A little like Kerouac

This country is dressed in green, and has decided to wreak havoc on my legs. (more on that later).

Lets start with last weekend, with the trip to Auckland. Eight of us rented two cars, and took the hairpin turned back roads to the largest city in the entire country (which hosts only 4.5 million people... nothin' honey). Tim was our designated driver, and remained calm cool and collected as we tried to navigate a very foreign country while driving on the other side of the road. I was of no help, seeing as I have the directional sense of a gnat. A few of us spent the better part of the day shopping (you'd be proud, I didn't buy anything) and then we all met up for dinner at this random hole in the wall pizza place that had delicious pizza, cheap drinks and a really good atmosphere. The All Blacks were playing that night, so we went to the irish pub and got to hear some good live music. Everyone I am travelling with loves beer, so they all laughed at me as I sipped on my white wine. What can I say, beer isn't my thing. But we decided to wander around the city and ended up by the wharf in a club dancing to Sweet Home Alabama with 30 year olds.. It was slightly ridiculous. We ended up back at the irish pub where we were all squeezed in like sardines as everyone had their eyes glued to the tv screen watching their beloved rugby team. I have NO idea how rugby works, so some nice Australian coached me through it, but I still have no idea how it really works. Oh well. Their rugby team does a Haka before every game, which is a Maori ritual, and one of the most awesome and intimidating things I've seen. Check it out if you can. The next day we went to this beautiful black sand beach on the coast... it was pouring rain but we explored and it made me fall more and more in love with the coast, the ocean and the country.

SOOO the weekend was awesome, and then we left on our first 'field' trip to Opoture on Tuesday. It was an hour north of where we are staying, and is located on the Coromandel Peninsula. We stayed in this AMAZING hostel overlooking the estuary that became our study focus for the week. We have to map the vegetation in the estuary and do specialized group projects on certain issues concerning the estuary. But we spent most of the week walking around exploring or kayaking. But of course, in order to kayak appropriately we had to do some training. I was part of the lucky group that got to get up at 5:30 in the morning to kayak. It was actually worth it because we got to see the sign rise over the ocean, which was absolutely stunning. The bad thing was that we then had to go swimming in the frigid water. We had to perform a rescue, so once you had to rescue and once you had to flip your kayak over and show that you could get back in. Lets just say I wore my wool long underware in the water and still managed to shout profane words at my professor.

oops.

as for the legs... it seems that sand fleas and other sorts of fun bugs have decided to attack my lower legs. I honestly look like I have the chicken pox. it is painful and I have to literally bite my lip to stop from itching constantly. ack.

it was still an awesome experience that I wouldn't change for the world. We got to kayak and hike and didn't have one lecture inside. The learning environment is unlike anything I have ever done, and I can't get enough of it. The work is very challenging, but we all work on it together and I am learning a TON. One of our assignments involved building a sandcastle off of a topography map. So we got to spend an hour on the beach in the sun building an 'island'.

it doesn't get any better than that.

For the weekend all of us got dropped off in a surfer town 10 minutes from opoture. The first night 11 of us stayed in the local hostel and went out to explore the 'night' life of the deserted-in-the-winter town. We went to the only dance club, only to find we were the only patrons, so we made a fool of ourselves on the dance floor. Finally people showed up, but there were only about 10 of them... it was silly and fun, but the BEST part was when we went to the maori karaokee bar... where we were the only ones there besides the owners and their children. We were all pretty shwasted (as my friend quincy calls it) by that point, so we sang horrible american songs as loud as we could and really made complete asses of ourselves, but it was all in good fun.

A few of the people had hitched up north the day before (hitching is safe and done often in NZ) so Hanna and I decided to give it a whirl. It was amazing how friendly and awesome everyone was. It took us about five minutes to get the first ride, and we were going about an hour up north and it only took us fifteen minutes past an hour to get to our destination. Hitching was an AMAZING way to see the country and meet some new zealanders, so parents of mine... please don't panic. It is safe and Hanna and I made up a plan of attacking anyone with bug spray if sketchy things went down. I am glad I got the chance and had such a wonderful time doing it. We met up with the other kids at the hot water beach (which is a beach that at low tide you can dig holes in the sand and create little hot tubs for yourself because of the volcanoes that are beneath the beach.. or something like that) where we camped for the night. It was beautiful this weekend, so the first time in awhile I wasn't cold. It was a glorious thing.

I have a ton of school work to do this week, and then we leave for the south island!!

I will update asap, as for pictures... it might be awhile, it takes about 10 hours to load one picture, so you will all just have to wait until I have the energy and the time to do that.

miss you and love you all.