Nerds

Lisa: And that's my avocado plant! Its name is Avogadro.
Nick: Avogadro... like Avogadro's number?
Lisa: Yeah.
Nick: ... You're a nerd!

It was neither a compliment nor a criticism, simply a realisation that apparently he didn't have when I told him about Radium Man.

Windy Windy Wellington

Hi hi. Some of you may know, I went to Wellington for a couple of days with my flatmates, Nana and Mee Siew (Wawa was in Nelson, and did not join us), and friends, Jeevan and Azahari. I flew there, but the others trained, ferried, and drove up.

I got there much earlier, maybe four hours earlier than everyone else, so I went to check in at the backpackers, and then wandered around Wellington. First I went to the Railway Station because it was right across from the backpackers. It is a beautiful building. Here is a photo from our room in the backpackers (it was a room for six, but it was just the five of us, so we had our own room and a bathroom to ourselves).

And then a photo from inside, which made Nana jump up and down. She is so adorable.

Actually, as I walked in, I was thinking, "This is an old school train station. It would be sweet if they had a Platform 9 3/4, because this is just the sort of station I imagine it being in." And then there it was in front of me. Unfortunately, it is not after Platform NINE, which would make more sense, but it's okay, A for Effort. They spend all of their fantasy books-turn-movies concentration on Lord of the Rings, so their Harry Potter is a bit rusty.

Then, I tried to find the wharf. I was walking down Featherston Street, wondering how likely it was I was going the wrong direction, when I realised that it was a beautiful day. Featherston Street runs from the Backpackers more or less North-South, South leading to the water, North leading to... the wop wops, I guess. (Wop wops = Kiwi boonies). So I turned twelve noon to the sun, found halfway between twelve and the hour hand, and boom, North (I know I mentioned this in the fieldtrip post, but I don't know how in-depth the explanation was. This is the trick Tim taught me to find North when the sun is out). I was definitely going the wrong way, so I turned around and found my way to the wharf!

I went to the Museum of Wellington, City & Sea, which was a very respectable museum. I sort of thought that being in such close proximity to Te Papa (National Museum of New Zealand) would give other museums in the vicinity a bit of a complex, but it was an adorable museum. Here is a photo of Paddy the Wanderer. Based on the description, Paddy was to Wellington as Patsy Ann was to Juneau.

After the museum, I continued down the wharf. Many things were closed for Easter Monday, but some of the small galleries and shops and stuff were still open. There was a playground. If I had been with Tamar and Ellen, there would have been some crazy photos, but I was by myself, so all I have is this docile one:

Eventually, I came to Civic Centre, which is where the i-site and stuff is for Wellington. Everything was closed, including the huge library :( , but I saw this on the side of one of the buildings in the square, and it made me laugh. Note the distinction between "useful" and "fine."


Shortly after that, the others arrived, and we went back to the hostel to get them situated. We went to dinner at a yummy yummy Malaysian restaurant. We got three dishes to share, and all of them were delicious. We had mee goreng (goreng means fried, so that one was... fried noodle, I think?), nasi goreng (fried rice), and nasi lemak (literally "fat rice," but it's coconut rice. That came with a beef dish that was my favorite, combined with the coconut flavour in the rice).

After dinner, we drove up to the Mt. Victoria lookout. From there, we could see lights all around us 360 degrees. I reckon you are supposed to go up during the day (the stairs were not lit...), but it was so spectacular at night. It made it harder to get a good photo, but it was definitely worth it. I increased exposure time as high as it would go on my camera, but of course that made all the photos come out fuzzy... Here's one:

That one is probably the least fuzzy. This one is also fuzzy, but I really really love it. I think it might be my favourite photo of the entire exchange thus far:

From left to right, although it won't mean much to you, is Jeevan, Mee Siew, Nana, and Azahari. I love it a lot, partially because I just think it is cool, but also because over dinner, we had a conversation about recognizing people from afar by the way they carry themselves (Jeevan said he can always tell when it is me because I talk with a lot of gestures and move in a "bubbly" way, whatever that means). Without knowing them, you wouldn't be able to tell, but all of them are standing in their own classic stances. I don't think they would have done it if they had known I was taking the picture.

This morning, we walked to Te Papa, and I have a handful of photos from Te Papa (many of the coolest exhibitions were no photography - my favourite was the New Zealand Artists exhibition, because most of it was modern art. My second favourite? THE COLOSSAL SQUID THEY HAD ON DISPLAY FROM ANTARCTICA), but to not exhaust the post, I have included just this one, which is mostly for Dad's benefit:


This is one of the cannons from Captain James Cook's Endeavour. They had to throw it overboard when the ship got stuck in some shallow water, but it was eventually retrieved, encrusted with a foot of coral around it. I just heard "Sand and broken shell!" in my head. They had a copy of the map that Cook drew up from his voyage, but it was about a bazillion dollars (okay, only fifty...) and I didn't buy it.

Then we ate lunch, followed by the Beehive (like our Pentagon). We took a tour through the parliament buildings, which was very nice. Our tour guide was from California, and I didn't realise he had an American accent until halfway through the tour. It just doesn't register as an accent to me yet.

That's the Beehive! I tried to follow the political talk, but there were a lot of things that I didn't understand. There are seven political parties in New Zealand, all represented in the parliament, and they all have a whip, and then there's the mace, and you can't walk in front of the throne or you're thrown out of parliament.

After that, we went to the airport to drop me off. The others are going on to Rotorua. The flight home was pleasant, and I got home right at the same time as Wawa, so we traded stories.

That's all! Next post, unless some madness happens before Friday, will be about Rarotonga!!! Oh, and if you're wondering, that first photo? YES, that IS a Prius taxi. I LOVE NEW ZEALAND.

Easter Eggs

Okay, one more quick one. I was way behind on the blog posts, but I want to be able to just write about Wellington as soon as I get back without having to do any catch-up, and same with Rarotonga. Today, Erin's friends Adeline and Lauren (sp? on both) arrived. They are both on Erin's study abroad program in Brisbane, and they are both from France. Dyeing eggs was a new tradition to them, as they usually paint blown eggs. We are not quite so patient for either painting or egg blowing, so we dyed them hardboiled as per the American tradition.

Lauren dyeing an egg purple:

I introduced the rubber band to them (Shalom and Erin included) as a decorative device. None of them had ever dyed eggs with rubber bands before, and the result was nice:

The red with yellow stripes is Erin's, the green/blue egg with the lines that look like a stick figure is Shalom's, and the other two are mine.

Erin's egg matched her shirt. And our complete dozen (note the French flag upper left):


Happy Easter, everyone!

Hawdon Valley

On Friday, Shalom, Erin, Sam, and I went up to the Hawdon Valley hut and stayed the night there. Sam drove (it was about an hour and a half drive to the trailhead), and the tramp was about three hours. Shalom loaned me her smaller tramping backpack, which was nice. It was really nice weather going up, sunny but not too hot. We didn't break for lunch because we were trying to beat this huge group of kids up to the hut (there were maybe nine of them, and the parking lot was full. There are twenty beds in Hawdon hut, so we were worried that if we didn't beat that big group to the hut, we wouldn't get beds, and we all had just sleeping bags, no tent or sleeping pads), and also because nobody was particularly starving. We ate when we got to the hut, and played cards (Sam and I taught Erin and Shalom a game that I learned on the 230 fieldtrip. It's called 500, and it's a partner game with rules similar to hearts or euchre). We went for a short little walk, but there wasn't much of a trail to anywhere.

We saw a species of parakeet that has an orange stomach. They are fairly rare. Apparently there are only 100-300 in New Zealand, and that tramp is one of the few places to see them. We also saw keas (one of them tried to steal Erin's sandal, but only moved it around the deck) and a small mountain wren that was pretty cute. The keas were pretty amazing... it was my first time seeing one, and I was very excited. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the kea, but here is the parakeet:

Sorry, the photo is a bit dark.

The hut was pretty much full, and everyone went to bed way before us. Seriously, the hut was silent by nine o'clock. The next hut on the tramp was nine hours away (we were only doing one night, returning to the car the next day, but if you wanted to continue, you could carry on to the next hut), so we figured they were getting to bed early so they could have an early, well-rested start the next day. That was not the case, as we were the second group out of the hut the next morning, after the South African couple, who had not gone to bed too much earlier than we had.

We left to do a day hike up to a lake in the next valley over. It's the first two hours of that nine hour leg I just mentioned. It entails scaling the ridge just behind the hut and tramping up the neighboring valley. Unfortunately, the sun didn't get the memo and had no interest in scaling the ridge. The next valley over was *frigid* and one big wind tunnel. The scenery was lovely, though.


There were many river crossings, and we had a chilly, windy morning tea by the lake before turning around and booking it back. We ran into the other groups on their ways up as we tramped back down, and they seemed disheartened by our reports.


When we got back to the hut, it was pleasantly empty and quiet. Also, it was sunny because we were back over the ridge. We played a few more rounds of cards, had lunch, threw some marshmallows at Sam, and packed up. We were out by 1:30 and hiked back to the car in good time. It was pretty spectacular. That night for dinner, we had grill cheese and tomato soup. All in all, a good good time.


Oh, and if anyone is keen to know what the coarse-grained counterpart to trachyte is, I forgot to mention it last post: it is syenite, and I will never forget that.

GEOL230 Fieldtrip

Thanks for the comments, Grace and Chris! The zipline photos are fantastic! And, that has been sorted out. We do have flying foxes in the U.S., but Erin says that they are called ziplines (even the zip rails on the playgrounds). Mt. Redoubt almost messed up my parents' travel plans, and yeah, eruption monitoring is pretty key.

I've been away and am going away again tomorrow, but I wanted to put up some photos from my fieldtrip!

We stayed in the shearers' quarters of the Glens of Tekoa farm near Culverden. We had plumbing, electricity, and beds with fitted sheets and pillows (so we slept in our sleeping bags, but on mattresses). Here is a photo of the living/common room:

That fireplace was the best thing ever... even after fine days, it was nice to have a fire in the evenings, and it was a good place to dry wet tramping boots.

The first few days were intensely frustrating. There was a lot of information being hurled at us and a lot of information expected of us. I had no idea, off the top of my head, what the coarse-grained counterpart of trachyte was... Tom and Rose, our trip leaders, would ask those leading questions, like Dave (sed/strat TA, for those who don't know him), but I would have absolutely no idea. It was like an affirmation that I knew significantly less than the other students and that I was going to be a big fail at field work.

The second night, we had an assignment due. We had to map a small section of our mapping area and create a cross section. The cross section was pretty straightforward, but the mapping was so hard... I had to ask Tom and Rose pretty much every step of the way, and I think they were discouraged by how poorly we were all doing. They thought we would be done by ten, but my entire table was still working at 11:30. This was after our first full day in the field, too, so we were all absolutely exhausted.

Those first few days, we all stayed together and traveled together as a pack. It was good to have Rose and Tom there to explain everything as we went at that early stage, and it helped us get through the area faster. At one point, we sent Tim across a small gorge to bring back a sample for all of us. Taking all of us over there, with our varying degrees of fitness, would have taken forever, whereas Tim just zipped over for everyone. I really really love this photo because later I realised how much the outcrop looks like a bird. For scale, you can see Tim as a black dot on the bird's neck.


The third day, things started to improve. Having done the mapping the night before, I had a little bit of a better idea what to be looking for, but I still felt stupid, especially since I could never find where I was on the map. The turning point was really when Lucy and I found the third dike. My mapping group consisted of my mapping partner, Lucy, and two North Islanders named David and Tim. We had different groups on different days, but they were my core group. On Day 3, we were instructed to map out the rest of the river and look for three dikes among the graywacke.

Dike 1: We were all together when we found it, but Tim and Davo were the ones who really solidified that it was a trachyte dike.

Dike 2: Lucy and I, determined to find it on our own, carried on ahead in search of the second dike. We came to a heavily weathered section of graywacke that looked like it could have been a baked margin, and stopped to look at it. We were fairly certain that it was not the second dike, but decided to stop and see what they thought. Tim and Davo caught up and agreed that it was not the second dike, and then Tim pointed fifty metres past us and said, "But that is." So there it was, hanging out on the river bank, right next to us, and Lucy and I were pretty gutted.

Dike 3: EVEN MORE determined to find the third dike on our own, Lucy and I carried on ahead again. And guess what! We found it! Baked margin, phenocrysts, vessicles and all. It was magnificent. We were triumphant! We showed it to Tim and Davey when they caught up, and they agreed that it was the third dike. They did not sound sufficiently impressed :p Here it is:


After that, the fieldtrip was spectacular. It was a lot of physical and mental work, but pretty rewarding in the end. Tim taught me a nifty trick for finding north with my watch when the sun is out, and by the end of the fifth day, I was pretty proficient at finding myself on the map. All three of them helped me out a lot, plus Rose and Tom, who were hugely patient and helpful.

Glens of Tekoa itself is a farm run by the McRaes, and it is beautiful. It is right along the Mandamus River, which runs through the valley. There are ridges to either side (held up by trachyte or syenite dikes) and a large syncline on the eastern side held up by limestone.

The last day, we had the morning to ourselves to do whatever because the mapping area was finished and the late morning was for clean up and departure. A small group of the diehards went to find a small waterfall up in one of the side valleys. It was not very far away at all, and well worth the walk. It was nice to have that small group of people who had treated the fieldtrip as a trip/adventure and not as an assignment/chore.

The last day, it snowed. It was a little chilly, but we went to find the water fall anyway. It didn't snow down by us, but up in the hills where we had just been days before, mapping.

So yeah, that was the fieldtrip. I can't really put it into words why, but it affected me a lot. I made some good friends and did some good work, and it was sort of sad to come back. Other people were rejoicing at the thought of their warm beds and twenty-four hours of dry feet, and I guess I was happy to be back, but not really in the same way.

The next day, Shalom, Erin, and Sam took me tramping up in Hawdon Valley, and that helped me reacclimatize a lot. I'll make that a separate post, so keep reading! If you have any questions about the fieldtrip, because I haven't been all that specific and I've mainly written around the photos that I most wanted to share, email me or leave me a comment, and I'll talk your ear off about it :)

The News

So, I heard an interesting story on the news today. I was simultaneously writing an essay on mammoth evolution, so I haven't got all the details, but the gist of it was this:

Somebody important (maybe a Congressman?) changed his wikipedia entry to downplay something that happened during his visit to India. The guy in the news footage was saying that this guy should take wikipedia's advice and read their conflict of interest guidelines. For some reason, this stuck me as highly entertaining.

Wikipedia. It's the revolution.

In looking for the details of this story (if anybody has them, please share them with me. After that guy said that line, I was really sad that I hadn't paid closer attention to the rest of the story - all the headlines are about G-20, so it's hard to find a small story like that right now), I noticed that WHAT, Stevens' conviction may get overturned? Also someone fill me in on that.

Right, reference list.