Valentine's Day update

My scholarship year is winding down, which means that everything is moving twice as fast as normal.  I keep alternating between feeling overwhelmed with all that I have to do and want to do and being sad about leaving Wellington.  I suppose it is a good thing that I am so busy because I don’t have much time to think about actually having to leave New Zealand.

I hit the ground running after RYLA.  I took summer papers at Victoria University, but I only took the intensive papers that met pretty much all day for a short period of time.  RYLA was over on Sunday, and on Monday I started my last paper in New Zealand.  It was PASI 101: The Pacific Heritage and it met for twelve days straight from 9-3 each day (with an hour for lunch).  We even met on weekends because we had cultural field trips.  We would have lecture and videos in the morning, a wrap-up in the afternoon, and student seminars in the last hour. We went on four field trips:

• A walking tour of Victoria University to check out some of the Pacific cultural stuff


• A trip to the Mana Pasifika and Culture Moves exhibits at Te Papa


• A visit to a Cook Islands church on White Sunday


• A visit to the Papua New Guinea High Commission to meet the High Commissioner

It was a good class overall.  I was incredibly busy because I was in class so often, and sometimes I really wanted to be out enjoying my last days in Wellington, but I did like the format of the class.  It was all internally assessed, which means that I don’t have to worry about a final exam.  I did have a 2,000 word paper to write that I managed to churn out yesterday (start to finish, including research).  I have an exam for my other summer paper tomorrow, and as soon as I finish writing this post I will begin my studying for that.

I have had a pretty busy time with Rotary lately as well.  Meredith spoke to the Rotary Club of Hutt City last Wednesday, and she was invited to attend their ‘Long Lunch’ on Sunday.  We tend to invite the other one along on our Rotary events, so I got invited as well.  ‘Long Lunch’ is an annual event organised by some of the Rotarians.  This year, about 80 people attended (Rotarians and their families, mainly).  We got on a train at 9.30am to head up to Featherston.  Meredith and I, along with the organiser’s children and a few other people, were acting as servers on the train, so we got all of the champagne and morning tea together.  It was nice meeting all of the Rotarians on the train and explaining who I was and why I was there.  When we reached Featherston, the Rotarians headed off to a museum while the servers drove on to the winery to get lunch together.  We had a huge spread of salads, breads, meats, and seafood, as well as wine from the winery.  It had been overcast early in the morning, left over from a big storm the night before, but it cleared up in mid-morning and turned into a brilliant day.  Lunch lasted about two or two-and-a-half hours, and then it was into Martinborough for some shopping and ice cream.  A little while later, we were back on the train with the leftover drinks and food.  All in all, it was a long but fun day, and I got to meet a lot of enjoyable Rotarians.

Last night I had another Rotary event.  President Ben of the Pencarrow Rotary Club (my host club) wanted to have a going-away dinner for me before I left, and as he is going to be in China when I actually do leave, we decided to do it last night.  Mark, Anna, Ben, and Meredith, along with a couple more Rotarians, made it to Cobar in Eastbourne.  I was informed that Prince William ate here while he was in New Zealand, so that was quite exciting.  This restaurant was really nice and had a great view of the harbour back towards the Central Business District.  We had good food, good conversation, and good company.  Mark and Anna picked Meredith and me up at home around 6 and we didn’t get home until about 9.30!  It was a very nice going-away dinner, and I am very appreciative of the Rotarians making my stay in New Zealand so pleasant.  

I think it’s about time for me to get some studying done.  I have the exam tomorrow (Wednesday), I am moving out of my flat on Thursday morning, and then I leave for Australia at 6am on Friday morning.  I won’t return until March 9th, late at night, and I will probably be disconnected from everything while I am travelling.  I don’t intend to waste a lot of beach time in an internet café!

More Rotorua Pictures (plus two randoms)

The two pictures above are from the inside 'Mexican village' in Cactus Jack's Backpackers. It was open air, so it was quite nice to sit outside in the swings and chairs in the evenings. This village was in the centre of the surrounding square of rooms, although with all of the expansions, some of the hostel was a lot like a maze.

Back at Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland! A lot of the people on the GT study abroad trip are Greek, so we have a running joke about doing the sorority girl pose. Emily, the girl on the left, isn't even in a sorority, but (left to right), myself, Mallory, and Nikky are all in sororities. We are doing this pose because we made the four boys do it right before us.


Yes, go on and sigh and make fun of the cheesiness of me and Patrick, but it is nice to actually be together again.

This teeter-totter might have been the most fun Emily and I had on the trip. I wish I had a sound recording of how much we were giggling. Blake (pictured above) and Patrick also jumped on the teeter-totter bandwagon by surfing in the middle.

Now for the randoms! It was Nina's (Swiss flatmate) birthday not too long ago, so a bunch of us went out to dinner and a movie to celebrate. Claudia unfortunately was not back from her surfing trip, but we got three flatmates together (myself, Meredith, and Nina)!

This is me hanging out with the GT crew at a local pub on a nice evening in Wellington. I am really going to miss wandering down to the waterfront on nice days and just enjoying Wellington culture. Why doesn't Georgia have more water!?

Once again, another sorority girl pose. My flat had a party last weekend during the Sevens tournament, so a lot of the people came dressed in crazy costumes. (For those of you who aren't Kiwis, the Sevens tournament is a two-day tournament with 10 or 11 hours of rugby each day. The halves are shortened, and the Kiwis go nuts. It's like their version of Halloween! Crazy costumes everywhere. It's really one big party, and if you get tired of the party, you can just turn around and watch the rugby [to paraphrase my friend Doug, pictured above in yellow] ).

Rotorua Pictures

The whole crew outside Cactus Jack's. This is the only themed hostel in Rotorua, and it is the coolest fake Mexican town. I think there's about 14 of us total.


One of the first things we did in Rotorua was go zorbing. This is a crazy Kiwi invention where you dive Superman-style into a big plastic ball partially filled with soapy water and then proceed to slip and slide down a big hill, as pictured above. It's probably the closest you can ever get to being spun around in a washing machine. To put the ball in perspective, I was inside it with Patrick and Blake, and there was more than enough room for us to stand up (not that we could; we were too busy sliding everywhere!).


After zorbing, we headed off to the AgroDome. Not surprisingly, there was no dome involved, but we did run into these sheep on steroids.


Later that afternoon, we went rafting. That's Krista in the front on the left. Patrick is behind her, and I am across from Patrick. The other three people are three randoms who were put with our group.

Here we are going over the largest commerically rafted waterfall in the world! It's somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven metres or so, and it was amazing. I was really nervous to go over it when we started, but once we got on the river there was no backing out. Our raft went completely under water before popping up again, but we were awesome and stayed right side up!

Of course, every good rafting guide will stear his boat back into a waterfall or two so that he can absolutely soak the people in front. At this particular moment, it is Krista and myself who are getting drenched.

The next day we all piled in our cars to go caving in the Waitomo caves. Our particular tour had lots of abseils, especially over waterfalls. It was cool to need a light and wetsuit and everything in the cave, but I would not recommed wearing gumboots to rock climb!

Part of our caving tour involved crawling through a shallow part of the river under some low-lying rocks. Turns out there was an alternate dry route, though, as our guide met us on the other side!