Back home from Oputere and on with the work! Recap part 1!

Wow! I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since I blogged! Whoops...

These last few weeks have flown by like none other! Technically speaking, my time at EcoQuest is already over 20% over! Ahhhhh! No! I'm not ready to come home yet!

Actually, I have to confess, I really have felt ready to come home at a few points recently. I've been yearning for the familiarity of a family and friends who have known me for at least a few years.

Particularly at the beginning of last week, while we were staying at a youth hostel on the Oputere Estuary (one of the nicest hostels I've ever seen by the way! No bedbugs!), I realized how nice it would be to pick up a cell phone and call home or one of my friends, not to have to wrestle for 10 minutes with the frustrating mechanical voice of the phone card, eventually saying, "Remember, you only have 1,036 minutes to complete this call." The hard thing is, if the person I'm calling doesn't pick up, it won't matter how many hundreds of minutes I have to talk. Darn this time difference! On the plus side, I have been able to use AOL Instant Messenger to talk with some people back on the state-side, which has been very helpful! And one night, I actually used my webcam to talk with my boyfriend, Chris, back in Hartford. Little did I know that even though I could do this, I wasn't supposed to be because it causes our internet bill for the month to sky-rocket. Needless to say, the chat was short-lived, but entirely worth the rebellion.

In general, I've been dealing with being home pretty well. I did call home this past week however, to wish my wonderful father ["Dad o' Katie", as he puts it] a happy birthday, and I talked with him and my mother for about 45 minutes, with tears welling up in my eyes during most of our conversation. It's not that I'm missing home, it's more that I'm missing my support system.

For instance, remember that paper I had been procrastinating on in my last post? Well, we got them back with comments on them mid-last week. We had been told before we started writing that these first papers would be ripped apart for the purpose of receiving a lot of feedback and constructive criticism; however, nothing could have prepared me for the comments I received. After I read the comment beginning with "This is horrible...", I had to stop for awhile. I'm not used to having my work so scrutinized, and I have to say, I think our teachers went a little beyond the realm of "constructive" criticism. With all of the comments, I was sure I had received an awful grade, but here's the kicker: we had to give our papers a self-grade before receiving our actual grade. UGH! I felt so terrible about my paper that this task seemed designed to drag us further down into our ditch of literary despair. Knowing that everyone's paper had been equally scorned did make me feel a little better, but when it came time for self-grading, I gave myself a D+. As it turns out, my actual grade ended up being *drumroll* a B-, roughly the same as nearly everyone else's report. Although I was able to get through the grading process, I can't describe how much I wished I could have gotten a hug from my dad or a kiss from my mom. Luckily, that first paper is behind me now, and it's time to dive into the next assignment: a vegetation map of the Oputere Estuary. Should be fabulous!

Rewinding a little, I should mention how fantastic my weekend in Rotorua was! The drive there went very well! My friend Missy drove the entire way in our stick-shift, 10-person van, and we only got lost once, when Caitlin navigated us in the wrong direction. Our campsite was very nice and homey, and all our tents fit well on our little plot of land. I finally got to test out my tent, and luckily, everything is great with it, especially considering I got it for $50 at REI. We were located only 10 minutes from Lake Rotorua, so the first night we were there, we all went down to the beach. Myself, Liz, Emily, and Kerry swam in the lake and it was beautiful! We have some gorgeous pictures of the sunset and us goofing around too. Our swim was followed by a midnight grilled dinner of burgers, cooked by the fabulous Missy, assisted by her headlamp. The night was lovely.

The next day, Saturday, February 7, we spent our day at the Raggamuffin Festival, which was SPECTACULAR! I really wasn't much of a fan of reggae to be honest, but this show was wonderful! Kora, Unity Pacific, and Three Houses Down were by far my favorite bands. Shaggy was also there, and he performed his old-school hit, "It Wasn't Me," further proving to me that he really has not been up to much following the release of that single. Oh well, he still put on a good show! There was also a small bazaar located behind the festival with lots of great food, free sunscreen (the sun was not hiding that day!), and the biggest assortment of marijuana paraphernalia I've ever seen. But I guess it was a reggae festival! Ziggy Marley was the last performer of the night and he did a great job, though I have to say, he was not my favorite! It could have been the fact that I had been there all day and that we were trying to leave early during his segment to beat the crowds. But all in all, I got a great day of music and a pretty sweet t-shirt out of the day!

Getting back to our campsite was another adventure in itself! A free shuttle took us back into Rotorua, and we had been told we could catch a cab from there back to our campsite. Sadly, we weren't exactly dropped in the middle of town, more like at a fast-food joint on the outskirts of town. While a few of us chowed down, Liz and Kelsey went out to find a pay phone, but after finding that pay phones would not take our coins, phone cards, or toll-free cab number, we had limited options left but walking. However, some of the ladies in the group, upon reaching their near exhaustion point, were not in the happiest mood, so we tried to find a place to stop where we could ask someone to call us a cab. We eventually found a hotel and wandered in. I rang the service bell and a man name Rayesh came out. After explaining our situation, Rayesh asked us to have a seat and that he would call us a cab immediately. I attributed our good luck with Rayesh to the fact that we both obviously shared Indian roots, much to the merriment of my group. Eventually, a cab showed up to tear us away from the hotel lobby's showing of "Dracula" and take us back home.

In the morning, we went to a large Redwood forest in the area and went on a half hour hike. Then we went into Rotorua again to visit a kiwi sanctuary, where kiwis were researched, bred in captivity, and the chicks released into the wild. Eggs from the wild were also taken and hatched in the center, the chicks rereleased 6 weeks after hatching, in order to increase their chances of survival significantly. The kiwis were adorable! After being shown the incubating area, we were taken to a dark room with 3 large pens in it. The room was kept dark because the nocturnal kiwis' internal clock had been switched so they would be awake in the day and when the workers went home at night, they could flip the lights on and the kiwis would go to sleep. I saw all three kiwis, and we were actually quite close to them, seeing as the only divider between us was a chest-high wooden fence. I actually couldn't find one of the kiwis for a few minutes and when my friend Kelsey suddenly pointed downward, there was a large beak and beady eyes looking up at me! I was surprised because the kiwis tend to be nosy; they have their nostrils at the ends of their beaks so they can scavenge for food more easily, but they tend to get a lot of leaf litter stuck in their beaks as a result and snuffle quite loudly; this one really snuck up on me! Anyway, after leaving the center, we started on our way home to EcoQuest. The ride home was fine, and we met up with our fellow students who had either gone to the northernmost tip of the Corrimandel Peninsula or sky-diving elsewhere.

Well, I do actually have work I really need to be getting done, so I will leave my recap here for now. But probably tomorrow, I'll post again just to relay a little information on this past week at the Oputere Estuary. As for now, I'm off to my work journal and mapping!

Bye for now!