The start of a life as an adrenaline junkie?

I have never been interested in birds. Holding my arms in the same position with binoculars glued to my eyes have never been my cup of tea. But this week, that was our focus. We had to sit for hours on a shell bank (not comfortable on the bum) and watch the different new zealand wading shorebirds and take note of their dietary habits. I drug my feet as we took the hour walk to the site, and decided to be a negative nelly about the whole thing.

What a surprise it was when I found myself frantically jotting down notes and discussing in detail the specific characteristics of bar-tailed godwits with my friend Lacey. This is when I made the decision that as long as I'm learning something, and something is new and exciting, it will catch my attention. And now I know more about three new zealand waders than I ever would have thought, and I take a small amount of pride in that. When I get home, test me on my bird watching skills. I know oh so much about the feeding habits of godwits, wrybills and oystercatchers.

And if you had an inkling that bird watching isn't my thing, you KNOW that kids aren't my thing. I leave that to Alexis, and when I'm with children I just don't know how to act. (except ryan and kyle...) But we went to the primary school in Kaiaua to spend a day running around and picking up trash with the kids. And although I had reminders of why I don't want kids (one little hoodlum told me that 'dogs don't hang out with chicks' and proceeded to bark at me... wtf.) I also found myself having fun being a horse to the 5 year olds and reading partners to those who could actually read. I was exhausted for the rest of the day, and I think that it was the best work out I have gotten since being here.

The weekend came, and we started it off with a bang at the local pub. Because we live in such a small place, when we go anywhere we take over. So we took over and started a dance party, got a little too tipsy and a walk that should have taken me 30 minutes took me two hours. gah. But the next morning a few of us (lacey, ashton, hanna, jenni and I) took a two hour drive to Waitomo caves for some black water rafting. It was AMAZING. The general idea of black water rafting is you hop into a wet suit, drive to a cave, slide into a cave and proceed to crawl/walk/maneuver your way through the cave until you reach the river. That is when you hop into your inner tube and float down the rapids. It is pitch black and you run into the side of the caves, and you jump off waterfalls and every once in awhile you turn off your head lamp and look up to what looks like the night sky. Then you remember you are in a cave, and what you are looking at is billions of glow worms. It is something I can't really explain. I just have to summarize it with the word amazing. Oh, and the guide looked like John Mayer, which was intriguing.

we then drove to Rotorua and splurged (because it was Labour weekend, we had to stay in a hotel)... so we took advantage and went in the pool, hot tub and sauna. We ate ice cream, took real hot showers and slept in comfortable beds. For all those people who aren't ecoquest students that may not sound like anything big, but for me it was extravagant and blissful. The next day Ashton and Lace went white water rafting (I needed to save some cash), so the rest of us went walking around the city. They had some beautiful parks, and Rotorua is known for it's thermal springs and bubbling mud pools, so I spent most of my time in the government gardens exploring.

All in all it was a good week/weekend. Now we have a week on shellfish observation and fenced islands, and then we head up north. The time is flying by, and it scares me. This place just feels right.