Race around Rangitoto

One of the many benefits of my Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship is that the Rotarians in my host club, the Remuera Club, often extend invites for me to join them on some adventure or other. This weekend past, I was invited by Iain Valentine to join him in a sailing race around Rangitoto Island. Iain is a trustee for a charitable trust responsible for maintaining five historic boats in the possession of the Maritime Museum. One part of this "maintenance" is sailing them regularly, to keep them in good condition. So Saturday, I joined Iain and four other crew members on Frances, a 38 foot former fishing vessel built in 1905.

Unfortunately, I started the day off on the wrong foot, and slipped and fell on the dock before we even made it to the boat. It wouldn't have been such a big deal, except the dock is textured to approximate large-grain sandpaper for better traction, and as I was wearing shorts, my knee was definitely scraped up. (I should have a pretty amazing scab about a week from now.) But after bandaging that up, we got Frances ready to sail and motored out to the starting line. Finally, at the sixth pip on a certain radio station telling the time, we were OFF!!

Except not, as the lovely weather for the day didn't really include wind, which as it turns out, is highly important for this particular sport. It was a long, slow race, and finally, about 3/4 of the way through, we gave up. At that rate, we wouldn't have made it home before 9, and none of us were prepared to stay out quite that long! Quite a few other boats had to drop out as well, and we weren't the first to call it quits, so we were all pretty comfortable with the decision. Besides, it was Cake Day - every boat had a cake to get judged and eaten at the finish line - so, since we didn't cross the finish line, we didn't have to share our cake!

Despite the lack of wind, it was a great day out on the water. I learned a bit more about what needs to be done to make a boat sail, and hopefully my next time out, I'll have a better chance to put my skills to good use!

Waiheke!

Last Friday, on the invitation of a friend, a group of us headed out to Waiheke. Waiheke is an island about 30 minutes away by ferry, and I had heard from many people that it's absolutely BEAUTIFUL. My friend's parents have a home there, and his mother was having an art show, so we were invited to attend the show, spend the night on the family's boat, and then enjoy some of Waiheke the following day.

Unfortunately, I don't have a ton of pictures - I was kind of busy having fun. However, rest assured that it was a GREAT weekend in a beautiful setting, with some wonderful people. And by the time I made it home, I was exhausted!

Rotary Weekend in Wellington

So last weekend, as one of my scholarship requirements, I flew to Wellington to participate in an Inbound Scholar Orientation. This was the in-country counterpart to the orientation I attended in Kansas City last year, and was a great chance for us New Zealand scholars to get to know each other a bit better, and to discuss some of the hurdles people have dealt with while settling in.

Wellington seems to be a great city, and I'm looking forward to returning with some free time. However, Rotary did make sure to give us some taste of the area - we toured the Parliament building, had a couple of great meals out, and our Sunday afternoon was left free. Many of us decided to spend our extra hours at Te Papa, an amazing museum with great Maori history, including a BEAUTIFUL modern marae, and tons of other great exhibits. In fact, when we were there, they had a traveling Monet exhibit that some people were quite excited to see. (The exhibit was on loan from the Boston Museum of Modern Art, so I'd actually seen it a couple of times already.)

All in all, it was another great weekend organized by Rotary, with great information and a few new friends. Although it might be good to have it a bit closer to the beginning of our stay ... at this stage, topics like "Finding Accommodation" seem a bit pointless. Oh, well ... there were a few Kiwi scholars headed outbound, and I'm sure they found it all quite useful!

"Cocktail" party

So one of the events organized for new students this term was a cocktail party, solely for masters and PhD students, as sort of a fun "networking" opportunity. Lydia, Brodie and I decided the night was a great reason to get dressed up, but it turns out that not everyone interprets "Dress Code: cocktail" the same way we do - half the students there were in jeans, and there was even a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts! Oh, well - we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, and it did give us the chance to wear our fancy clothes for once.

Rangitoto!

Sunday last, a group of students from my uni accommodation organized ourselves to hike up Rangitoto, a dormant volcano about 30 minutes from Auckland by ferry boat. It's a cool location, because the volcano is the entire island, all volcanic rock and no soil, and yet it's somehow covered with, basically, a jungle. And once you hit the top, there's a great view of Auckland and the surrounds.

We were lucky to have a nice, sunny, not TOO hot day, although the humidity was a bit oppressive. We naturally divided into a few groups on the way up - Lydia and Brodie took the lead and made it up long before the rest of us, although in our defense, they didn't even stop for pictures. I was hiking with Ed and Clare, and a Polish girl named Ola, who was regaling us with tales of her hike up to the Everest base camp (amazing!!). And the rest of the group was bringing up the rear, a good 15 minutes behind us.

Once at the top, we had a bit of a lunch break, hiked around the crater itself, and then decided to explore some of the lava caves on the way down. The first one was great - super dark, and no one brought torches, but we made it through okay. The second required a climb down into a hole, which Brodie, Lydia and I decided against, but some people were quite excited at the prospect.

Including one man, Jim, a 45 year old American here getting some sort of Business PhD. Who slipped on the way down, fell backwards, and cracked the back of his head open! There was blood everywhere, he was white as a sheet, and we were all stunned. What to do?! The island is a natural reserve, so there's no infrastructure to speak of. We weren't sure he could even climb out of the cave, much less hike over an hour down the side of a volcano (a hike that the rest of us, hale and hearty, had some trouble with). Plus, while Brodie has first aid training and Clare is a nurse, no one had a full first aid kit - so instead of a nice bandage, poor Jim had to make do with a sterile bandage held on with a wadded up t-shirt and a pair of linen pants tied around his forehead.

We decided to call emergency, just to find out what our options were, but as soon as they heard that it was a head injury, they decided to send someone. Which meant a helicopter and a rescue team!! Brodie was left to guide the copter in, then we watched a rescue guy rappel down to the ground, guided him to the cave, and let him get to work. There were already a couple of people in the hole with Jim, so the rescue guy tossed down his first aid kit and gave instructions for proper bandaging while discussing evacuation possibilities with his partner in the chopper. Finally, we helped Jim out of the cave and walked him to high ground, and he was strapped into a harness to get him to the copter, and then flown out!

Turns out he didn't have a concussion, but needed stitches and was covered with bruises, so I think we made the right choice, even though he was quite embarrassed by the ordeal. After he was gone, we hiked back down, still had time for a bit of relaxing by the water before the ferry arrived, and then had some nice cold beers on the way back to the city. Other than the drama, it was a beautiful hike with fun people, and a great way to spend our Sunday!

Hunua Falls

This Saturday past, we had grand plans to hop in the car and drive a couple of hours to a lovely east coast beach. Ed and Clare could surf, and the rest of us planned on just enjoying the sunshine. Unfortunately, there was no sunshine, but instead black rainclouds looming overhead. That, combined with our very very late start, scrapped the beach plans.

Of course, we couldn't just stay in and do work! So instead Brodie, a Canadian student living in the same Uni accommodation as I am, suggested we go visit Hunua Falls, a great waterfall about 45 minutes drive from the city. We went, we hiked, we saw. And then we got lost on the way home. Still, though, a great way to avoid doing schoolwork!

Remuera Rotary Club

This past Monday, the 2nd of March, my host Rotary club asked me to give a brief presentation about me, my family and my studies. They want to hear from me in more depth near the end of my stay, but the president thought that this may be a good way for most of the people in the club to get to know me, and to get any research/recreation requests of mine out there. I talked for a few minutes, then chatted with some fabulous Rotarians after the meeting. Definitely a great group of people, and one I'm hoping to get to know a bit better as time goes on.

Roadtrip!! - Home again

Saturday dawned just a little too early for some of us. We decided to head back to Auckland, and then use Sunday to drive south a bit to do some caving and blackwater rafting in these cool caves filled with glowworms. Nothing too eventful happened, actually. Got a late start, due to the late night we had on Friday. Went into town and the chef at Lee and Dave's restaurant cooked our pipis for us - delicious! We did some scenic, but very slow, driving, saw a really old, really large kauri tree, and stopped for a spontaneous swim at a lovely beach on the side of the road. Made it back into the city about 10 or so, too late to catch the Symphony in the park we were hoping to see, but early enough to get up the next morning for our drive down to Waitomo.

Which, unfortunately, won't get its own blog post, because the next morning when we climbed into the van, it wouldn't start. Roadside assistance would have taken a couple of hours, too late for us to make it to Waitomo on time, so no luck. Hopefully we get down there eventually!