I took my camera out on my last class trip for MARI 201 since we were on the boat again. We were studying light in the ocean so we took some measurements of light attenuation through the water column and other measurements of PAR and suspended organic matter and all those fun things. I didn't really get a clear view of how excited we all were about this but here is my class:

It's my smallest class here at Otago... a mere 13 or so of us on a good day. It's nice to have a small class to break up the giant lecture halls and multiple lab streams. We've gotten to know each other pretty well through the often unnecessarily long labs involving lots of downtime on the boat drinking tea. Sweet as.
This is the view of part of the Otago Harbour. They did a lot of whaling here so there are only the occasional sightings now. I didn't see any whales but I did see a seal and a little blue penguin. The penguin looked so funny swimming in the water... like a wounded or waterlogged bird paddling towards shore. They look so much more graceful below the surface!

I also had Deinda snap a photo of me in my fancy official Otago University lab coat. I was so excited when I learned that a lab coat was required in two of my classes! You don't really need protective gear when working with computers... except for pocket protectors! Ha! Anyways, this lab required safety glasses as well so look even more legit. Hurray for cool labs!

I'm 21! May 20th here did not feel much like my birthday and fell on a Wednesday, the day I have class from 9 to 6pm with a couple one hour breaks. Still, we had a super cool lab for MARI 302 where we dissected baby New Zealand Fur Seals. I stayed late and got to do a bit of further dissecting, like a lateral cut down the heart. Very cool.

Professor Dawson (Steve) weighing the baby seal

Liz Slooten examining the skull fracture that likely killed this seal (Seal clubbing anyone?)

The next day I decided was much more my birthday, since I was born in Alaska and not New Zealand, so I would be officially 21 on the Alaskan May 20th. I received a package sent from home chock full of birthday goodness. Alcoholic chocolates from my sister were a definite highlight since she couldn't buy me my first legal drink. Reading all the cards made me feel so special and loved that of course I started crying (happy tears!) in my room, thinking about Homer and how lovely it will be to go back. The chocolates helped me feel better, which was good because I had to pack for my weekend getaway.

Half the group from the Super Awesome Fijordland Adventure were setting out on a much more adventurous trip to the north part of the south island with the goal of summiting Mt Owen in Kahurangi National Park. The trip was off to a bad start when Harvard's car started making funny noises and kept stalling just a block from my flat.

Calling up AAA a block from my flat, oh noes!

Some people would write off the weekend as a bad job, but not us. We quickly rang up a couple rental places and were soon off and rolling in a nice automatic... and it was only 6pm. We rallied all the way to Omaru where we stopped for groceries. We bought so much food for just the five of us and TWO boxes of wine... it was ridiculous. I also broke down and ate at my first American chain restaurant since leaving the states for the UK. It was Subway... and it was delicious.

The rest of the drive I tried to sleep but it was hard to get comfy in the middle of the back seat. We also only had five mix CDs that Kris had made so I kept drifting off and waking up to power metal... which does not encourage the best sleep. With only a few wrong turns and one or two stops for petrol, we arrived at our trail start with the night sky only barely touched by the approaching morning sun. As we packed up the food and changed, the sky lightened up and we decided we might as well just take off now and rest once we were at the Granity Pass Hut... a six to eight hour tramp away.

Taadaa, twelve hours later at our track start in the new car

That tramp was definitely a test of will power. After twelve hours in a car and at least 36 hours without sleep, it all comes down to your mind willing each step, knowing that it is one step closer to the hut and rest. We actually made good time, arriving at the hut in about 7 hours even with a lunch stop and a detour when we lost the track in the snow. The sun was just going down behind the mountains as we got there so we enjoyed the last rays before trying to make some tea. I say "trying" because what actually happened was the creation of a flaming bomb out of our previously fine stove and the very quick disposal of the bomb into the snow outside. After we settled down from that scary business, no one really wanted tea anymore so I passed around my ginger wine which improved everyone's mood significantly. So did dinner and the consumption of the entire box of red wine over many card games. Surprisingly we did not pass out from exhaustion (no sleep, twelve hours of driving AND a 7 hour tramp with wine laden packs?) and were able to make so much merriment that we got yelled at by the old man who was camping outside. Geez.

On the way up, not looking too shabby all things considered

The next morning we had a late start to Mt Owen which meant that we followed the tracks of the old, unhappy couple that yelled at us the previous night. Since there was so much snow, Mt Owen was going to be quite the effort so we decided to just focus on summitting something. That something was Mt Bell, only 20 m lower than Mt Owen and still absolutely charming. With the gusty winds and abrasive snow it really felt like quite the expedition, one that may have actually required the use of the ice axes and crampons strapped to our bags. Reaching the top was accompanied with silliness like cartwheels and merriment.

More snow and feeling a bit like the Fellowship tramping through the Misty Mountains

Group shot: note the sweet ice axes and the blowing snowflakes

Reversing down the mountain was quick due to sledding on our butts for much of the way. We celebrated our success with delicious pasta, another full box of wine, and many more card games including my first win at hearts. I'm glad I learned how to play hearts in Scotland... it has proved to be a great game for mountain huts. The next morning was a quick jaunt to the car with much lighter packs and a few side explorations. We were almost trampled by a stampede of sheep on our drive out but luckily our rental car survived without a scratch, no doubt cushioned from blows by large amounts of wool. Torben the German drove us home in record, Autobahn time which meant we only had to listen to the same five CDs a couple times each. I learned the lyrics to more power metal songs about Lord of the Rings characters than I ever knew existed in the world that weekend. Great success.

Yay, I'm 21 and I just summitted my first snowy mountain!

I've been going to rugby practice regularly since my second or third week in NZ, every Tuesday and Thursday. I joined the university club because I thought that was my only option, but there are actually about 8 clubs just in the Dunedin area. Hurray for rugby country! Our main coach is Helen, who played for the first Black Ferns team. Black Ferns is pretty much the female equivalent of the All Blacks... so the elite and best of NZ. She's way tough, but nice and approachable too and I'm sure I'll be learning tons while I'm here.

Dee and I on the sideline, my hair is a bit wind-blown

Lineout in our game against Pirates (our first loss of the season)

I came home after the Pirates game, a bit down that we lost but happy that we passed at least five other games of rugby on the ten minute drive home. There's so much rugby in this country!! So when I got home I was quite confused when I came across this scene below:

That brick house on the left is my flat and in front of it is a bunch of cameras and other film stuff, some sound guys and two people dressed up in togas. Wow. All the stuff was blocking my gate so I didn't really know what to do. I asked someone what was going on and they told me they were filming a movie (well, yeah...). When I didn't leave immediately, they looked a bit impatient until I tentatively pointed at the flat and said, "I live there". They laughed and apologized for all the crap in the way and assured me that I could come and go as I pleased. I kept checking from my bedroom window (the one right in front, on the left of the photo). Sure it wasn't like being an extra in Lord of the Rings.... but at least I got involved in Kiwi film making!

I went and saved penguins this weekend. Okay, maybe not directly, but in doing things this weekend I probably increased the likelihood of at least one penguin living a slightly longer and happier life and that's pretty good work for one weekend.

These aren't the penguins I saved/helped. These are Oyster Catchers that I snapped pictures of as the ebbing tide threatened to suck my kayak into the crashing waves of the beach. Let me explain...

This is Fergus:

He and his wife own a penguin reserve and run regular ecotours of the area so that tourists can ooh and ahh over the Yellow-eyed Penguins that nest on the shore.... the rarest penguin of them all. We were not tourists; we were volunteers. This included only the slight difference in that we spent about 4-6 hours each day doing manual labour like clearing a path through New Zealand bush and removing overgrowth around important shrubs. Other than that, we were fed delicious homemade meals like pumpkin soup, lasagna and chocolate cake (with chocolate sauce!), slept in nice hotel-like rooms and had interesting conversations with Mary and Fergus while going through their extensive library.

We were also allotted some time to explore the area, which is shown above as the view from Mary and Fergus's place where we were staying. Right on the beach! They had kayaks so I tried a bit of that but the tidal current was pretty darn strong and I have not kayaked a lot.

Here's Lindsey on a rock. The penguins came ashore on one of the rocky shelves in the background at dusk after a long day of foraging. These Yellow-Eyed Penguins are the only penguins that nest in forest, so this particular population was devastated when a local farmer's brush fire got out of control and fried through most of their habitat. It's good to know there are people like Mary and Fergus out there working to protect interesting creatures like this! Maybe I'll be one someday...

This was the weather report on my homepage, spring in Homer above and fall in Dunedin below. It made me wish I was home instead of enjoying the mysterious rain of Dunedin. When you walk out into it, even if its only the slightest drizzle, you are immediately soaked and either have to go change into new pants etc. or remain damp for the rest of the day. It's like walking into a giant vegetable mist-er from the grocery store. At least my hair is short so it dries into a cool messy look super fast.