In Which I Fail Utterly to Achieve My Study Goals, But Hey, I Met Numerous Social Ones!

Kia ora!

So I have one essay almost completed. However, "Themes Exposing the Morality of Convictism in Clarke’s “For the Term of His Natural Life”" somehow just isn't exciting enough for me to write an entire blog post about it. In fact, it wasn't even interesting enough for me to finish said topic over the weekend, meaning I now have two and one-third essays to do this week and on the weekend. I take comfort in the fact that I work well under deadline, especially when break is almost here!

Break for us, here in New Zealand, is three weeks. That's right, read it and weep! We get three weeks off in the month of April, and included in that is Easter and ANZAC Day. ANZAC Day is commemorating the Battle of Gallipoli (oh yeah, and the World Wars), and how the British basically killed a bunch of ANZAC (Australia, New Zealand Army Corps) troops by sending them rather blindly into the Ottoman Empire. It's an exciting read, look it up!, and they have special biscuits for the day! Any day that has special biscuits is a plus in my book.

What am I doing for break, you ask? I'm not quite sure yet. I have a few set things on my agenda, but when and how I get there is up in the air. I do know I will be doing some hiking in the Abel Tasman National Park, and possibly doing a day kayak tour there. From there, I hope to go down the west coast, stop in Westport and Greymouth, and continue on to Fox Glacier. At Fox Glacier, I'm looking into doing the day hike on the glacier front, as well as hiking Lake Matheson, New Zealand's most photographed lake. It's the one on the Mount Cook postcard, for whoever received that card. From there, possibly go to Queenstown to hang out for awhile, then Milford Sound to do a day tour and see the Fjordland National Park, then either go to Invercargill to visit a friend or over to Dunedin, to stroll through the Cadbury chocolate factory. From there, it's back up to Christchurch to either do homework frantically or go from there.

A lot of New Zealand people are pretty loose on traveling, and will often just go with only a few days of planning. While I will be traveling during a peak season, it will be towards the end, and I'm not especially worried about transportation or accomodation. God has been good to me, and I don't have any fears about traveling alone or being stranded. New Zealand is too small to worry about the latter!

The bus system here is EXCELLENT. Cheap, almost always available, and exceedingly travel-friendly, I wish that we had this kind of system back home! One bus system, Naked Bus, even has fares as low as $1 NZD if you book far enough in advance. It's sweet as.

And you're probably wondering what I actually did this week. I did a lot of socializing, and spent a good amount of time with friends, watching movies. Next weekend I'm going on a volunteer weekend, and then to a convention with a friend, so I've been told that I can't go to the convention until I've seen all of "Firefly", a western/sci-fi television series (it has 14 episodes and one movie, so not a large commitment). Thus, I've been watching "Firefly" with a friend, and saw "Sweeney Todd" with another friend. I also got my hair cut, and dyed it! It's still red, but this time it's so red it looks like I'm a comic book character. It wasn't intentional, and not only did the colour come out VERY bright, but I also had to buy another box, just to get the spots I missed... I'm waiting for the colour to fade, and hoping it looks better than it does, because right now I could be Mary Jane from "Spider-Man".

The week has been rather spastic with weather. The weekend saw two days of cold, wind, and rain, thus out door activities were fairly limited. It's turning into autumn here now, and the leaves are changing colour at school. The weather is also starting to turn chilly, meaning I'll be shopping soon for more warm clothing. I recently learned the way to my friend's house off-campus, and despite the flat being less than a 15 minute walk, I find myself getting cold even on such a short stroll. I'm just lucky it rarely snows in Christchurch!

Speaking of walking, I realized today as I was walking back to Ilam Village that there seems to be something about New Zealand that inspires you to walk more. It might be that the scenery is beautiful, or the fact that everyone else walks. But the longer I stay in New Zealand, the more I find myself becoming more outdoors oriented. Granted, I still enjoy a good solitaire session or two on the computer, but there's something about hanging out at the lake or sitting on a bench under the trees to eat lunch that speaks more profoundly as a worth while experience while over here. Back home, there is less push to be amongst nature, yet I can see now why God calls the Israelites to the desert. There's something about the land that moves you to just sit quietly and think.

Another week at school is about to begin, and with hair still smelling slightly of dye, one step closer to finished assignments, and a full weekend planned, I think I'm ready to roll! Here's to hoping my school work gets finished...


Cheers,
Nicole

Isaiah 40:3