far to find a pathway of communication that makes sense. They have trademe here, which is a bit like a combo of ebay and craigslist, but not as good. Communicating with the seller is really difficult, and there's a bigger pressure to buy because there's a 'buy' button. A friend had told me about Turner's Auction House, which sells used cars. Even though the idea of an auction made me really nervous, I decided to check out the catalog online. The cheapest upcoming auction was for repossessed cars, and the one that caught my eye in the catalog was a little red 1994 Volkswagen Golf. I met my friends Ralph (Malaysia) and Kevin (Minnesota) at the auction house. They were there to provide emotional support, car knowledge, logic and to enforce my self-imposed budget. We spent a couple hours test-driving cars, eliminating them for reasons like 'has the wrong battery', 'radio has been ripped out', 'has child size t-shirts stuffed into the engine' and 'sounds like hell'. I've never participated in an auction before, and was super nervous! The only experience I've had with them was the livestock auctions in Indiana and Mom telling me to sit on my hands so I didn't accidentally bid. After a couple tough choices, I ended up with the red Golf that had caught my eye from the very beginning!

A few of my friends from Minnesota also bought a car, and invited me to go North to the Coromandel Peninsula with them. After a Friday night of playing volleyball, we left early Saturday morning. The drive up was beautiful! We went through farms and grassy fields and mountain roads through native bush. One of the main attractions in the Coromandel is Hot Water Beach, which has hot springs upwelling on the sand of the beach. In some places it was too hot to touch! We didn't bring a shovel, even though it was recommended to us, so we dug with our hands. It was such a cool sensation to be laying in a pool of hot water in the sand and have a wave come up over the rim and fill your pool will chilly ocean water. On of the tricks was to get there at low tide, otherwise digging a pool wouldn't be possible. After a few hours there, we headed farther North to our hostel for the night. It was immediately across the road from the beach and had a beautiful view of the bay we were in. They also had free kayak rentals, which we took advantage of. It was a cold afternoon and I had been feeling sick for a while, so I tried to stay as warm as possible. The getup I decided on was swim suit bottoms, a long underwear shirt, my rain jacket and a wool cap. I was stylin'. This was my first time kayaking in NZ, and I was so happy to be back on the water. We only stayed out for about an hour and a half, but it was beautiful and so calming. We had a calm night in the hostel and went to bed early.

Rachel (Minnesota) in the window of the kitchen.

The next day we left the hostel early so we could go to Cathedral Cove before heading back to campus. It was so incredibly beautiful. I know that I say this about everything here, but it was truly breathtaking. I'm not even going to try to talk about it anymore. Here's pictures:

from the top 

 stringray bay

 cathedral cove

a puriri grove

See? Gorgeous.

Thanks Audrey, Rachel, Ashley and Corey for bringing me along for a great weekend!

Orchard Park, Classes and Rotorua (June 30- July 12)

This past week has been the most restful time I've had in years (literally, years). I've been sleeping 8+ hours every night and walking slowly around places I don't even need to go. The only thing I really had to do was orientation for Waikato, which was only a couple hours a day and followed the tradition of all orientations: well-intended and useless (other than making friends). I did an event called the international student amazing race, where we ran all around campus to complete tasks. It was fun and my team didn't finish last.

I'm living in a place called Orchard Park. It's a community of four bedroom cottages that are university owned. They're really quaint and have a lot of character. What they don't have a lot of is insulation. They get super cold at night, especially the floor! I wear my slippers almost constantly because the floor is almost the same temperature as the ground outside. Orchard Park is kind of separated from the rest of campus and tends to be mostly older and international students. It's perfect for me because these are the people who have the same priorities as I do. I also love having my own kitchen. My room is a little sad because I didn't bring anything it decorate it with. Luckily, my dear friend Rachel Paul is sending me something pretty.

Perhaps one of my favorite parts of Orchard Park is the cat. Most people call her (him?) Oreo, but I don't like that name very much. She's an absolute doll. Nobody's really sure where she came from, but that's fine! She's spent a few nights in my bed and I know there's a few cottages (ours included) who have been feeding her. She seems young to us and I hope she sticks around.

I'm taking just three classes when I'm here: coastal morphology, applied freshwater ecology and environmental history of New Zealand. I'm actually pretty nervous for them because I haven't taken any of the prerequisite classes. AP bio is high school and basic Earth science is pretty much my entire background and I'm in senior level classes. So far they've been really interesting but I know I'm behind the rest of the class. Thankfully our next assignment in geology is math based, and math has been my life for the past two years.

This Saturday, July 6, I went on a day-trip out to Rotorua. It's a town about an hour and a half drive from school. We spent most of the day on a walk around the lake. Rotorua is a really geothermically active area, so there are thermal upwellings and boiling pits of mud all around the lake. One of the pools was notable for releasing nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and I saw a bird struggling near the pool. It looked like it was trying to fly but couldn't because of an injury. I jumped over the barrier and carried the bird to a safer place. My friends and I watched him for a while and he seemed like he was getting better, but we can't be sure. My guess is that the nitrous oxide was too much for him to handle when he flew close to the pool. Poor darling! After lunch we drove back to Hamilton for the rest of the weekend.

It's been a long while since I've uploaded anything, but I promise another post on my more recent trips soon! Today, July 21st, marks one month that I've been here in this beautiful country. I'm so sure that this is the right place for me right now, and I feel so lucky that I have this opportunity. The next step is to make the most of it!