the last one from aotearoa

i guess my updates turned out to be a monthly thing. i'm leaving auckland tomorrow and so this will probably be my last one on this trip. i'll probably send one more out when i get back to states to tell about what i did after i left auckland. and i also tried to cut this one down from the last one :-). hope that worked out.

i left off on the cook islands in the last one i think. we went there as a whole program group in the first week of october. we first landed in rarotonga, where their international airport is but then we got onto another tiny stunt plane-like plane and flew over to mangaia, one of the smaller islands in the southern part of the archipelago.  mangaia is almost completely non-commercialized and we saw maybe one or two tourists there the whole time. there are three villages around the island and each of us stayed with our own cook island maori homestay families. it was really a culture shock for a lot of us because you couldn't drink the water, there was no hot water, we ate the native island food everyday, no doors on bathroom stalls, and everything was open air -- bugs, reptiles, animals outside and inside all the buildings. half of the kids in my group actually got food poisoning on the trip, about 10 people, but i wasn't one of them. i really loved the experience. during the day, we took tours of the island by driving around in the beds of pickup trucks and learned a lot about their customs and traditional crafts like husking coconuts and making a really strong rope from the husks. the island itself was beautiful. the coast was surrounded by this ring of coral reef and on land, the jungle started right after a thin strip of beach, which was all made of crushed, tiny coral pieces...no white sand beaches here.  inland there were taro and bamboo fields surrounded by relatively short mountains covered in jungle and cliffs.  we spent most of our time at the mangaia school with all of the kids from the island. all ages from elementary to high school were all in one complex and i think hanging out with and learning from them was the best part of the trip. they taught us how to weave palm leaves into everything. literally everything...baskets, skirts, leis, waist leis, glasses, rings, bracelets, shooter weapons, fans, and more random stuff. it really is pretty amazing how resourceful they are with what they have. i learned how to play the ukulele too. we also learned how to dance like pacific islanders, hula-like for the girls and a haka for the guys. the haka is a maori chant/series of gestures the men do to intimidate and show their power. on our last night, we had a performance for the entire island (it's very small) at the school where the kids did their native dances and fire twirling in their native costume and then we did our dances and sang in their native costume, sarongs for the guys and sarongs/coconut bras for the girls and all of us covered in palm leaves skirts, flower leis and head leis, and sea shell necklaces. it was fantastic. by the way, i have never seen so many different kinds of flowers that smelled so good. this was definitely not a vacation but more like a cultural learning experience and each of us had different feelings towards it, good and bad.

after the cook islands trip, things slowed down a bit travelling-wise because all of us started our internships full time and full time means less time. we did get to take a few more smaller roadtrips though.  i'll just list the highlights of the last 8 weeks and talk about them briefly:

-railway campus- just hanging around the dorm and hanging out with my friends from my program as well as a bunch i made from other programs from all over has been really great. they're all people i plan on staying in touch with and possibly visiting when i get back to america and are just all really fun, great people. i'll miss them a lot.

-waiheke island- an island about a 45 min ferry ride away from auckland; we only spent a day there but it's famous for its wineries and vineyards so we did some wine tasting, relaxed on the beach for a bit, and walked around the island. we also hitchhiked and rode around on the back of a truck and ate dinner at a returned services association with a bunch of war veterans. don't worry, there were about 10 of us, guys and girls, and the hitchhiking culture in new zealand is completely opposite of that in the states. it's done all the time here and people pick people up all the time too.

-halloween tapas night at the railway campus- everyone who lived in my dorm dressed up in costume and we had a big tapas night in the communal kitchen. the americans made a lot of traditional fall/halloween themed dishes and the europeans, south americans, africans, and asians made their own versions of halloween dishes and asked lots of questions. it was a good time.

-ecology field trip: snorkling at goat island- goat island is known here as the 2nd best place to go snorkling in the country. it's about an hour and a half north of auckland and it's a little island in a little bay really close to shore. so we snorkled in the area between shore and the island and saw stingrays and some colorful snapper.

-party at piha- piha is new zealands most famous and dangerous surfing beach. it's on the west coast and so it's a black sand beach. there's the long beach and then the town of piha which is on the side of a mountain since the whole area is surrounded by the waitakere mountain range. we had a party on the beach, at the very northern tip of it on a sand plateau with the tasman sea about a hundred feet away.  we saw the sunset over the sea and then just had a good time with around 70 people from the railway campus playing guitar, singing, and just hanging around the bonfire. awesome.

-hobbiton- we drove to the town of matamata about 2 hours south of auckland where the scenes from the shire were filmed for lord of the rings. hobbiton was filmed on a set created on a private farm surrounded by rolling green hills. we had to take a 20 minute shuttle over to the area because peter jackson made sure that the spot was secluded so no one would see it before the movies came out. the set itself has been dismantled almost completely except for the panels that made the walls outside the hobbit holes, some fences, and stairs.  but the place itself still seemed magical because the the land itself was still there and there would be no hobbiton without the party tree, party field, trees, and tiered hillside. the tour was really well run and really enhanced what was left of the set. and i got to dance on the party field :-).

-thanksgiving- fortunately, almost everyone in my program knows their way around the kitchen and so we had a pretty great thanksgiving over here. everyone contributed one or two dishes of traditional thankgiving goodies and so what resulted was a long table full of delicious food - turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, garlic broccoli/cauliflauer, creamed corn, mashed sweet potato, fresh cranberry sauce, fruit salad, stuffing, gravy, cornbread, biscuits, pecan pie, peach cobbler, apple crisp, pumpkin pie, garlic bread, cheesecake, icecream, and so much more i can't remember. but yeah, we took care of ourselves over here and ate all the leftovers the next
day.

-ecology field trip to the waitakeres- our class went for a tramp in the waitakere ranges. it actually turned out to be a pretty tough hike for about 3 hours but it was like going through a jungle because of the thick forest and running streams. every so often we'd get to a break in the trees where we could see the ranges from high up and seeing the plush green mountains surrounded by mist and fog was really pretty.

-auckland zoo- the zoo here has a pretty big collection of different animals and the zoo itself is beautifully kept with gardens and displays, all very colorful. also, i finally got to see a kiwi bird after 3.5 months. that made it worth it in itself.

-horseback riding along pakiri beach- pakiri is a town about 2 hours north of auckland. maggie and i drove up there for a day and went on a guided horseback ride along the shores of the pacific, the surrounding sand dunes, and hilly forest for about 3 hours. we were even allowed to ride in the surf and the weather was sunny and warm.  our guide even let us canter through the dunes and my horse actually started galloping at one point. i also drove for the first time finally on the way home. right side of the car, left side of the road is actually not hard and really kind of fun. i got used to it pretty quickly.

-coromandel peninsula- this past weekend, 12 of us went over to the coromandel peninsula for our last weekend in the north island, about 2 1/2 hours southeast of auckland. it's on the east coast of the country and is a peninsula on the north east side, known for its white sand and tropical atmostphere. i drove on the way and got to drive on narrow winding mountain roads most of the way. we used this trip to just relax on the beach all day on saturday and then on sunday, we went to hot water beach. it's a thermal spot on a normal looking beach and what you do is bring a shovel and dig a hole. if you dig in the right place, the hole fills up with steaming hot water and it's like a home made hot pool on the beach with the ocean waves crashing right next to you. it's pretty cool but it gets crowded during the summer months. from there, we went to cathedral cove, the most photographed beach in new zealand. it's a 45 minute hike there from the parking lot and when you get there, you immediately know why it's the most photographed. it's surrounded by limestone cliffs, the water is clear green/blue, white sand, there's a cave-like tunnel separating two sides of the beach, and waterfalls falling from the jungle covered cliffs. it's probably one of my favorite spots i've seen since i got here and it was a great way to end a great trip.

anyway, i fly out of here tomorrow (wednesday) and i'll be in sydney, australia for a week seeing the sights and visiting my friend emily, then on to fiji for five days to relax on the beach. hopefully the military coup going on there doesn't affect my flights and my stay over there. after that, i fly back to the states and land in boston on the morning of december 19!....if everything goes smoothly.

i've been so busy that i haven't really had a chance to sit back and think but it's really starting to set in that i'm leaving and this trip is over and that i have to say goodbye to people, the city, and the country really soon. i've already had to say bye to the friends i made from other programs, who all left back in mid november.  we'll see how i handle that tomorrow. anyway i've got lots of errands and packing to get done sooo i'll end it here.

i hope all is well back at home, hope you all had a great
thanksgiving, and i'll see everyone really soon.

just thought i'd let you know i'm still alive here in new zealand :-)

ok so, i warned you that i wouldn't be very good at keeping up with these emails before i left. now you know it's true.

i've been really busy and i've done a whole lot since then the first email i sent out...september 14...so here's the next chapter to this novel i'm living. it's going to be longer than the first one just because so much has gone on and i'm writing this almost like a diary entry--thoughts, feelings, and detail. hopefully you can make it all the way to the end.

the weekend after waitomo and taupo, our group went as a program to rotorua and rotoiti which is just about 45min-1hour away from taupo, so same area. on the way there, we stopped at matamata for lunch which sounds like your ordinary funky name new zealand town except this is the town where peter jackson filmed the scenes from the shire and hobbiton! i know i know, i'm a huge dork. i've accepted that. the set for hobbiton was actually made on a private sheep farm and after filming, the owners decided to leave up the main parts of the set and sell tours of it. smart folks. you have to take a bus over to where the area is so we didn't have enough time do it then.  hopefully we'll be able to get over there in the time we have left.


after lunch, we went on to rotorua. first stop there was zorb rotorua. so zorbing. pretty much you change into these uniforms and they drive you to the top of this hill. at the top, you get into this huge beachball/hampsterball type thing and they fill it around 5 inches deep with warm water. then they kick you through the gate, and you roll down the hill sloshing around inside with 2 other people. it was hilarious. way over-priced and a complete tourist trap, but hilarious. when you get out of the ball at the bottom, you have to slide through these little holes with the water and from the outside, it seriously looks like you're getting birthed by a giant beachball.  next up was street luging. what this one is, is you ride in a gondola to the top of a mountain. at the top, you get a bike helmet and these go cart like sleds with handle bars and you slide down these narrow swervy roads down the mountain, ride back up on a ski lift and then slide again. there were three levels of difficulty and by the third ride, we were all going down the advanced and trying to race each other around these curves that literally went straight down off the sides of them. in retrospect, i'm amazed no one fell off with all tokyo drifting that was going on.


after the street luging, the bus took us to the maori marae where we stayed. we had to be ceremoniously welcomed in order to enter it. girls had to wear skirts and no one was allowed to speak until we sang a song in maori. i wouldn't have minded the skirts if it hadn't been next to the lake and ridiculously cold and windy but it was only for a little while anyway. after we settled in, we went to the hall where they fed us dinner. the ceremonial welcome was like making us part of the family that owned that marae and with it, we were supposed to feel like home and be comfortable. it also meant that we had to help clean up and with dishes after dinner so we washed 30 people's worth of dishes in assembly line style in the kitchen. fun stuff.  


the for the rest of the weekend, the director took us to the rotorua hot pools which you can only get to by boat. they're literally these man-made pools that are naturally filled with the hot springs water that runs into them from the side of this mountain across the lake from town, completely secluded. the water in the pools was almost boiling and and the water in the lake was a drastic freezing opposite so a lot of us had some fun shocking our bodies by jumping from the pools into the lake over and over. after, we were set loose in the town of rotorua for the afternoon. it was pretty quiet since it wasn't tourist season but still interesting. that evening, we took a bush walk which is a hike through the thick new zealand forest. the trees and flora are so thick that you only see glimpses of the sky once in awhile until you emerge from it. it was almost jungle-like and very cool. you can do walks like these much easier in new zealand because there are very little predators, dangerous insects and ticks. the trail ended right at the lake and we came out as the sun was setting over it. it was so surreal looking with the colors of the sunset over the water, hills, and clouds that it looked almost like a painting.


the next weekend, seven of us flew to the south island for a super-fast-squeeze-as-much-as-we-can-into-four-days road trip fromchristchurch down to queenstown. we flew into christchurch which is on the northern side of the east coast and rented cars for the drive.  most of the scenes from lord of the rings were filmed in the south island so if you saw the movies, you can imagine how beautiful it is everywhere you turn. as soon as we drove out of christchurch, we headed inland straight toward the mountain ranges. we drove across the country from christchurch to greymouth on the west coast, via arthur's pass, a mountain passage in the center of the island. the road was curvy, often along cliffs in the valleys but still a good amount above sea level. and there was always something to look at. at arthur's pass, my car stopped and hiked up one of the mountains there. the trail itself was really rocky, steep, and actually a running stream so a lot of the tramping (hiking) was through water.  it got drier higher up but more steep and rocky. all four of us were pretty deadset on making it to the summit so eventually we got up to where there was snow on the ground and didn't stop there. the view, by the way, was fantastic since we could see up and down the mountain valleys, the snow caps, and all the hidden waterfalls on other mountains. we were only a couple hundred feet from the top when we finally turned around and booked it back down the mountain cause there were threatening clouds rolling in. 

we reached greymouth that night and found our hostel.  the next morning we moved on to drive down the west coast of the island. the road was sandwiched between the tasman sea and the southern alps so both sides were easy on the eyes for the trip. our next stop was the town of franz josef, home of franz josef glacier and fox glacier. the town offers countless glacier tour companies but the weather was drizzly and we were still tired from the hike the day before so we didn't do it but saw franz josef glacier from the lookout point. we did run into the other car from our group who had split from us after arthur's pass.  they had done the heli-hike, being taken up to the higher part of the glacier by helicopter and hiked around up there. from what they told us, the experience was once in a lifetime.  when we reached haast down on the southern central part of the west coast, we veered back inland towards wanaka where we were staying for the night. between haast and wanaka is 75 kilometers of complete wilderness so you have to make sure you fill up on gas before you enter it. we were thinking as we went through that if we ever got in an accident or broken down, we would be helpless since there was no one for miles around, it was thunderstorming, and we didn't have cell phones. luckily we made it through unscathed. we drove this stretch in overcast weather and at dusk, just after the sun was behind the horizon. this was one of my favorite and most memorable things i've done since i've been here. haast pass is a curvy mountain valley road high above sealevel. the clouds were so low and we were so high up that we were actually driving through them. those low clouds in patches around mountains, mixed with the dark green and plush upward slopes on both sides (think of scenery in jurassic park or gorillas in the mist), running blue streams criss crossing through sandy plains and waterfalls all over the mountain sides made the drive almost mystical and really sort of magical. when it got really dark, add an intense lightning storm in the middle and you've got an atmosphere that probably can't ever be replicated again. we also just missed hitting a few cows hanging out in the road in the dark.


wanaka is this small town on lake wanaka, tucked somewhere between mountains in the southern alps. the atmostphere there is much like that of a ski town, which is what it is during the winter, really inviting, cozy, and relaxed. that morning we rented kayaks and paddled across the lake surrounded by mountains. it was windy so it was a little rough paddling against the current and i definitely got a good arm and ab workout. there's a tiny island in the middle of the lake--no more than 10 minutes to walk around the circumference of it. we made it there tired and each found our own little spot on it to nap in the sun for a few hours. after we paddled back to town, we ate lunch and hit the road again towards queenstown.

this next stretch of road was through rocky gray hills covered in short shrubs, some patches of trees here and there, and rivers running below the cliffs through the valleys. we stopped at a bridge off the side of the road over one of these rivers, home of aj hacket bungee, the world's first bungee jump. it was closed so there was no one jumping but it was still cool to see it. the rest of the way to queenstown was during sunset so there were pink, purple, and yellow clouds behind the peaks.


in queenstown, we met up with one of my roomates, kali, who had stayed the whole weekend in queenstown at the flaming kiwi hostel. queenstown is the adventure sports capital of new zealand and possibly the world (not to be mixed up with the real capital, wellington). it also had wanaka's feel of a ski town on a lake except bigger and more touristy but still very pretty. the next day, the other three from my car went whitewater rafting on shotover river. kali and i went and did the shotover canyon swing. our guide "chrispy" drove our group into the mountains on this tiny dirt road until we made it to the canyon site where the swing was. the canyon swing is similar to bungee jump in the free fall sense except when the you reach the bottom of the cord, instead of bouncing up and down, you swing over the shotover river at the bottom a few times. the company offers you ten ways to fall from the platform so that each jump gives you a different view of falling. i did two of them, the first one i picked so that i could step off under my own power and the second one i picked so that i would be released by chrispy but also could see the ground coming at me the fastest headfirst. there's nothing more satisfying than being able to jump off the ledge on your own. it was awesome.

after the canyon swing, kali had to catch the shuttle for her flight back to auckland so i hung out by myself in queenstown for a few hours while i waited for the other crew to get back from whitewater rafting.  it's a really nice place to be alone in, to just walk around and take in all the scenery and people. when we met up again, we returned the car and headed to the airport for our flight back to auckland.  i've taken a lot planes to a lot of places and even the take off from queenstown is the most beautiful one i've seen.  meanwhile, the other car that came with us but split off again after the glaciers, went and did a lord of the rings tour on a large farm outside of queenstown. they got to drive their car up to this high hill that overlooked the town, lake, and mountains where a bunch of scenes of the escape from edoras through rohan to helm's deep were filmed. there are lots of amazingly tame animals all over this farm and people who come get a bucket of pellets and these animals eat from your hand. after this, they drove to dunedin, a small irish college town, and saw penguins and seals on the pacific east coast beach . 


i posted some of the pictures they took so you can see.  the south island is just a mix of every kind of landscape in one place: long green fields, thick forest, towering snowcapped mountains, royal blue lakes, rocky hills, criss crossing river valleys, huge blue and white glaciers, steep river canyons, and sea shores. i wish we had had more than four days to see it. since we had so little time, we didn't get to stop for a lot of things i would've liked to have some more time to take in. we also didn't get to see the east coast, northern section where abel tasman national park is(famous for white sand beaches and sea kayaking), the central section, and the very southern part (where milford sound and all the other sounds are). i definitely plan on coming back here for a longerperiod of time in the future.

i still have a whole week in the cook islands to tell you about but i'll wait for the next email to do that since i think this one is long enough.  it was an unforgettable experience and could probably take the length of this whole email to tell about this one trip. so i'll save it.

anyway, besides these weekend trips, work has started four days a week, eight hours a day and is a lot of work and my boss is really tough. i really have the most difficult and demanding internship in my program but i know i'll learn a lot from it. that last day of each week, i have an ecology class. we have class from 9am to about noon, then we take field trips each week to study that week's topic, and then head back to the lab to examine and analyze. so far we've done rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds and have the ocean, shoreline, and terrestrial ones coming up. the ocean one is this weekend and we're taking a snorkling trip for it :-).

that's it for now. hope everything's great at home and that you're all enjoying fall in new england. you don't realize how great it is until you have to miss it. have a happy halloween and i'll talk to you soon!

~h

PS. i'm here in auckland until dec 6 (dec 5 for you). it takes about 5-10 days for mail to get to me. my address is:

Heather Tang
The Railway Campus
209/1
Private Bag 106 601
Downtown Auckland 1030
New Zealand

not that i'm hinting at anything...just in case you like writing people's addresses in your address book or something like that... :-)

finally sending out a HI/novel from new zealand

i'm in auckland, new zealand and it's fantastic here but i've been ridiiiculously busy. when i get some more downtime i'll send more of these out, i swear. just thought i'd let everyone know i made it here safe and sound...3 weeks after the fact. yeah sorry.  so first, i'm going to answer the million dollar question...no, the toilets here don't flush in an opposite spiral than the US.  actually they flush straight down. from all sides. and every single toilet here is the same.

auckland is a great city and really multicultural, definitely different from boston when it comes to diversity. people here are also very friendly, random people say hi to you on the street and everyone is always willing to help you out or just chat. the only thing is, cities are cities and besides the diversity, the niceness, and the fact that drivers are absolutely insane and on the left side of the roads, walking on the streets and between skyscrapers gets kind of old. so that's why we've been traveling every single weekend since we got here. we have 16 hours of class squished in tue-thur and then fri-mon is the 4-day weekend until october, when we start our 32-hour a week internships/8 hour class on fridays. i've already started mine and i work 9 hours spread between tue-thur too. (explains the busy-ness).

the first weekend, our group had orientation and took a bus tour around the city and the west coast beaches. auckland has water on both sides of it so the coasts are really close. we went to the top of mt eden, the tallest dormant/extinct volcano in the middle of the city and from there, we could see the other ones that are spread out around the city, over 50 of them. we also saw mission bay and bastion point, 2 historical sites just outside of downtown. then finally we left the city and went a little bit out into the country to see the west coast blacksand beaches and have a wine tasting at a vineyard.

the next weekend, we went to northland, the peninsula north of auckland. i've never seen so many shades of green in my life, and when the coast sea is in the background and the sky is blue, the view is pretty breathtaking. we rented these vans called "spaceships" that are minivans by day and tents by night. pretty cool stuff. while we were in northland, we split up into smaller groups and mine decided to go "sand duning" aka sliding down probably a 60 degree steep sand dune, probably about 200 ft high on tiny plastic sleds. unfortunately, its as dangerous as it sounds and Raina, one of the girls with us, broke her ankle trying to stop before hitting the grass at the bottom of the hill. so we pretty much spent the rest of the weekend in a couple different hospitals. on the way to the 2nd one, we had to stop at Bay of Islands and since nothing was open for us to stay in that late, we slept on the side of the road next to the beach in our cars. quite an experience. beautiful sunrise though over the bay. we got to the 2nd hospital in whangerai (fang-ga-ray) and Raina ended up needing to get surgery so we played tourists around town while she got that. the trip ended up still being really fun and Raina took it like a champ and said she still had fun too despite the broken ankle.

last weekend, we took a road trip to waitomo and lake taupo.  waitomo is this tiny, very hilly town a little off the main road but under all those hills are these labyrinths of glow worm caves. we took a 4 hour guided tour of a section where we had to wear wetsuits (it was freezing) and literally hiked, climbed, squeezed through crevices/tunnels, swam, and tubed through a route under the hills.  when we turned the lights off of our helmets every so often and looked up, the ceilings of the caves were full of these glow worms and it really looked like green constellations. it was awesome. the next day was kind of a break day, we got to taupo and just visited a few waterfalls and boiling craters and finished off the day with a soak in these natural hot springs which were FREE. quality. we stayed in hostels both nights for cheap but they were really nice hostels. we left the next day but before we did, we did a little bit of jumping out of a plane at 12,000 ft. sky diving is probably the single most incredible thing i've ever done and there really are no words to describe it. just that i plan on doing it at least one more time before i leave here. probably helps that the landscape here is pretty incredible itself.

this past work week/work 3-days, was pretty rough on me since i had a paper due tue, a deadline for work on wed, and another paper due today (thur). i havent really slept or eaten a real meal for about 4 days now. but that's done now.

this weekend, we're going to rotorua as a program sponsored trip and staying in a Maori (the NZ indigenous people) marai (home land). theres also street luging, hot springs, and a little something called zorbing there--rolling down a big hill in a giant water filled air bubble/hampster ball. should be funny i think.

rotorua this weekend, the south island the weekend after, and the cook islands (tropical!) the week after that. sweet as (nz slang-means awesome, sweet, cool, etc...)

miss everyone and hope everythings great at home!