Leigh

So after I parted from Brian and Naomi, I took the Naked Bus out to Warkworth, the closest stop to Leigh and where my flatmate Maia lives. Her mum picked me up and we chatted the whole way out to their house just outside of Leigh.

I think visiting people at their homes has been my favorite part of traveling; there's just something to be said about staying with a family that gives you the full cultural effect or what not. Plus Maia's family is awesome! So in Maia's family it's her, her mom, three younger brothers and her step dad. Her brothers are quite a bit younger (between a couple months and 4) so it was fun to play with little kids after not really seeing any for a while. Plus little kids with accents are ridiculously cute. Luke, the oldest, was such a flirt! Mace (second youngest) was just a cute little two year-old, and then the littlest baby, whom they just call peanut, is...well...a peanut!

Rotarua

Well, Tongariro was tons of fun; a plethora of fun, but it was time to move on.  The next stop for our little band was to Rotarua, a city built on hot springs and tourism. We left for Rotarua after we'd done our final walk in Tongariro, but since Rotarua was only about an hour and a half away we took our time in getting there. We took a few little detours along the way. The first was lunch, of course, in Taupo. Taupo sits on the edge of the lake of the same name: it's the largest lake in New Zealand. It was once the site of the largest volcano in New Zealand. Something like a 2000 years ago it exploded and the lake formed in the crater. The explosion was so big that its effects were noted as far away as China and Rome, crazy eh? Anyway, it was kind of weird to be on the other side of the lake because we could see the volcano we'd climbed up the day before, plus it was about 10 degrees warmer. Funny how changing altitude will do that.

After lunch we stopped at some incredible waterfalls. You could hear them as soon as you stepped out of the car in the carpark. It was just the way that the land had formed, but this particular part of the Waikato River flows faster, with a greater volume of water per meter than any other part. It's not a huge drop (only 11meters) but it's beautiful to see. The water's this spectacular blue turquoise color caused by the increased air in the water reflecting blue light. The waterfalls are so powerful that trout can't swim up the waterfalls to get to their breeding grounds. It was pretty cool.

After we got to Rotarua and checked in to our motel we decided it was time to explore. There was a playground on the map on the edge of the lake that was marked "Volcano Playground" which was a lie that drew us in--no volcanoes there! Since our family is made up of a bunch of big kids, though, we decided to play a little, and the hand jousting began. Brian beat us all. Cheater.

After jousting we went to explore around the lake's edge but soon had to move away. The sulfuric smell was overpowering. I later asked one of my kiwis friends who's from Rotarua how she can live there, she said that she technically lives outside of town, but after a while you can't really smell it. We wandered more closely to our motel, as it was getting dark already, but not before we'd found the city gardens. Most of the flowers were dying out, but there were still a few roses blooming! The extra cool thing about Rotarua being on hot springs is that all of the motel pools are naturally heated, so we that night we just floated around in the pool staring up at the stars. The constellations in the southern hemisphere are different to ours, but I think I spotted one: scoripus, my zodiac sign. Well, and of course the southern cross.

The next day was my last with Brian and Naomi, I was moving on north to go visit one of my flatmates at her home, so we thought we'd get up early to go for a walk. We got up too early I guess because the place we wanted to go for a walk and see some hot springs was actually closed. We kept driving, and eventually got semi-stuck in a massive amount of fog. We were still trying to find a walk, but eventually we gave up and wandered back to Rotarua. In stead of going for a walk we ended up in the local museum/art gallery. It was alright, the coolest pat of the galleries was the exhibit they had up of all these digital artists that work/ed at WETA workshops. There were little bios that listed which movies and departments they'd worked at, and since I'm a nerd, I even recognized some of the names from the LOTR additional features. Most of the drawings were done in digital formats, but a couple were actually watercolor or oil paints. All of the art was of different creatures and strange fantasy worlds: my kind of stuff.

The rest of the museum was about the local history of Rotarua and the volcanic activity there. The building used to be an old bathhouse in the early part of the 20th century, so there were several exhibits dedicated to that. You could go up to the roof and look out over the city as well, which was pretty cool.

After exploring a couple more exhibits it was time to head back for lunch and my departure. It was a once in a life time adventure to wander around a foreign country with my brother and sister-in-law, it led to some great stories and lots of fun. Perhaps one day we can do it again with the whole family (there's a scary thought--not sure if the rest of the world is ready for ALL the family).

One Does Not Simply Walking into--wait a second...

...apparently one DOES simply walk into Mordor! Sorry Sean Bean and meme culture--you were wrong.  This place that we've seen via the LOTR series called Mordor was filmed on the slopes of Mt. Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park. Since we are rather nerdy in my family, it was on the list of places to go and explore for Brian, Naomi and I.

Not only is Mount Ruapehu known for the LOTR, but it also has one of the most beautiful full day hikes in New Zealand. The Tongariro crossing is a 8-12 hour hike that takes you up by the craters of one of the volcanoes and passes all sorts of interesting volcanic formations, including sulfur lakes. Since it was the winter season (and had snowed the day before) the conditions for the crossing weren't too great for us so we decided to do a different, but just as grueling and cool, day hike. Let me back up for a minute, though, any share a quick couple of pictures from the travel day we had to get there.  From Wellington it's about a 6hr drive to Whakapapa (pronounced Fahka-papa) at the foot of the mountains. On the way out of Wellington there's another little LOTR stop, so we stopped there:

 Look familiar? It's Rivendale! This is the spots where they built small parts of the sets to film parts of the send off scenes and Frodo's recovery. Very ethereal looking; it's located in Kaitoke National Park, in the Wairapa. It's a neat little park, with more tramping trails than we had time to explore. We did do an hour loop track that took us over a reeeaalllly long swing bridge. It was fairly wobbly, and I think Brian was a bit nervous crossing: he let Naomi and I get most of the way across before he went. The forest was mostly rainforest and tons of huge crazy trees. It was a fun side trip as we traveled.

When we finally got to Whakapapa it was dark out, so we couldn't see anything out our window. We got up early for our walk though, and when we stepped out onto the deck the view was spectacular! We were pretty high up already, and all spread out in front of us was just flat plains, and then there was this huge volcano, with other cones in the distance.

It was really cool, and everything was covered in ice. We almost slipped down the driveway of the hotel because the whole road was iced over. I think it was so cold because a) it was winter, b) we were at a higher altitude, and c) the sun was just coming up, so everything was still mostly in shadow.

The sun did eventually make its way beyond the volcano and warmed us up a bit. It clear out some of the clouds too and we could see Mt. Ruapehu! Ruapehu is a massive volcano that's (supposedly) inactive. On its slopes are the North Island's premiere ski fields. It was a beautiful sight to look up anywhere we went and go 'mountian!' I think every where should have a mountain. It's only fair.

Typical New Zealand path, it wouldn't be complete without a stream crossing! Luckily for us, it was mostly frozen over.









We had some fun taking silly pictures. We were the only ones on the path for most of the time, it wasn't until we had already started back that we started seeing people, so it was all timer shots for us.


The ultimate goal of this tramp was to get up to about 1500m elevation and see the Tama lakes, which are on the side of the volcanoes.

It was a beautiful, albeit cold, view. The wind got really strong up that high, and the higher you went the more it looked like Mordor. All the vegetation died away until you were just climbing up this almost snow like dirt. It was really soft and felt like walking through snow. That part of the trek was really hard because you were nearing the top, and the elevation was starting to get to you, coupled with the cold and the wind. It didn't help that the uphill was really hard. Imagine you're trying to walk up Elver hill in about 8in of snow, in the middle of a blizzard. It was kind of like that.

The lakes were really beautiful though. Worth the hike, I think. The other cool thing was that once you got up to the top it was just endless valleys laid out before you. And when you looked down the path you came up, you could see down both ridges. One side was in the sun and actually had some scrub grasses on it, while the other was in shadow and was covered in this kind of ice/snow layer. Beautiful. I think, in the picture below, you should be able to see some people walking up the ridge. They were the first people we saw of the day, way out on the ridge in a bright red jacket. They'd be tiny in the picture so if you can't see them, no worries, just an idea of how spread out everything is.

This was the ice crystals that had formed in everyone's shoe prints. Somehow they'd frozen in the dirt so it puffed it out, and when you stepped it broke them. They looked really cool.

So this is a volcano, right? What's the worst thing that could happen while hiking on the mountain? It could explode. What's the very last thing you want to hear while you're hiking away from the mountain? Why a giant boom and then a shake. We were well off the upper heights when it happened. It was like we were all rabbits that had heard a noise and froze for a second to listen, panic, and then we started running up the path to the next rise, because that's what all the warnings in the hotel had said in case of an eruption. It was also to see it if had actually gone off, because we were in a valley at the time and couldn't see the volcanoes. As we were reaching the hill there was another boom and shake, and we ran faster. I was secretly thinking, 'no way, no way, how cool would that be? Insane. This can't actually be happening!' some of you may know this, but when I was in about 3rd or 4th grade I was obsessed with the idea of becoming a vulcanologist (someone who studied volcanoes--not Vulcans).  Anyway, obviously, when we got to the crest of the hill and looked back nothing had gone off, to my slight disappointment. We thought about it for a while, and later ran into someone on the path who confirmed our theory, that they must've been dynamiting something up on Ruapehu because that's direction the noise had come from. The people we met on the path next told us that they often will blast on the mountain to prevent avalanches. It made sense since the ski fields were scheduled to open the next week. Oh well, that's the fun almost volcano-explosion story.

 

On the way back, we looped on a different path to stop and see a waterfall. By this time we were all pretty exhausted (and it was only like 1:30!) so the sillies started to come out: 

There was pretty incredible sunset later that night:

The next morning, after spending a nice night relaxing in the hotel's sauna and spa, we got up for another early hike before check out and moving on. This one was out to the Silica Falls. It was another cold morning with more ice crystals on the path:














There was a river that followed along the path, and actually had flooded parts of it so that when we walked on it we had to be really careful because it was all ice, and uphill! There was a cool part where the grass had hung over the stream and had frozen:

We got to the falls just as the sun was coming over the hills, so they were extra spectacular. The mineral deposits from the volcanic springs runs in the water and turns the rocks different colors, depending on how fast the water flows over them. In this one area there were red, white, and green sections of rock: it was very cool.

Then of course there was the mountain. I am going to photoshop that into every picture I take: mountains are AWESOME.

On the way back to the hotel to check out we walked along the road for part of it. Since it was still early, the roadside was covered in sheets of ice and as we walked along and the hills warmed up it would all slide down. It was so silent that you could hear it all around. It was a really cool natural thing. I love nature. It's awesome.

And that was Tongariro. I definitely recommend it, go and walk around! I would've loved to have stayed for a couple more days and done more walks, I just couldn't get sick of the scenery.

Just Went to see a Show

Oh you know, I just went to see this little show starring Sir Ian McKellen, and who happens to be there? Why practically the whole Hobbit cast. No big deal. There was this little guy there with a comfy flannel shirt and jacket on, kind of like my dad would wear, but oh wait, he's just one of the most influential directors on the planet. And I got to meet him. Yes ladies and gentlemen: I just met Sir Peter Jackson. Oh. My. Freaking. God. I'm still in shock and can hardly believe it--I mean this is the man who's movies inspired me to want to be an actor for real and helped me make my decision to study abroad in New Zealand. I made jokes with people about running into him and everyone else while I was here BUT IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Wow. I can't even begin to describe my feelings, hopefully the choppy syntax and bad grammar are getting it across for me. I guess I should start at the beginning...

Visitors

So happy fun times, my semester has finished, I'm officially done with school here in New Zealand, and what do I get to do to celebrate? Why hang out with my brother and his wife who've come to visit! It's pretty freaking fantastic because, being on the other side of the world, I haven't seen anyone from home in a while. Some of you may be wondering, they came all the way to visit YOU? Why? She's weird, you can tell from this blog! All of these things are true, I shan't deny them. Anyway, it wasn't strictly to visit me, but to make a long story short Naomi (my sister-in-law) had a month of sabbatical to use, so they decided to spend part of it with me. I'm very grateful that they decided to trek all the way out here to hang with me, it's been fun so far.

They got here on Friday evening, so we went out for food, hung out mostly and planned things to do for the next day or so. Saturday was lots of fun, we hiked up Mt. Vic, Bri and Nomes got introduced to the Wellington wind, and then we did some museum-ing at Te Papa. The evening consisted of another dinner out, and then a night on out on the town. There was much consumption of beer and lots of frivolities. Sunday was fairly chill. We recovered from the previous evening, went down to do Sunday market stuffs, and then went for a hike out to see some seals (same colony I went to last time). Dinner was special tonight, because Shannon, Enika, and Souzie and I cooked up a 'traditional' lamb roast for them. It was an excellent feed, with good company.

Sorry about the rushed post, we're going traveling up to the Tongariro national park tomorrow (full day of driving, yay!) and I wanted to let people know what was up before I ran off to collect more stories for le blog.  I'll be back in about 10 days, with hopefully a diary of stories to share, then only a couple days until home! It's hard to believe my trip's gone so fast.

Seal Time

 So remember that post a while back when I saw a seal out on my run? Well this basically makes that seem like nothing now.  Massey University treats their internationals pretty good; this was another organized trip that we went on.  The trip was a walk along a hill trail to the ocean and a seal colony called Red Rocks. The weather was perfect for going for a hike: sunshine blue sky, little to no wind (such a rarity for Wellington!) and these great clouds that were just blowing through the sky. It was a gorgeous morning.

Dannevirke Farm

 As one of my friends has pointed out to me, it's like I'm able to find these little portals that lead back to Wisconsin in New Zealand.  I've seen several cool forests that really made me think of home, but the weekend of the 12th, had never made me feel more like I'd found a portal back to our Dairyland: I spent the weekend with my flatmates at Talya's family farm in Dannevirke.

Skyline Walkway

Another view of Wellington and its amazing countryside!!  So this will just be a short-ish post, because there's only so many times I can describe hiking through the amazing scenery around New Zealand in detail.  So on the 5th of May a group of Massey International students went on a hike on the opposite side of Wellington from Mt. Vic.  It was pretty awesome because it was one of those spots that I could see from a distance and always said "I want to hike that," and lo-and-behold that's where we were going.

Queenstown, the Cheap Version

And now on to the final installment of my Easter Break adventures (nearly a month later, I fail at updating my blog!).  So I arrived in Queenstown on a Saturday evening so I didn't get to do much besides grab some dinner and pass out in my hostel from exhaustion.  The real fun started on Sunday.  I figured, since I had four days in Queenstown, I could take my time adventuring so I got up late and wandered up a path marked for Queenstown Hill.  It's just a foothill that looks out over Queenstown and lake Wakatipu, but boy is the view awesome.  It's not a horrible horrible hike, but some of the uphills are kind of hard.  It was another one of those hikes where I started walking up and thought I got to the top...and then kept going up....and up...and up.  It follows a path through a pine forest until it clears to just grasses and scrub brush.  The forest path got tough at times because it was covered in pine needles so sometimes it was really slippery.  There was, however, an actual designated path for once!  There were some cool informational kind of signs that had what the town was founded on, some Maori legends, and different bird species in the area on them.

Milford Sound

sunrise over the Remarkables

 Just kidding, Milford isn't really a Sound--it's a Fiord.  Anyway, super awesome fun-time adventures.  So this was the only "trip splurge" that I took part in on my vacation. I joined a tour of Milford with the group called Real Journeys.  It included transport from Queenstown to Milford Sound, then a 3 hour cruise of Milford, and transport back to Queenstown.  I was really glad for the relaxing bus ride that I could just spend staring out the windows/ceiling (the ceiling of the bus was window too!) taking in the spectacular scenery.  You've already heard my opinions about bus rides in New Zealand--I love them--but this ride was extra special. 

Wanaka oh Wanaka

...Oh have you have you seen Wanaka? Wanaka the beauty's astounding! (Now go back and sing that to the tune of lydia the tattooed lady)  So the next part of my trip after Franz Josef was my stop in Wanaka, and probably my favorite part.
I didn't really want to spend my entire trip coasting through hostels, because of the expenses, and you don't really make many friends in hostel on your own. My solution to this was that I joined this site called couchsurfing which hooks travelers up with people who're willing to host you in the city you're traveling to.  I tried to get a whole bunch of couchsurfing spots set up, but the only person who replied was this really cool guy named Keith in Wanaka. He said he could host me, and had another surfing that'd be staying with him at the same time so we could hang out.  After I bussed into Wanaka, about 7pm, Keith picked me and the other surfer Mary Ann, up and he made us dinner.  Keith was this really cool typical laid back Kiwi guy.  He's really into sports and music, and actually makes his living as a snowboard/ski instructor.  He spends half of his year in Japan, in the Hokkaido region (the northern most island) teaching snowboard, and train instructors there, then he spends the other half in Wanaka where there's a pretty big snow resort there in the winter.  He had a whole bunch of really interesting stories, having traveled and worked around most of the world as a snowboard instructor, and even wrote the "Lonely Planet" version of places to snowboard/ski in Japan.  When I had got there it was only the 2 week he'd been home from Japan, so I was really fortunate that he was able to host me!  Mary Ann was really cool too.  She'd just finished a linguistic degree in France (she's French, alors j'ai parle un peu avec elle), and came to do an internship here in New Zealand.  She was working with college aged kids up in Auckland (that's middle school age in the States), and was doing the same thing I was: traveling for the Easter Holidays.  She was really into mountaineering, but had messed up her ankle a week or so ago so she couldn't do any strenuous hikes.  Since I was still nursing my gimpy knee, I didn't mind too much.

 The first night we were there we mainly just sat up and talked, and Keith gave us some ideas about what we could do around Wanaka.  He offered to take us up Mt Iron the next morning, so we agreed and that was that.  Mt. Iron isn't really a strenuous hike; it's a kind of foothill a little ways from the lake, but the views you get from the top are spectacular!  It's literally 360 degrees of mountains all around you, and lakes.  It didn't hurt that fall was just starting to grab hold of the area, so all the trees were just starting to change.  There were tons of beautiful yellows, oranges, and reds just bursting into color in the landscape.

Franz Josef Frivolities

Now for some really exciting stories! I've gone through the bus ride to Franz Josef and all that fun stuff so I'll just jump right into Franz Josef.  There's two parts, first there's the town and then the national park area.  The town of Franz Josef is really non-existent; it's one of those places that really only exists because of the tourism industry.  There's several hostels, motels, and camping areas as well as tourist shops, and one tiny supermarket.  The rest of the shops there are for booking scenic flights over the glacier or guided hiking trips on the glacier.  Since I'm a little stingy, I wasn't going to fork out the cash for those hikes, I was also traveling by myself so I didn't really think it'd be too fun for just me to do.  There are, however, a ja-billion and one hikes around the glacier that you can do, so I picked out a couple that looked like they'd be up my alley and planned out my two days around those treks.

Distraction!

Hey everybody, this is just a super brief random distraction that I'm too excited to share about, I will probably have another post about traveling in the next day or so.

 To keep myself from being a lazy student I tend to go running 2 or 3 times a week, and usually I run down to Oriental Parade, which is on the bay in Wellington.  It's about a 5k round trip, but it can be a really hard run when the wind is going crazy (as it likes to do in Wellington).  Anyway, so I went out this morning to do my usual run, and on the way back in I happened to slow down and look out toward this pier by a beach that my run passes, and I see this little shape out on the pier.  I stood and tried to figure out what it was from where I was at, but I couldn't quite tell, and it looked like it was moving.  Intrigued, I went down to the pier to investigate.  What do I find when I get there?  Why this:

The West Coast...Via Bus!

I love seeing the clouds rolling over the mountains

Alright, so this might sound like a little bit of a boring post, but honestly one of my favorite parts of my trip was just staring out the window on the bus ride between cities.  I took the bus from Nelson to Franz Josef on Tuesday (the 10th), which takes the route along the west coast of the south island.  If you refer to the map in my first "travel" post you'll notice that Franz Josef is quite a ways from Nelson, which is true: I sat on the bus for almost 10 hours watching the scenery go by.  I lucked out a little bit for my bus ride, it was the only day that really rained on my trip and I was in a snug bus the whole way!  None of my plans got screwed up at all =)

Like I said, it might sound really boring but one of the coolest parts about traveling through New Zealand is just driving around.  It's like they tried to jam as much scenery into the small place possible so every hour or so the bus would stop at a scenic look out and you could see all sorts of beautiful rock formations and cool skylines.

Live at Six

So, this will be a subtle diversion in my plans to get all my travel blog posts up to date, but life happens!  The story behind this is that, at the first day of lectures back from break, my classmate Shelley said that she had a couple extra tickets to go see a show at Downstage Theatre.  Myself and another classmate, Gemma, jumped at the chance to see this show called Live at Six.  Free theatre is the best kind and this show was rumored to have some audience interaction and cool technological tie-ins.

Alright, so the show was scheduled for a 6:30 curtain, but we were told that we should get there at 6 because there was a special audience participation bit in the bar.  So we showed up, got our tickets and went to the theatre bar, where we picked up a program.  In the program were instructions to act like we were at a big media event after party and to look for a woman in a silver dress.  Anyone with a smart phone was told to snap some video of her if they could and then email it to an address provided.  Well we hung out in the bar mingling and talking about what we'd heard about the show when we see the woman in silver come stumbling in.  She was obviously drunk and careening around the room.  There was a small camera following her, but also tons of people with smart phones out.  After a minute talking with some random guy in the corner she stumbled away.  About 10 minutes later, when we were wondering if she'd be back--we didn't really get a good look at her--she came stumbling back in more intoxicated than ever.  She even collapsed at one point and some guy carried her out.  Shortly after we were all called to enter into the theatre where we see a looped video on youtube playing of what just happened in the bar!

Now we come to the premise of the show.  So the title sets it up a little bit: it's two rival news crews who are trying to spin the story of the woman in the silver dress getting drunk at this party.  It's a big deal because she's a broadcaster at one of the stations, and the guy who helped her out is a reporter at the other.  It's an entertaining look at the behind-the-scenes of story making.  The lines are witty, with a lot of kiwi in-jokes.  They split the stage area into kind of four sections: there's the two studios (splitting the stage down the center-line) and then the tech side and broadcast side (splitting the stage lengthwise).  There's also two balcony areas that serve as the anchor desks of each station.

Probably the coolest part of the show was that it was all done in real time; the show was 2 hours and it played over the 2 hours.  In that two hours there was a lot of back and forth about the ethics of the story, what actually happened, how they could find the videos of the events and how to patch them all together.  A lot of the action of the piece was centered around this technological side of things, so two of the minor/major characters were the two techie guys who edited together the footage for the news clip.  The thing was that there were the computer screens up on stage, and the guys were actually doing it.  They had the footage from the real camera that followed her, but then they also put up some of the audience footage.  You could tell it was legitimately from a smartphone/not by a professional because it had the typical grainy quality to the video, and it often was jumpy from her to the people around her, trying to get a better angle.  My friends and I got quite excited whenever we saw ourselves appear on the screen.

Anyway, the techi-cool part of the show had to be the fact that the "tech" guys on stage put together the footage from our phones and their footage, along with the bits of voice over they recorded onstage into the 2-3min news bit by the end of the show.  Everything was projected up the walls in real time, and you could watch them going on youtube, pulling clips down, checking their (character's) facebook, skyping, recording audio, and editing video.  It was so cool for that aspect of reality to be incorporated into the show.  It really, somehow, reinforced the suspension of disbelief and realism at the same time it broke the fourth wall.  Those two were also my favorite actors out of the bunch.  The main girl had a few too many tactics that she repeated, and the main guy seemed to only play his obstacles (but that I think was more a fault of the way the character was written than the actor).  The techies actually had a task to do, they did it, but at the same time you could see them get distracted and make fun of the newscasters, or get distracted and go on facebook, or even play a game.  They were so fun to watch!

Overall, it was a really interesting use of technology available to include the audience in the show, bridge the fourth wall while bolstering the reality of the show.  Some of the acting, unconvincing to me, was made up for by just the awesomeness of the video inclusion.

Next post will be about traveling, I promise!  Hope you enjoyed my diversion =)

Easter Break Beginning Adventures

Alright, so I will slowly get down all of the insanity of my Easter break traveling.  First off, we had a two week break from school: one week was for Easter, the other was a "study" break.  I took advantage of these two weeks by traveling through the south island of New Zealand.  Even though I had a whole two weeks, however, I didn't get through the whole island!  There's way too much to see and do in New Zealand for me to accomplish in one short trip.  On this trip I tried to stick with the free activities because-hey-I'm a poor uni student!  Most of my trip was tramping (what kiwis affectionately call hiking) which I love to do, and you can do for free, with amazing views, just about anywhere you want in New Zealand.

I started my trip on a Thursday night.  My flatmate Shannon lives in the north part of the south island in a town called Blenheim.  We took the Interislander Ferry, which takes you from Wellington to Picton on the south island (see map--->).  I've never been on a really ferry before, since the states mostly just consists of highways and no real mass transit system.  Geeze, I wish we had a better one, light-rail anyone? It was pretty cool because our ferry left at 8 so I got to see the city recede into darkness and then Picton appear from the black.  It also helped that the seas--the Cook Straight--were fairly calm.  Shannon told me that they're supposed to be some of the most dangerous waters, because the swells can get very large, but in our case it wasn't until about 20 minutes into the ride that I realized we were moving.  The ferry ride is about 3 hours so we got in to Picton around 11:30 then got out to Shannon's house around midnight.  Blenheim is part of wine country: the Marlborough district, so the entire ride there was passing vineyards in the dark.  Needless to say I was pretty out of it on the drive there so I didn't notice much besides the almost full moon rising above us.

Lag-time

Hey if anyone's out there reading--I have a TON of new posts coming in the next couple of days.  With one thing or another, school assignments due and Easter break, I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon.  I have a lot of written up in my journal that I just need to type up, look nice, and add photos.  I went traveling over break so I have about a billion and a half photos to slog through.  Here's a tease:

Epic Hiking and Wine Tasting Adventures

Well I've finally gotten out of Wellington!  And I picked the perfect day to go do it: it was beautiful on Saturday.  I went along on an organized trip for the International students at Massey, there were about 35 of us on the trip, so not the total population of international students here, but a good chunk of them.  The trip was two parts: a wine tasting at Alana Estate and then off to Patuna Farm for either horseback riding or a chasm walk.  I chose to go on the chasm walk.  It was epic.  Before that, however, they thought it might be a good idea to loosen us up with a wine tasting--so on to the wine tasting!

Does this look like a hill?

We arrived at Alana Estate around 10, and the drive there was ridiculous.  It took us through these small mountains that our bus driver playfully called "hills."  Essentially these roads were insanely large, with windy roads and tiny guard rails.  There was even a section of gravel uphill, with other cars whipping around the corners, craziness.  Anywho, once we got past the hill country it was really flat and full of vineyards.  The day was perfect and sunny, practically cloudless sky!  Before we actually got into the tasting part of the venture the manager took us on a short tour of the vineyard.  We walked up to rows and rows of grapevines, and he told us about how the soil needs to be rocky, with little rain.  They don't even spray for pests because it gets soaked into the soil and then into the grapes, so it destroys the flavors.  The best kind of soils for wine making are the ones with mineral rich soils.  They grow three different grapes for wine at Alana: Sauvignen Blanc, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir.

Hohepa

This was a jam packed weekend!  I went on that epic hike, it was St Patrick's day, I went to the Opera, and I moved flats all in the same weekend.  Insanity.  Anyway, this post is about the Opera so I'm going to talk about opera.

After the epic hike I had barely enough time to run back to my flat, change into something opera-worthy and then book it down to meet my friend Josh at the Opera.  This was another show that was part of the International Arts Festival, which ended this weekend.  The opera was another world premiere show and, similar to Troilus and Cressida it was Maori based.  Unlike the last show, however, the majority of Hohepa is sung in English.  There is some Maori sung, in fact it was expertly woven into verses between English lines.  The opera tells the story of a Maori chief when New Zealand was just beginning to be colonized.  Hohepa is friends with some of the settlers, and it tracks their interaction and the interaction between the two cultures.  It's a short opera, only two hours long, and written by Jenny McLeod, a native Kiwi. Here's an interview with the lead vocalist of the show.

The show had a couple theatrical conventions in it that I'd noticed in Troilus and Cressida, one of them being the hand shaking.  Well, to my good fortune, my friend Josh has more Maori knowledge than I do and told me that most of the time when people are shaking their hands by their sides it has a sort of spiritual meaning.  Part of the Maori culture is a very deep connection with your ancestors.  Indeed that's almost entirely what Hohepa was all about; bringing back the bones of your ancestors to their native land.  Anyway, the idea behind shaking your hand by your side is like an indication that your ancestors are with you, but Josh said it has a lot to do with that's being said.  Sometimes, like when I described the kind of threat it looked like in  Troilus and Cressida, it can mean things other than respect for ancestors, but Josh said that he'd have had to heard what the lines were to have told me more.

The other very cool convention of Hohepa was one of the characters, ironically the same actor who played Troilus in  Troilus and Cressida, was really solely responsible for these kind of presentational dances.  He was always in Maori dress and would do almost a mini haka throughout the show whenever someone started talking about war or fighting the Maori.  They did several very short hakas within the opera as well, but they changed them around so that they weren't necessarily chanting it, but more singing the haka in keeping with opera.

There isn't much else to say about Hohepa; it was a typical modern opera if you're into those sorts of things.   It was only about two hours long, in two acts, with a bit of a discordant score at parts.  I'm not the biggest fan of operas, but I did enjoy this one.

Troilus and Cressida

Last night offered me another chance to indulge my theatrical side.  It was the premiere of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida in te reo (spoken Maori).  I went because it had the two key ingredients going for it: the words 'free' and 'theatre' combined in one phrase.  The event was part of the International Arts Festival that I've mentioned in previous posts, and held at the Te Papa museum.  Now, because it was a live performance, the 'no photography' rule applies, which means I don't have any fun pictures to share with you.  Instead I shall apply my extreme description skill to get across this unique show.  Bare with me guys, as some of you know I've got a research project that deals with Maori performance integrated into theatre, so this will be an extra long post.

A description of the translation technicalities can be found here, so I won't get too into that here.  First, I suppose I should give a quick run down about Shakespeare's version of the show.  At the very bare bones of it, the story is structured around the ancient battle for Helena between Greece and Troy.  Even though that's the conflict that provides the backdrop, the action of the story is about Troilus (Toroihi in this show) and Cressida (Kahiri) and their love affair.  Much like any of Shakespeare's love stories, Troilus is a Trojan and Cressida is a Greek.  Now that's really all of the story that you need for me to talk about the Maori interpretation of it.  If you want some more here's the wikipedia entry on it.

First Week of School...Kinda

So, as some of you know, it's autumn here in Wellington now which means I FINALLY started classes!!  Well, I've kind of started classes.  The school set up is a little bit different here than in the States: they run their classes with a lecture and a lab/workshop/tutorial component part for each class (or paper as they call it).  That means that I have lecture one day a week for one hour, and a workshop one day a week for two hours for each class.  Since I'm only taking three classes while I'm over here, I wanted more time for adventuring and I have an theatrical independent study to work on from back home, that means that I'm only in class for four days a week.  I have all of my lectures on Tuesday: five hours straight yay, and then one workshop on Wednesday, one Thursday, and one Friday.  However, it was the first week so that meant that the workshops for two of my classes got canceled--I got done on Wednesday!!  So I went and did something fun on Wednesday night, but before I get into that I'll let you know what kind of classes I'm taking.

First off, I'm taking a Media Script Writing class, a 300 level writing course about how to analyze and write scripts for television and movies.  This was the only class where I had both the lecture and workshop for the first week.  For this class we're going to spend quite a lot of time watching bits of movies, so our lecture is slated for three hours instead of one, even though we won't always be meeting for the full three.  We jumped right into class, talking about our favorite scripts what makes them good and why scripts are written and for whom.  We even got to do a bit of writing already in our workshop class; we were given the task to come up with a scene that was impossible to film and I'm glad to tell you that my lecturer (they don't call them professors here since most of them aren't full-fledged professors) said that I came up with the best idea.  I proposed that the most impossible scene or type of show to film would be a reality show of someone being a CIA agent, or trying to become one.    I was pretty proud of that =)

Sea of Stories

So this is part 2 of my weekend of theatre. Friday night I saw the Te Papa "First Contact" event, and Saturday night I went to another free event by the Museum of Wellington and Maritime Museum called "Sea of Stories". This was probably one of the coolest concepts for a theatrical space that I've ever seen. The stage for the show was actually different parts of the museum. It wasn't just a straight theatrical performance either; it couldn't be considering their limited space. It was a test of ingenuity that the cast and crew past with flying colors. They used the different exhibits and spaces to their advantages. A bench in front of an exhibit became a bench out on the wharf, then they'd turn the action around and the audience was sitting on the bench as the action took place where we'd been sitting moments before. It was obvious that the budget for the show was literally nothing, but they were able to make a rather cool idea out their nonexistent budget by making puppets out of paper to help tell their story in parts, use flashlights as spot lights, and the audience for sound effects.

Since the story they were telling was all about the sea, they incorporated different parts of exhibits. For instance, there was a row boat exhibit so at one point they climbed into the boat and pretended to row. One of the cooler concepts that they had for the show was the use of paper to make props. The character of the little girl had a paper doll, made the ocean waves out of paper, even a boat and a hat. Our programs for the show were even folded into origami boats. The use of paper came to a head in the end of the story when Freya (the lead girl character) tries to go to the underworld to save her father. During the last scenes she's played as a paper doll, and everything in the underworld is made up of the stories of their lives. They break so many conventions of theatre through this paper doll idea, but they completely break the fourth-wall when Freya's paper doll gets thrown to the ground and she supposedly dies in doll form. Freya blankly stares at the doll for a moment before she looks around and says "then Freya realized that the underworld was made completely of paper and she tore out the exit, going back home." It was a brilliantly devised ending to the story of stories. It was a lovely little introduction to a kind of semi-professional theatre in Wellington, and only makes me anticipate the rest of the International Festival with glee!!

Artsy-Fartsy Nerd

See, it's the Europeanse (or Pakeha in Maori)

I am an artsy-farsty nerd, and I do not regret one bit of it.  I had a choice between going to the opening of the International Arts Festival and going to a toga party, and it was the easiest choice ever.  Arts Fest hands down.  By all accounts of those who chose the later, I made the right choice.  To continue, Wellington hosts an annual International Arts Festival end of February to mid March.  The festival supports venues for all types of art: visual, literary, theatre, dance, and musical.  Tonight was the opening act called "First Contact".  It was an interpretive collaborative work that involved live dancing, singing, percussion and traditional flutes, dj-ing, as well as images projected onto the outside of the museum of history Te Papa.

Student Life

The start of another week, and the insanity of the first few days in New Zealand seem to be finally catching up with me; I am absolutely exhausted.  Luckily (or perhaps not so much) for me I had a day or so of just sitting to contend with.  Monday was orientation day for International Students, so there was a lot of listening to people at the university talking at us.  In fact, there were some points during all the talking that I realized I had no idea what was just said--it was that boring and I was that tired.  I was somewhat surprised at the disproportionate number of American students in the orientation; I think we outnumbered everyone 2:1.  This disappoints me a little bit mostly because I'd like to get to know people from outside the US.  Overall there were probably between 60-70 students there.  I met one guy from Germany and a couple girls from Japan, but they were really the only ones I got to talk to during the event.

The Bob Barker

After they gave us free lunch (I totally nabbed a plethora of apples to snack on), most of the students split.  I took a walk down to the bay and read a book for a while.  The weather here in Wellington never ceases to amaze me, but I've learned it is absolutely no use trusting the weather report because it's been wrong for the past 3 days!  When I was walking back I was taking pictures of the wharf and bay when what do I see, but a big ship with an epic paint scheme and a logo that looked rather familiar.  If anyone reading is a fan of Animal Planet, you might be familiar with the show Whale Wars.  It's a series about combating whale hunters in the Antarctic, and one of their ships is docked in Wellington Harbour for a couple days to take on provisions.

Muay Thai Boxing

Today's adventure was just a little one; I'm saving a big one for tomorrow.  Again I got hooked up with a cool free activity through Adventure Wellington, they hosted a free lesson in Muay Thai Boxing, at the local gym: Jai.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, Muay Thai boxing is kicking boxing that uses 8 points of contact: your hands feet, elbows, and knees.

The class was from 2-3 and a jam packed hour of straight cardio.  We started out full force; our instructor literally jumped into jumping jacks, then moved us into pushups, crunches, and then some other "warmups".  We were already dripping sweat by the time he got into the actual boxing portion, and not only because the studio was about 100 degrees--it was HOT today.  In keeping with his "warmup" style, there was no real transition.  He simple said, "stand like this, left forward, punch and step at the same time: huh!"

A sparring chart they had in the studio

 So through the course of the class I got to learn to do several series of punches and kicks, which the instructor would build up to.  First, you started with the simple punch, then a left-right, then a left-right-hook, and then a left-right-upper cut.  That was all without gloves.  Next we put on some boxing gloves and paired up so someone would hold the bag, while the other punched.  You did 50 left-rights in a row, while bouncing on your toes and then go into the sets.  Each set was about 20 of whatever series he told you to do.  The bag series of punches ended with a really good one.  Our instructor called it a "superman punch" you did a left-right-left-right-right then back up a couple steps, run, jump and punch a strong right.  It was AWESOME!  Exactly how a superman punch would be.

The next series we did was kicks.  It was the same idea with the bag: partner up and one holds the pad while the other kicks.  The idea behind the kick was that you pivot up on your left toe, drop your right arm down as you kick with your left foot toe pointed.  Although, you don't kick so much with your foot as with your ankle.  I was a lot better at the kick than at the alternating punch, but boy did it tire you out.  It was especially hard when he had us doing multiple kicks in a row: one-two-three.  He even had us switch over to the bag and kick 10 times in a row!  It was really grueling.  After that set we got to so some combination punch kick stuff though, still totally threw me off.  I kept having to think about all the different things he was telling us to do: "always keep your none punching hand by your cheek/chin, hook with your elbow up, and twist your right toe when you hook left."  It was a lot, but to go along with our superman punch, he taught us a superman kick as well!  It was a left-right-kick-kick back up run a couple steps jump and slam a kick in.  It was hard but boy did I hit that bag hard!

In keeping with his intense workout we had just as bad as a "cool down": more situps, pushups, and then you had to hold someones feet as they went from a situp to standing and doing a left-right punch.  Luckily at the end he let us stretch it all out.  Boy was that a work out for me!  I'm definitely going back next weekend.

Adventure Wellington

So now it's time to play catch up with all the stuff I've been getting up to the last few days.  My last post was all about my first day in Kiwi-land, so now I'll have to expound upon the things I got up to the last couple of days.  Boy, living in the future is tough!!


On Thursday I went out in the morning with Amy, had to go and exchange some money as well as try and find: a phone, pillows, blankets, and some other random things.  So first, Amy had to go the bank I followed her downtown, stopped in and exchanged some money (exchange rate is about $1 US= $1.2 NZD), and then wandered out while she was talking to the bank people about something.  I had seen a place that sold phones earlier called Vodaphone.  I went in and checked it out, there was a cheap pay as you go phone for $49+ $20 top up on minutes, BUT it came with 2500 free texts on the sim card, and since that's how I mostly communicate I thought it was a good deal.  I had wandered out, checked out some other phone stores down the road, and it looked like theirs was the best deal so I went back and got the phone.  It is the tiniest, flimsiest thing I've ever seen: it feels like a toy phone.

Toy phone, not real phone do not eat!

So got my phone set up and then realized I had forgotten to ask Amy for her number to call her and meet up again.  Unperturbed I adventured out into the city alone, going the direction I was fairly certain we had come.  Along the way I looked for a place that would sell me a pillow or two.  The girl who exchanged my money at the bank had told me that a place called Farmers would have the things I sought to I went in search of that store, found it and also found that the blankets and pillows they had were ridiculously expensive.  I mean seriously, $29.99 for one pillow??  Luckily for me I spotted a double pack of pillows for the same price, took it to the counter where the man at the checkout said they were actually onsale as a 2 for 1, with an additional 30% off if you spent $30 so I went back and grabbed another double pack.  Four pillows for less than $30 seemed much more reasonable.  As I aimlessly wandered out of the store trying to find the street I knew I stumbled across a Salvation Army.  Score one for extra cheap things!! And it just so happened to be on the street I was looking for (5min walk from my apartment), so double win.