Where in the what?

Guess what I did today! Silly question! I went orienteering!

For GEOL230 (field studies), as a crash course in topographic maps, we used an orienteering map (with topographic contours on it) to get around Victoria Park up in the Port Hills. I told Nick I'd never been orienteering, and he said, oh, it's been ages since I've been, five, six years, so I'm not very good at it.

Um, bollocks. Nick is actually pretty superb at orienteering, and I felt bad for slowing him down. 1) bikes all the time, so he can run loads more than I can, 2) Kiwi, so he can navigate steep terrain, and 3) good at orienteering, so knows where he is going. Me? Hm... 1) Fencer, so mostly anaerobic, and not very good at that, 2) American, so unfit and slow, and 3) new to orienteering so I was just like, we're going where? It made me feel better that by the time we reached the end, Nick was also short of breath...

Anyway, so after Nick tricked me into thinking he was bad at orienteering and we agreed to be orienteering partners, we went up to the Port Hills, got dropped off in the parking lot, given a compass (which we didn't need because Victoria Park is fairly open and full of walking trails that are excellent orienteering landmarks), and told to be back in forty five minutes.

Prof. Horton told us that five targets was decent, ten was good, fifteen was excellent, and we got 'round to nearly twenty! We would have gotten to more if SOMEONE hadn't been slow and needed to walk for part of it...

It was all very exciting, and despite being really gross and tired, it was so awesome! So now I'm all psyched for field studies, because I was sort of put out by having a lab from 3:30 to 6:00 on Friday, but if it's going to be running around the Port Hills looking for orange sticks, that is a good way to end the week.

Also, in the back of the van, we were sitting Kiwi - American - Kiwi - American, so we had a nice chat about language differences. Renaissance in NZE: ren-AY-sance, instead of REN-uh-zonce.

I'm going to go chuck around a frisbee for a little while and then find some much deserved edibles. Hope everyone is doing well!