I've just returned from one of the longest weeks of my life. As part of my geology course I spent 8 days in Golden Bay at the North of the South Island; a beautiful area which we were lucky enough to see in mostly beautiful weather.
Before heading south I celebrated good Friday with a couple of feasts. In the morning Aurelio, Gabby and Katherine came round for Eater brunch which Liam and I made bread, hot cross buns, milkshakes and poached eggs for and the others brought home made crumpets, salad and amazing chocolate crepes.
The feast continued in the evening when Liam and I went to Aurelio's so that I could try his famous pasta; it surpassed my expectations. I was taught how to make ravioli, tortellini and pappardella which Aurelio had made spinach and cottage cheese and pumpkin and sage fillings and a delicious tomato sauce for. It was probably the best pasta I've ever eaten. This was followed by the pears Liam and I had scrumped and poached in spiced red wine. Safe to say I didn't need to eat again until I arrived in Picton the next day.
Twenty geologists caught the ferry on Saturday morning across to Picton then we piled in the two vans and drove across to the field base at Onekaka, where one of many delicious meals was waiting for us, after stopping off at a number of outcrops. We spent the week in the university owned lodge in eight person bunk rooms (pictured at the bottom). In the dining room there was a roaring open fire which was very welcome, after a long day in the field, to sit round whilst doing our work.
The days were very long; we had to get up anywhere between 7 and 5am in order to eat our fully cooked breakfast and get out in the field and collect our data before the tide came in and we got wet feet. We tended to return to the lodge around 5-6pm where we were greeted by a delicious home made meal, cooked by Charlotte, the wonderful chef. These ranged from lamb tagine to pork in cider and were followed by home made lemon and coconut cake or apple crumble; my favourite had to be chocolate brownies, straight from the oven.
Once dinner was over we started on the dreaded mapping assignments, cross sections which messed with your head and detailed stratigraphic columns. Most nights these would keep us busy until around midnight, getting gradually later throughout the week. By Thursday night many people were pulling all nighters; I was the first to go to bed at 3am and had to get up again at 7am in order to finish it all by the midday deadline. After this it was back out in the field to take more notes; I doubt many coherent notes would have been written that afternoon.
The final evening was by far my favourite; despite barely being able to keep our eyes open we donned our high vis. jackets and walked down to the Mussel Inn; a rural pub famous among Vic geologists. The evening certainly exceeded my expectations. I was half way through my feijoa cider when a cry went up and the group of 60+ year old hippies started a newspaper battle with the climbing group across the tables; apparently they used to do this back in the 70's and decided to try it out again while we were there. After a surreal 5 minutes of watching people prancing around the pub from our spot outside we had newspaper thrust into our hands and were told to prepare our weapons ready for the next battle. It was great fun running along the tables in the pub, acting out dramatic deaths as people jabbed and swiped at me with newspaper 'swords' and certainly provided a very memorable end to a great week.
Despite the hard work I really enjoyed field trip as I became much closer with everyone in the group and it was such a beautiful area to study. The geology was amazing as there was such a variety of rocks and minerals and so many different processes had taken place in the area leading to faulting, folding, metamorphism and igneous intrusions. Although being shown a huge number of rocky outcrops and told to identify them, work out how they got there and map them three dimensionally was a daunting task I definitely learnt a lot from the trip and thoroughly enjoyed myself in the process.
I can't quite believe that I've now been in New Zealand for over 9 months, meaning that in 3 months time I will have been back in the UK for nearly a week. The phrase 'Time flies when you're having fun' most certainly applies to pretty much the whole of my stay here in New Zealand so far. I'm really looking forward to coming home and seeing everyone again and revelling in everything British, but at the same time I'll definitely miss this beautiful country and will always look back on this year with a big smile.
On Wednesday I had the last of my tests for this half of the trimester so I can now return to making the most of Wellington, despite the wet and windy weather which has finally returned. I'm hoping the rain will ease for the first week of Easter break as I'll be spending it in the Abel Tasman national park, mapping rocks as part of my course.
I was very excited today to receive an Easter package from home (pictured to the left); this definitely made up for the fact I'm going to be working over Easter.
The pictures above are of the sunrise from the balcony behind my accommodation; I took it before the clocks went back as I was setting off for a run.
As you can probably see I've thoroughly enjoyed the first three quarters of my year abroad and just hope this last quarter lives up to the rest.
This weekend I went on a two day field trip to Wanganui, about 2 hours North of Wellington. Around 70 of us were bused up to the Wanganui basin to study the unique geology there. We learnt about the past climates in the area by examining the exposed outcrop; in order to do this we had to look at, touch and taste the sediment; yum yum. On the second day this also involved scrambling up the 25m outcrop (shown below) in order to reach the shell dominated sediments.
It turned out to be an interesting and surprisingly fun weekend over which I got to know many more kiwis; especially the three I shared a bunk room with.
Since I got back from the field trip I've spent the majority of my time bobbing in and out of the library to revise for my mid term test on Thursday; this involves learning even more about sediments and stratigraphy and what we can deduce from them.
Aside from study I've also helped out at the overseas fair, promoting Lancaster uni to the students here (and getting some free sushi whilst at it). Last Wednesday I made my international buddy a curry and on Friday a group of us went over to Mealiny's for cake and a huge game of 'Who am I?' It took me an embarrassingly long time to guess that I was the Dalai Lama.
It's been really nice getting to know more Kiwis and I look forward to making more New Zealander friends on my field trip during Easter.
