ISV Tour New Zealand 2010 part 1 Project Tour

Thursday - Saturday June 26th
(The dates are weird for this entry because I crossed the international date line, took a red eye flight, so I basically got super disoriented for a day.) Man, I've been awake for a long time. Woke up in the morning and hung out at Barnes & Noble for like an hour, then had my flight at 4:50 to LAX. 5 hour layover, then the 14ish hour trip to Auckland! All the people on this trip that I have met are hella chill. Once I met up with my group of 8 that I would be living with, we became hella close. This really is a cool group of people, and they're all really nice, no one anything like the impersonal or self-absorbed individual that you usually pick out when meeting a group of strangers. As I'm sitting here at night writing this first entry, everyone is mulling about in our new firehouse accommodations and keeping warm by the wood stove. There is Emily on the couch next to me; she is from Davis, but attends Humbolt State. Christina is from LA and goes to UC Riverside while Steven is all the way from Nebraska. Kathryn is from North Carolina. Janelle, Joanne, and Finn are the "foreigners" of our group, from Quebec (that's Canada) and the last 2 from Ireland. We spent an entire day talking about our colleges, making jokes about scroggin, laughing about Christina's jokes, and sharing our different cultures. So far we've been discussing accents. We also had to buy food today, since we cook for ourselves for the first 2 weeks of our project tour. Bought about $900 of food today, 3 shopping carts full. We have Chauncy as our project tour leader and he's really cool and funny, acts just like us. We all call him Chauncer. We've all got our own, of course: Kent, Feathers, S-Dawg, Frizzles, Bambi, Strawberry (or something, her name kept changing), Sharkie, and Shimmy. Guess which one is me. So I'm going to sleep at 1:40 here. That's like almost 6am back home, and I got about 6 hours of sleep on the plane. Oh well, I'm too excited to be tired.

Sunday 27th
So hella chill day today. Woke up at 10 and lounged about all morning and ate breakfast with everyone while it rained outside. Lots more deep discussions. Went on a bus ride of our area! Took a bunch of pictures of the changing countryside and we hiked about 10 minutes to the center of the North Island. It is so beautiful here.

Monday 28th
More talking about accents today. Don't take my short sentences as though I'm bored of them. I am in fact quite entertained, part of the discussions and learning a lot about others. Don't expect me to remember what we talked about, though. You know that I'm not good at that. Really want to come back with an Irish accent. Volunteering was pretty easy because the workers at DOC are hella laid back. We scrubbed rust off of old historical pieces of machinery and painted fish oil on them. Went on a walk through the "Buried Forest" on our break, too. During our free time tonight I taught everyone ZOO. Played Ninja with 3 people, cause everyone else went to sleep or was too tired. Boo.

Tuesday 29th
We planted trees today on the banks of a river! They're hella cute haha, little seedlings less than 2 feet tall, and we planted an entire hillside! I feel like Godzilla walking through this forest of little trees that only go up to my thighs. It rained a little, but at least it was when we had our lunch break, and we hid under a camping overhang. Finished working at 2 cause we work in Beast Mode! It was still a beautiful day though. I taught everyone the extent of my chinese, and on the ride back we found the end of a rainbow right next to the firehouse! Like legitimately the end - it went strait into the ground! On our excitement about finding a Leprechaun and a pot of gold Finn said the following "If you find a pot of gold or a leprechaun, HOLD ONTO IT. If a leprechaun tells you that he'll give you his gold is you release him, DON'T DO IT cause that little bugger will just disappear and take the gold and you'll be left with nothing!" So once we dropped off all our dirty stuff Steven went on a walk to go find the gold and kill the leprechaun LOL.

Wednesday 30th
Another chill day working. Seeing a pattern? The park rangers again follow a very... leisure filled lifestyle. We sat around a lot waiting, like our 1 hour coffee break in the morning before we had even started any work. So basically since we had done so much work yesterday we didn't have any work to do today, so we drove an hour up to a hunting campground and picked up litter. Sprinkled a little so we hid in a shelter around 11 and ate lunch. Talked a little, particularly about what would happen if the world suddenly stopped turning. This is about the point where Kathryn started showing her annoying side. Went back to Pureora, ate more, went back to the fire house and played on the seesaws until we got wet again. Oh, to be a child again. One of the park rangers Mike swung by and brought us beer yay! It's our last night here in the fire house and we're sitting by the fire reading with Mr. Charlie Dawg. We call him C-Dawg, and played with him (and decks of cards) all night. Kathryn is really starting to annoy me. Her voice, her need to smother you in her opinions and experiences. I really wish Ninad was here to shut her down.
Oh my god it is beautiful here tonight. There are absolutely no clouds in the sky and no light pollution at all. I missed the sunset, unfortunately, and my camera isn't very good at taking night photos. But the stars here are amazing. More than I've ever seen in my entire life. It's beautiful, surreal how many we can see, and how distinct the Milky Way is. It's like in photography where people trek out hundreds of miles into the middle of nowhere just to get away from the city lights. One person I know would love to see this.

Thursday July 1st
We moved places today. Started the morning by cutting out some New Zealand Flax into small individual bunches. It's called Harakiki. After lunch we traveled to a Marae where we stayed the for the night. In the afternoon we planted the flax we had cut next to a riverside to protect the water from agricultural runoff as a gift to Maori for letting us stay the night. It was really beautiful here, I'm loving the countryside here. At night it's cold as polar bear balls here. Had dinner and played "pass the poem" in the dining house and stood around the stove talking about culture.

Friday 2nd
I'm writing this on Saturday because we were all to tired yesterday. So lets see: The morning we spent at the Marae and one of the Maori named Tu talked to us about his culture and the Maori stories. We saw this sick ass carving he was making that represented his family's heritage. It was sweet as. After we left we went to the supermarket again and bought $800 of food. Quite a bit less than last time. Then we went to our next lodging at an area near Waitomo Caves. It's an incredibly nice caving lodge with an amazing view over farmland and a valley, huge rooms, a living room and a huge kitchen. We played with the dog Sunny and took group pictures in our "home tree." We couldn't resist going exploring down this dark forested area, got lost in the mud, then Joanne, Janelle, Finn and I played with the electric fence for about half an hour. No joke. Nice hot shower, then played with the dog for the rest of the night. There are a couple of cavers who are staying at the place too, but they don't seem to mind the noise our group is making. Tired, so I slept at 9:30. Earliest I've been to sleep this whole trip.

Saturday 3rd
Finally got to work pretty hard today, and I loved the feeling of exercise. We worked on trail maintenance at some industrial complex and built the entire entrance to one of the longest trails in the world. I worked on smoothing out a path and then filling up a big hole with dirt to even out the path. It was pretty rewarding because we got a lot done. By the end, we had built a whole 200 feet of trail, created a bridge, and planted a bunch of native plants in ridiculously rocky soil. Then back to the lodge to cook and shower. We stopped by Curly's Bar and picked up some beer, so it's been really relaxed tonight eating and casually drinking.

Sunday 4th
Yee free day! Woke up at 10 to pee, back in my sleeping bag until 11:30 and had 3 sandwiches and 2 pieces of toast. Then we headed down to the beach. Loved the black sand there, it was really fine and actually pretty warm even though it was too cold and windy to go swimming. Then we drove off to go explore a small cave and saw a waterfall. After we went tot Curly's to use the internet, a glorious 20 minutes (time goes by quickly) and I got a beer and fries with Joanne. Played pool with Finn, but I really wanted to watch the world cup going on. It must be exciting. Miss my friends, but got 3 more weeks of this amazing trip. Really getting to know everyone now, although it does mean that we have less to talk about now. I really want to learn more about poi. Strange dreams... but those are private.

Monday 5th
Back to our usual routine today. Wake up at 7, eat 2 PB&Js pack up for the project, leave by 8. I thought it was a little dull. Our job was on week duty, digging out the roots of invasive lillies to protect the rare native Tainui plant. It was fun traipsing around the bush, but the digging of the plants was less fun that I thought. More fun than picking up trash, though. And the exploring how to get back to the van was fun, too. I really like climbing up impossibly steep hills. Enjoyed the hour drive; I like these drives where I can just contemplate and watch the scenery go by. It's nice to just slow down and think to yourself, or just clear your mind. Talked to Joanne about teeth and home friends and stuff like that. Think she's going to try to hook up with Drew (The Warden) tonight. She and Emily are probably just joking though. Maybe not, cause they decided that he's not gay anymore. Steven made awesome pizza for dinner, so I'm pretty full! Oh, we stopped by Curly's again and watched Rugby League. Finn and Emily say that this is a completely different sport, and it doesn't look as fun. We need to do some laundry tomorrow, desperately, so we're going to town tomorrow cause the washing machine is still broken at our place.
Apparently our group is the hardest working. And the other big group is 30+ people. I much more enjoy the intimacy of this small group. We played a map game today, and it failed miserably. Pictures are needed. So now the girls are straightening their hair and we are waiting until we are tired and go to bed. We killed Sunny. She's so tired, poor dog.

Tuesday 6th
Awesomely spectacular day today, my favorite by far. Drove up to the mountains to work on some track cutting in a protected frog reserve. We had to hike up about an hour up a path to get to the hidden trail. The first part wasn't very steep, but lots of puddles and mud made the trip a little adventurous. We stopped and had lunch before we did our work. P.S. I am bomb at making tuna sandwiches. I used giant clippers to cut back underbrush and hanging sticks and vines along the path that researchers use. It was loads of fun. Basically exploring and bushwhacking, so much excitement that I didn't know how far we had gone or how long we had been working for. But it was cool because we got to chop away trees and climb over dead trunks and squeeze through holes. Janelle got hit by a tree. She was pretty pissed about that haha. Then we got to the "end" where there was a beautiful waterfall. Of course we had to climb up and I took pictures from underneath it. Then we hiked back and beasted through the mud. Tackling our laundry at night was kind of a pain. There were only 2 laundry machines in the laundromat we went to, so we went to some pub and got dinner while we all took turns with our loads. Then we passed out at home. Without showers or anything ewww.

Wednesday 7th
Started late today cause the DOC guys were supposed to meet us at our place at 8:30 but didn't show up until 9:30. We planted along a river near a beach to help the whitebait fish populations and learned about the native fish species. It wasn't bad work, but the long grass was being a total bitch to dig through and the sand fleas were eating me alive. If I'm itchy for the next couple of days I'm going to be pissed. We learned that XTina believes that zombies will emerge from a mutated strain of rabies and that swords are better than guns in zombie-defense mode. Her house is probably already zombieproofified. It was an absolutely beautiful day so we decided to do some beach cleanup along the sunset. We wanted to go swimming in the ocean because Janelle had never been swimming in the ocean before. I didn't bring any swim stuff so I was just going to go in my boxers, but we decided to just go back instead. Janelle brought back a ziplock bag of sand and shells. Nice peaceful drive back because most of the people were on their ipods or sleeping. A couple of us got dropped off at caving house so I showered and stared the fire while others went to Curly's or went to get more groceries. We're running out of food. :( But fire is warm :) Nice talk tonight about conservation and continuing practices at home.

Thursday 8th
Today was our last day in Waitomo with Chauncy. Our volunteer work was planting more native plants ona river bend near a rugby field in front of Curly's Bar. We had to climb through some bushes and over barbed wire to get to the other side, then made a fireman's chain and threw the the plants across the river. After planting about 400 trees we played a scrum on the field against one of those football training pad things. Went back home, showered, had lunch, then teh DOC guys came over for some Q and A. Then went to get food while we packed up, then had a huge BBQ for dinner that was pretty damn good. I'll really miss this beautiful place