Kia Ora!!!

Ahhhh! I’m here! I’m finally in my new home away from home, the land of the kiwis, the All-Blacks, and the “one ring to rule them all”.

So continuing on from my previous post, I ended up in Los Angeles around 3:00 PM on Sunday, January 25. The next morning, I repacked everything in my suitcase while enjoying my last experience with abc.com’s free LOST episodes. I left for LAX at roughly 1 PM to check-in early for my flight at 7:30 that evening.

On my shuttle from the hotel to the airport, there were actually only four of us and we were all flying on Air New Zealand that day. One of my fellow shuttle passengers, Daniel, was taking the same flight as I was, but he was positively terrified about navigating LAX for his next flight. He even told me to not be surprised if I saw him in my peripherals as I made my way through the airport. As it turns out, he had left Great Britain only 3 days prior, on his first airplane ride, and had come to LAX for one night. His next flight to New Zealand was one-way. He had planned and was now in the process of going on a trip to Hamilton, New Zealand for the next 23 months, living out of his backpack, staying with friends of friends, and eventually trying to find work as an illustrator along the west coast of the North Island.

Daniel kept me pretty distracted from being nervous, but after a few hours, I knew I had to get in touch with some familiar voices. I spent about 4 hours calling home, three friends from Trinity, five friends from home, and my sister. Thankfully, getting in touch with a lot of these people put me ease, and even gave me the push of social confidence I needed to finally go meet my group members who had begun trickling into the terminal shortly after I had. Right before I boarded my flight, I called home once more to say goodbye to my parents, and then suddenly, I was on my way.

The flight itself was quite turbulent. They actually had to suspend our cabin service 3 times because the ride was so rocky. Luckily, the food, crew, and entertainment made up for the lack of service. The meals we had (one dinner and one breakfast) were awesome as far as airplane cuisine goes. The crew was more than pleasant throughout the flight, despite being thrown into the aisles and overhead more than once during turbulence. And we had countless options for movies, tv shows, and music to view and/or listen to while in flight. Overall, it was a fine experience, minus the many hours spent gripping my seat handles as the plane wobbled.

Once at the airport, we all gathered our bags. Everyone’s luggage made it on the journey except for one girl’s pack. We all cleared customs quite easily, but then had to go through the biosecurity check, which New Zealand is apparently infamous for. Something in my backpack actually caught the attention of Missy, the service dog in the area, but as it turns out, she was only detecting the old scent of an orange peel had just thrown out before my flight in. We all met up with our staff leaders quite quickly and were soon on our way to EcoQuest headquarters. We took three vans with trailers on the hour and a half drive to the campus, and it was a very scenic, soothing ride.

Upon campus arrival, we were officially welcomed by all present staff members, including the director, Jono, his wife, Ria, and the campus dog, Scamper. Jono did a beautiful presentation in Mauri to give us an extremely heartfelt welcome. We also met a number of others important to the program: Wendy, Elizabeth, Jon, Bruce, and Stephanie. [I need to make note here of how fabulous of a cook Stephanie is! She is in charge of all of our food here and she has been fantastic thus far! Yay!]

All of the students, after a brief welcome circle ceremony (“Hi, my name is ______, I go to _______, and I like to ________ ), we began an introduction to the campus and were given our cabins and roommates. I ended up with a one-room cabin on the edge of the campus, right behind a banana tree. I really like it. It has a huge sliding window door with two other windows on opposite walls. The breeze floats through almost as if we’re outside. I also learned that the beach is in fact 30 feet from our home, so the ocean is quite literally on the doorstep. There are lots of different plants all over, and we’re actually located in a small town, so it’s not as if we are cut off from the outside world at all.

Another plus so far: I’m not feeling too much anxiety about fitting in anymore. I was so nervous about meeting 22 new people, knowing that many of them knew each other already (most of the students here either go to the University of Michigan or the University of New Hampshire), but everyone has been extremely kind. I can tell that at some points, I may rub personalities with a few people, but that’s life, and I do pride myself in being relatively easy to get along with, so I guess if conflict ever surfaces, we’ll deal with that as it comes. Honestly, I have a pretty optimistic outlook right now, which is pretty rare for me, but maybe this is a sign of good things to come.

Anyway, following orientation, we had a wonderful lunch of sandwiches and salad, followed by the distribution of our personal equipment and lunchboxes. We then set out for another beach about 15 minutes away to have our swim tests. I can’t tell you how amazing it was to do an ordinary swim test in the Pacific Ocean under the New Zealand sun (though many layers of sunscreen were necessary). Having the taste of saltwater in my mouth was a welcome sensation, and I can’t wait to go back out again. My only complaint: the rocks at the beach seemed endless…I felt like the real test was seeing if you could walk over the rocks without puncturing your feet following the test.

We then returned to camp and had about an hour to do as we pleased before dinner. I hopped online and checked email and such, and now, well, actually following dinner and a quick shower, here I am.

This has been an obnoxiously long post, so I’ll end it for now. Besides, I need to sneak in details about EcoQuest gradually as I discover more of them. Hopefully, it will make me appreciate the experience more and give everyone something more interesting to read as well. All I can say for now is that I’m here, I’m happy, my new home is beautiful, and things are looking good.

~Katie