Rarotonga

Okay. So, this is going to be tricky. It was more than a month ago now, and to cover a whole week... I'm going to go based on my pictures, and just talk about fun photos. To sum it up, we ate a lot of coconut, met a lot of Cook Islanders, got sick, and did many awesome tropical activities, like paddling in a vaka (canoe), husking coconuts, snorkeling, etc. There are actually many places I did not take my camera due to water, such as the beach and the cross island walk. The cross island walk was a tramp across the island (surprise), but some of the views and such from it were really gorgeous, so it's a shame, but that's how it goes.

We dyed pareau (sp?), Cook Island sarongs. Mine came out looking sort of like a watermelon, but it was lightweight and cool, so I ended up wearing it nearly every day after we made them. I took this photo, so I'm not in it, but these are many of the people on my program, showing off their pareu, and also the sweet ways we learned to tie them.


My best photos are from the school visits, since they were camera-safe, and also fun. We did two, one just to visit. I was actually sick when we visited the first school, so I was less than fun. The students performed for us and gave us really beautiful leis and headdresses, though.

These are both from the second school visit, which was for community service. This one was awesome. We helped fill in holes that could catch water (Jai chopped down plants with a machete!!! It was really sharp and kind of scary!!), to prevent mosquitoes from spreading dengue fever. We also helped put stickers on raffle tickets, which some of you may know is what I love doing, no sarcasm involved. And then everyone ran around with the kids for a while, and I took a lot of great photos on that visit. The first is Amanda playing airplane (she, Melissa, and Ellen had races, with their gradeschool partners), and the second is Melissa, Alyssa, Carolina, Tamar, and Meg on the jungle gym.

We also did a fair bit of dancing, and one night there was a dance-off. In the guys', it came down to Jai versus James. Carolina won the girls' dance-off!!!

Also, we were fed so well every single night. It was fantastic. Our hotel was right on the beach, and I shared a room with Tamar and Ellen. There was one day, my favourite, when we hired bikes and biked around the entire island, stopping for food and beach stops as we saw fit. It... was pretty great. It also poured that day, which was amazing.

Unfortunately, that's what I have about Rarotonga. It was brilliant, but I didn't get very many photos. Also, I've been putting off posting knowing that I needed to do Rarotonga first, so now that I've done Rarotonga, I can continue on with the blog :p

Till next post.

THEY'RE COMING

Oh my gosh, he totally listened to me!!! PAUL SIMON LISTENED TO ME. HE'S COMING TO NEW ZEALAND TO SING TO ME, AND HE'S BRINGING ART GARFUNKEL WITH HIM. THEY'RE PERFORMING IN AUCKLAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TOGETHER! IN NEW ZEALAND! WHILE I'M HERE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Watch This Space

"Watch This Space" is what the television channels always say when they're getting ready to air new shows or swap the schedule around. VoiceTV has it a lot because the channel has a lot of dead time but is expanding. VoiceTV is the Korean television channel, and strangely, often has the best programming...

Anyway, since my last post, I have been in Rarotonga, which is about a million posts in and of itself, and traveled a wee bit with my parents, and seen Ben and Kate, and all manner of exciting things, but it's also midsemester, so I have tests and assignments and stuff, and just in general have not been able to upload photos or write new posts. I apologise, but I promise that the Rarotonga posts will be worth the wait! So watch this space!

A quick note: the Simon and Garfunkel episode of Flight of the Conchords? HAS ART GARFUNKEL IN IT. Yes. Yes, I know what you're thinking. Art Garfunkel, TWO, Paul Simon, ONE. And, okay, I love Saturday Night Live, but the other of Art Garfunkel's points is ARTHUR... so it's really more like INFINITY AND TWO to one. I'm pretty sure the only thing Paul Simon could do to pull ahead at this point is show up here in New Zealand and sing Gumboots to me. If you're reading this, Paul Simon... I suppose you could sing a different song, but my favourite is Gumboots, and I think you need all the points you can get after that Arthur blow... New Zealand is really lovely...

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.