Grades, Food...and Pleather

Another week has passed, and suddenly I only have one week left of classes and only five days until it’s time to have some fun in the sun in Tonga! Time is flying, as is to be expected when there are lots of deadlines to meet! Although all but one of my essays is complete, it’s another research paper…technically I have until June 19^th, but I’d rather not leave it all for when I get home on the 15^th. We’ll see how this week goes!

As I warned, not too much excitement again this week. It was mostly spent with the schoolbooks, and there is still a lot more to do. I just found out that my Maori Studies final, on June 21^st, will be three hours long and involve all writing. Writing is usually a strongpoint of mine, but I have to say that I have lost confidence since I’ve been here. I can be a bit arrogant when it comes to school—I know that I am smart and I know that I can do the work. So when I get most of my assignments back with B’s (they just looove B’s here), it gets depressing. I know that I should not complain, especially as my grades will not transfer back to my GPA at UMBC, but it’s sad. Especially when it’s pouring rain every time you’re walking home after receiving the assignment (good old wet Welly). Anyways, I will have a lot of studying to do if I need to write for three hours. Yuck.

Today was quite a nice sunshiny day, although a bit chilly, so Laura and Nicole and I took to the streets of our city. First stop was bagels (of course!), and then up through the shopping district (we stopped at the 80s store again and played our game…this time I ended up in pleather skintight pants and an awkward see-through leopard print top courtesy of Nicole) and onto Bolton Cemetery. My parents and I discovered this cemetery when they were here and staying on Bolton Street, conveniently right next door to the cemetery. It is a very pretty spot, although the motorway runs right through it which can be disturbing at times. I feel bad for the some 3,000 bodies that they moved when they were building the motorway…they’re now placed in a large common gravesite to one side of the road. After walking up the hill via the cemetery, we stopped at the Botanic Gardens (or the Botans as the girls call it) for iced chocolate…and a scone….and fries. Lots of yummy food in one day!

This week will be the same as usual until we hit Friday! I will reach Auckland from Wellington about 5PM on Friday and then have to wait around until 10:05PM for our flight to Tonga. This was due to a lack of cheap seats available on a later flight that Laura and Nicole were going to take. However, Laura and Nicole’s flight was due to arrive only 35 minutes prior to our departure on our other plane, which started to cause alarm when I went back to the tickets and saw that we were supposed to be there minimum of an hour prior to takeoff. Turns out that there is no way for them to make the Tonga flight, and the next cheapest flight up to Auckland that day cost an exorbitant amount…so they’re driving. Eight hours of driving. I guess I got the better side of the deal after all!

We will be in Tonga from early Saturday morning (our flight gets in at 2AM), and will leave late on Wednesday night. We’ll have to spend the night in the airport (about five hours) before catching the early flight down to Wellington, in which we will arrive at 7:45AM. My sleeping schedule will be so confused…after less than twenty four hours, Laura and Jessica and I will be back on a plane heading to Dunedin. I expect to be ridiculously tired upon our eventual return on the 15^th (another reason to finish my essay early!). So I will apologize in advance if I am lacking with the blogging over those two weeks…I’m not sure what kind of internet availability/affordability there will be. But I am so excited!! Traveling is really the reason I came to New Zealand (no offense, Vic Uni), so it’s great to be back exploring new places. Plus, only about a month until I’m back at home!! It’s so crazy, and a bit bittersweet. I miss my family and friends from back home, but I know that it will be a very sad goodbye both to New Zealand and to my new best friends Laura, Nicole and Jessica. Let’s not think about that part yet. Instead, I will focus my attention on my essay, Tonga, and the South Island!

NZ Weeks 16-17: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150610856600707.678259.597595706&l=0ac3dfa5d2

Baby Seals and Rainbows

Sorry this week’s post is delayed—I was Skyping with my family on Monday my time and was immediately accosted by Anna as to its whereabouts. Turns out she reads it after all, even if it does get a little boring from time to time!

Anyway, not much happened this past week, except on Sunday, which was the reason for the delay. My Maori Studies class, The Peopling of Polynesia, had a field trip planned two weeks ago that was cancelled due to weather. This past Sunday, it was rescheduled and we were able to go to Palliser Bay. It turned out to be all of the American students in addition to one Kiwi student (figures…), but it was really fun. Laura, Jessica and I were in our professor’s van along with a girl from Uni of Iowa (I told her how I had driven from Elkridge to Iowa City in one day…she was impressed!) who was a music major! So that was fun. She was also impressed with my knowledge of drum corps and marching band for being a flute player (it made me feel special). Our teacher, Peter (everyone calls their professors by their first names here…it was a little strange at first, but I’ve adjusted. I guess I’ll have to adjust back before heading back to school in the fall) was giving us a lot of interesting information as he was driving. Some of those roads could hardly have been called roads, especially when we were on the way to the seal colony.

But! Before the seal colony, we stopped at a pa site, which is a Maori fortification site. Basically, it was where everyone camped out during wars back in the day. We had to map it out which was a bit challenging, but it was really neat to see an archaeological site from the 1800s (not that old in comparison with the Maori history, who probably arrived in New Zealand around 1250). We were able to see old kumara pits (they seem similar to sweet potatoes) used to store food to last through the winter and ditch and bank systems that were used to keep the enemy from approaching too quickly. It was extremely foggy when we arrived, but cleared up pretty quickly during the hour or so we spent there. Then we headed to a nearby hotel/restaurant for lunch. Luckily Laura, Jessica and I had brought our own because there were about fifty motorcycles parked out front. We ended up hanging around there for a while since it took people so long to get their food. While hanging out in the back of the van with Peter, another American girl and I realized that her brother went to UMBC. And I knew his girlfriend since I had a seminar with her last year, and just helped elect her honors college president. Small world indeed! Peter then said that it happens every year in his class…two Americans who live a block apart or something ridiculous meet each other in his class. Crazy how these things happen when you’re in New Zealand and not when you’re in Maryland!

We headed to the seal colony, which was right on the coast. The coastline was very unique, and Peter said it was different than any other coastline in New Zealand. It had giant rock formations spread throughout, both on land and a little out to sea. It was a little creepy, especially with some of the fog still hanging around. On to the seals…there were tons and tons of them, including lots of baby seals! There were a lot laying around on the rocks being friendly (as in they allowed us to photograph them). Laura and I were heading around the side of a giant rock formation when a nearby bush growled at us. Yes. Well, we thought it was the bush…turns out there were a least a few seals hanging out under there. They make the weirdest noises…from growling to yowling to barking to sneezing to whatever else you can imagine. We were there for about an hour before Peter started herding us back to the cars…just in time to see the sun start setting over the coastline, which looked fantastic with the fog and the rocks and the waves. Hopefully some of my pictures turned out!

The other exciting event for the week was rainbows! That’s right, baby seals and rainbows. You can’t get much better than that. We saw one on the trip home from Palliser Bay across the mountains and then today in Wellington. It was so neat! At home, I’ve only really seen little bits of one, but both of these were full semi-circles with all of the colors clearly depicted. Of course, I don’t have a picture of either one, but I think Jessica and Laura do so I will be stealing theirs!

Travels and Tasty Drinks

Happy Sunday! Right now the sun is shining and the sky is blue, almost as if Wellington is trying to apologize for keeping me up most of the night with rain, wind, thunder, and earthquake tremors. I’m hoping this kind of behavior is not going to become a nightly occurrence as the seasons change, although I suppose I would eventually adjust. This week has been more of the same old routine as we power through the now three weeks left of classes. But who wants to talk about that? Travel plans for June are much more exciting!

In addition to my trip to Tonga with Laura and Nicole from June 3-9, I will now also be traveling to the very bottom of the South Island with Laura and Jessica from June 10-15. We start out in Dunedin, head down the coast by way of the Catlins and their penguins and seals, stop overnight in Invercargill and head up north to Queenstown via a drive to Te Waewae Bay at the very bottom of the island. Supposedly it is absolutely stunning, but what isn’t in this country?? Once arriving in Queenstown on the night of the 12^th, Laura and I will head out early the next morning for a tour of Milford Sound on Laura’s 22^nd birthday! And to think that I had to go to class on mine…how lame! After spending the 14^th exploring Queenstown, we’ll head back to home base for our exams. I’m hoping to convince someone to do some traveling up north with me around the Auckland region after the 21^st, but for now we have no definite plans. It’s crazy to think about what I will be fitting in to the next month and a half before coming back home to “reality.” Once we get through the next three weeks and four essays, I’ll be much more excited!

This past Friday was Friday the 13^th. For any of you who do not know, I have celebrated the passing of this day since a young age when I realized that some people looked at me funny when they found out I was born on Friday the 13^th. To celebrate in traditional Welly fashion, we took to the streets to party! After more fondue at our new favorite place to eat, we tried something new when we stopped by a bar on Courtenay Place called the Minibar. Their sign about mule specials lured us in, and I’m glad we stopped! Yes, I said mule…not as in the animal, but as in the alcoholic beverage. It is composed of vodka, flavor of choice, mint, lime, and ginger beer. Delicious! I will certainly attempt to recreate it back at home, although I suppose I’ll have to make do with ginger ale. As a side note, it is apparently quite exorbitant to buy alcohol here compared to back at home. Seeing as I turned 21 while in Welly, I haven’t had the pleasure of purchasing alcohol back at home, but it sounds like it was better to start here and then return home! Even a beer or a glass of wine (or even a shot, apparently) will easily run you $8 here at a minimum, with any kind of cocktail being at least $15. Even when you calculate in the exchange rate, it’s still pricey. After talking to Alex and hearing about a 2 for $3 beer special (I mean, it is beer, but still!), it sounds like drinking at home is much easier on the pocket. I’ll feel like I’m getting a deal all of the time!

The next three weeks of blogging will probably consist mostly of “woe is me” type detail as all of my deadlines approach. But don’t give up hope! I promise that there will be worthy stories and pictures once June rolls around. Until next week, kia ora!

Rugby, Graph Paper and other assorted events

So it’s actually been over a week since I last updated, and this is my first post in May! After finishing my paper in time for class on Monday, the rest of the week has been spent trying to get back into school mode. Turns out it’s kind of difficult to do when you just spent two weeks traveling full time! Hopefully it will continue to re-emerge (and soon!) since there is a lot of work to get done this month.

This past week, keeping with the “something new” goal, I went to not one, but two rugby games! It just happened that the Hurricanes, Wellington’s regional Super Rugby team, had home games on Saturday and then the following Friday. On Saturday, they played the Reds from Queensland (I think…somewhere in Australia). Anyways, it started out not looking too good (the Reds got a try, similar to a touchdown, within the first two minutes), but came back to win it by a kick (similar to a field goal) on the last play of the game. Hooray! This Friday they played the Blues from the Auckland region. They were trailing for a lot of the game, but again on the last play it looked as if they had pulled off a try to tie everything up. However, the referees ruled against it. How rude. I enjoyed both of the games, especially because everything was a little more “laid back” than American sports. This is basically their equivalent to the NFL-if you want to go to an NFL game, you have to pay out the nose for bad seats, get there hours beforehand, and pay ridiculous prices for food. At the rugby game, we walked up to the ticket counter and got a student ticket for $20 half an hour before the game started, hung out and watched the game which lasted eighty minutes plus halftime, and could eat a full meal for about $10. The atmosphere was much more relaxed and it was nice to see that the players were doing what they loved even though they weren’t being paid millions and millions of dollars.

On Tuesday, the four of us regular girls went to Southern Cross because Laura was doing a landscape project on interesting outdoor spaces. Turns out that her professor had changed her mind earlier that day and it wasn’t for class anymore, but we went anyway. Jessica tried apple cider and we all tried a little bit, so we may start going that route in the future as it’s cheaper than cocktails but doesn’t taste like beer. Hooray! Laura, Jessica and I went out on Thursday night to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and our lack of Mexican heritage. We stopped first at the Flying Burrito Brothers, but it was a little pricey so we moved on after one margarita. We wandered by a few other places before heading for the old stand-by, Alice, which was closed (I should mention that it wasn’t even nine yet). So we continued our walk down Courtenay Place and ended up at the restaurant where we had eaten with Mom and Dad when they were here. We stopped in for some fondue to pass the time, and Laura and Jessica tried some more apple cider. Afterwards it was back to Alice, where had our now-customary pink lemonade. However, it turns out that stomachs don’t necessarily approve of the combination of margaritas, fondue, and gin. Good to know.

Today, Laura and I were wandering around town a bit aimlessly when we walked into Supre, the 80s clothing store. It may not advertise itself as such, but it is definitely true. I created a fun game that involved picking out an outfit for the other person. This is how Laura ended up in a hot pink mini skirt and bandeau with a crochet-like top and I ended up in both a leopard print romper and the ugliest pair of animal print parachute pants I’ve ever seen. Nevertheless, it was totally hilarious and it will probably become tradition every time we walk in (we repeated the experience at the shoe store and both almost broke our ankles thanks to the heels). I’m not sure if the salesgirls were as tickled as we were, and they told us that they don’t allow cameras in the store. Probably because they don’t want people wearing ridiculous outfits all over the internet. Where’s the fun in that?!

Today was the day of our Maori Studies class field trip to Palliser Bay, a nearby area that has some archaeological sites. We were mapping out a site and therefore were in need of some graph paper. Turns out that finding A3 size, one centimeter square graph paper is impossible. After two stores, forty minutes and zero luck, I finally settled on A2, 5mm square paper that I could cut in half to make A3 size and double the size of the boxes. After all of this ridiculousness, our field trip was cancelled due to bad weather. Now we have to write an essay instead. Not fair!! On the plus side, there are only four weeks of school left followed by one exam and one paper. Hooray! It seems far off, but a month from now I’ll be hanging out in Tonga. Awesome! Then I can enjoy some warm weather to make up for the windy and rainy Wellington, although I can’t say that I wasn’t warned by Wikipedia. Hopefully everyone is enjoying some nice spring weather over on the East Coast!