Okay, so I have to admit up front that I am about the cheat on this blog post. I wrote a pretty detailed letter to my Dad when I got back from NZ, and I'm just copying and pasting that letter here. The only notable edition I'm making is that, in the 7th paragraph, my paper is now due this Monday, and I've written a bit more of it. Still have a long weekend ahead, though (but not long enough).
New Zealand was awesome, and being back at school sucks. Lol. I had a great time, but what else would you expect when I spent 8 weeks living off my savings and worrying about little to nothing? I mostly just kayaked all the time, but did get to a few other things on the side, including a day of rock climbing and a couple days of farming. Fun story, I helped a friend of mine give shots to 700 sheep. Which is to say, I gave shots to 700 sheep, because he was drenching them (which means he stuck a tube down their throat and blasted their stomachs with parasite killer). I actually think I got the better job, since all I had to do was grab a loose flap of skin behind their ear, shove a big needle in it, and push a lever to deliver the shot. Got myself in the thumb twice, as well, but I didn't inject myself with anything, so no worries. Mostly the shot was just vitamin B12, anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered too much.
By far, kayaking was the highlight of my trip. It took about a week to get everything sorted out in Christchurch when I got there, what with having to wait for Johanna to arrive before I could pick up the car, then getting a set of boats that we could only hold onto for a week, and also having a social event to attend in the city, but eventually the trip did get underway. Interestingly, after one day on an easy river near Christchurch, Johanna decided she wasn't as keen on whitewater kayaking as she thought she would be, so I drove her out to Arthur's pass where she went and did some tramping, and I ended up kayaking without her for the entire trip. I went up to a place called Murchison in the northern part of the south island and spend almost 2 weeks there just paddling. There's probably 15 rivers with decent paddling that are all within a 20 or 30 minute drive of Murch, so heaps of people camp there around Christmas/New Year and just paddle every day. I got in with a group of really good paddlers willing to show me a few things and I had an awesome time. My paddling ability went cruising skyward, and I'm a real confident grade 3 paddler at this point. I've started taking on some grade 4 rapids here and there, but it's not well within my ability yet, so I'm being pretty choosy about what I'm willing to run and what I'm not.
After Murch I went back to Christchurch to switch boats, then headed down Queenstown way. I stopped near MountCook on the way and did a day of rockclimbing with a couple gals I met in Murch, which was cool, then went the rest of the way and did some paddling around Queenstown with a few people I'd met along the way. Only spent a couple days in Queenstown because most of the water around there is far and above my paddling ability, but it was a nice stop anyway. The area is beautiful, which was definitely a plus, and I found a free campsite at one of the river takeouts, which was also quite nice.
From Queenstown I headed up the west coast with a gal who found me through an online travelers' community called couchsurfing.com. She ended up being a complete nitwit, and I was glad to see her go after a couple days in the car with her, but whatever, it's all good. After I offloaded my cyber-hitchhiker, I met up with some people from Christchurch and we did a couple easier rivers around Hokitika. We had a few beginners with us, so it wasn't anything major, but the rivers were absolutely gorgeous and had a few fun places to stop and play in little waves and whatnot, so it was all good. One of the rivers we did near Hoki is called the Crooked, and it flows out of a glacier. The color was awesome, and the water was freezing. One of our beginners fell out of her boat 3 times, and I think she was a little wet and miserable by the end of the river, but she kept a brave face on, so good for her.
From Hoki, I finished the loop up to Murch and did a couple more day paddling there with a guy I met passing through. Ended up having an awesome time the second time through because of how much my paddling had improved. Went out and confidently did a couple harder rivers, and on the way out we stopped at Maruia Falls and dropped it. Amazing experience. Maruia is a huge waterfall, about 10 meters tall, spans the whole river. Adrenaline rush in the extreme. WAterfalls are cool, though, because they're a lot easier to take on than something like a cliff jump or a bridge jump. When you're going off solid land you can always stop yourself, but in a river, once you leave that last eddy, there's no turning back, and leaving an eddy is real easy.
Anyway, after Murch I went back to Christchurch and crashed with a friend of mine for 4 or 5 days. He works from 4 AM until about noon, so we went and played in the surf in the afternoons, which was heaps of fun. I got a fair bit of important work done in the mornings while Dan was at work, as well, which was definitely a good thing. I had a 16 page paper due the Monday I got back, and I had a bunch of stuff I had to do for a job application, and I managed to get all that more-or-less done before I left NZ.
Back here in the USA, things are not nearly so adrenaline pumping, though in some ways exciting nonetheless. I'm excited to be graduating in May, though I don't know how I'm going to survive this semester. Most of my classes aren't too bad, but my senior essay is due in something like 3 weeks, and I am not nearly as far on it as I ought to be. I had a hard time focusing on schoolwork in NZ, what with people always coming up and asking if I wanted to go paddle, so I haven't really made any progress on my paper since October, when I wrote the initial proposal. I'm not too worried about getting through it, but it is definitely a little stress ball in the back of my mind, and may become a big stress ball before the end of all this.
Besides that, though, I'm taking 3 music activity classes, so I'm getting to play a lot of trombone this semester, and i'm also taking my regular academic classes. This term shouldn't be as hard as most of my others because i'm not taking any upper division math classes and I only have 4 academic classes instead of the overloaded 5 i usually take, so that's good. I'm thinking that after i've finished my thesis i might actually be able to find the time to go out and have a bit of fun this semester, and that would be nice.
I'm applying for jobs, now, as well. The application I was working on in New Zealand was for Teach for America, which is an organization that places teachers in disadvantaged schools. I just had my final interview with them last Tuesday and I should hear back about whether or not I've been accepted on March 8. I'm pretty confident they will hire me, but you never know, maybe I screwed up my interview and just don't even know. In addition to TfA, I'm also planning on applying to Lasallian Volunteers, which is (as the name indicates) a volunteer organization through the brothers that run my school. I think I like the opportunities I could get through LV better than what I could do after TFA, so I'm leaning that way, but I have to wait until I'm a little farther along in their hiring process to decide. And, I guess if everything were to go pear-shaped, I could always work on the ranch for the summer and figure out my life from there.
That's about the long and short of it all, though I'm sure I could go on for ages about my time in New Zealand. I'm not sure when i'll post again next, hopefully relatively soon.
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