Ethan's Semester In the South Pacific: Getting Back in the Swing of Things

So Saturday, March 2^nd was my alone day. I ended up getting up a few hours after my dad left. My goal for the day was to catch up on rest and catch up on anything else I needed to do. The first thing I did was cook breakfast for myself in my little kitchenette. Once I was finished, I set out to be productive for a little bit. I re-packed by suitcase, worked on this blog, sent some emails, posted pictures on Facebook., and got caught up on a few TV shows. Surprisingly, these tasks took all of my morning and most of my afternoon. However, it was nice to just be inside taking it easy. During late afternoon, I walked into town (about a five minute walk), ordered Dominos pizza, picked up some laundry supplies, and rented a couple movies. I walked back and had my solo dinner while I did my laundry. Afterwards, I made some skype calls until I hit my data limit and then watched movie #1, Hunger Games (hate to say it, but I wasn’t impressed. I guess I need to read the books instead…). Thankfully, I had to tried and true movie, Hot Rod (which definitely brought me back to summer 2010 when we would fall asleep to that movie every night in the pit). Just like back then, I fell asleep in the middle of the movie, which kind of worked out because I watched it when I woke up the next morning.

So I woke up the next morning, watched Hot Rod, and cooked breakfast again. Fortunately, a girl on my trip who was in New Zealand already too was back in Christchurch, so I met her over at the Christchurch Botanical Gardens, which are supposedly world famous, and we walked around for a little and ate lunch. Since I sat around all day the day before, it was nice to do actually do something. After lunch, we went our separate ways and I headed back to my hotel for a little bit. We went back out a little later in search of a place to eat ice cream. We walked to area where we had lunch earlier only to find a ghost town, so we went back to the YMCA and asked where we should go. The lady made a few recommendations and casually suggested we stop by the “Lantern Festival” at the park. So we decided to stop by, not really expecting what to find. We were shocked to find what seemed like the entire town of Christchurch at the festival. There was live music (in English and in Chinese), a 100 yd stretch of food vendors (all Chinese food), lights, fireworks, and one ice cream place. We looked around for a couple hours and we’re amazed that we would’ve had no idea this was going on. Anyway, it was nice surprise and we headed our separate ways for the night.

The next day (Monday), I was reunited with the group at our accommodations, the Christchurch YMCA, and it was good to see everyone again, even though it was nice to have some alone time during spring break. We didn’t actually have anything on the schedule until late afternoon so we were able to spend some time in Christchuch during the day before having to do school stuff. At around 4:30, we finally had our first class. We got lecture on the “Bio-Geography of New Zealand”, had a pizza dinner, and had orientation for the New Zealand portion with our new professor Dr. Tarrant. Afterward, we all walked to the grocery store to buy lunch food for the next couple days, walked back, and went to bed (We were all pretty tired, especially everyone else who had a slightly crazier spring break than I did).

We had breakfast as a group the next morning and then had lecture with a local professor for an introduction to the socio-culture of New Zealand. After, we went into town to the to the Re:Start Quake City museum. In case you weren’t aware, in February of 2011, Christchuch had an enormous earthquake that basically damaged the entire downtown district. In fact, most of it is still damaged and you can’t even go in the part that are called the “Damage Red Zone”. The city center where the museum is borders the damage zone and its fenced off. It’s a weird feeling looking in on it. It feels kind of like looking into an open casket. Everything is still there as far as street signs, restaurant signs, etc. You can see a Subway, a Starbucks, but no one is there and it has a really lifeless aura. Anyway, we ate lunch after going to the museum and then went to another museum to see more about the history of New Zealand. Then we went to the Botanical Gardens to see the New Zealand representation in the garden and to learn a little about New Zealand’s ecology. We were turned loose afterward around 4:30, but didn’t really do much in the evening but eat dinner because all of us were pretty tired. I took advantage of the time to watch some more TV shows and then went to bed relatively early.

This morning (Wednesday), we woke up at the crack of dawn to hit the road early. Throughout the day, we have stopped at various beautiful sites along the drive to have mini lectures from our professor and made another stop at a farm to hear about some of New Zealand’s political-environmental issues from his perspective. (Side note: They shot a scene from LOTR Return of the King at the farm). Now, it is about 5 PM, and we are en route to Mt. Cook where we will be spending the evening at Alpine Lodge. Seeing as we’re in the middle of nowhere, there shouldn’t be too much else going on tonight. We’re definitely blessed to have a great few weeks ahead and to experience more of the beauty of God’s Creation.

No pics yet, but I'll post some when I can connect to Internet on my phone.