Days 96-104: Enter Witty Title Here

I have an excuse for why I haven’t updated- classes are about to be over, and I had such an awesome weekend that I wanted to do it justice with a real post, not a pansy half post. Real posts, however, take time.
On Friday me and my dive mates went with the uni scuba club up to Tutukaka, up in the bay of Islands region of New Zealand. It was about a 5-6 hour trip up through Auckland. There were green hills and lush grass, as through all of Waikato. We got there and settled into our accommodation, which was a 12 person bunk cabin. We made dinner and went to the local place to watch the rugby game- Waikato Chiefs (yeah!) versus the Wellington Hurricanes. It was the first rugby game I had ever watched, and it was intense. The temperature was about freezing point, so when the teams fought for the ball (the scrum) the steam from them collectively rose as if the field was on fire. These ethereal ghosts wisped away as the plays continued. With 3 or so minutes to go, the Hurricanes had the ball and were only 5 meters or so from scoring, and that score would give them the lead. A fogbank rolled in instantly- within 20 seconds the field went from totally clear to so obscured that the only people who could see the game were the players actually playing it. The cameras couldn’t see anything, nor could the fans. The game was broadcast from a camera on the field. The Chiefs won- they will play in the finals in South Africa for the first time ever.
Saturday we had our first dive. The site we were diving is known as the Poor Knights Islands, and they have an awesome history. Allow me to enlighten you.

The first picture of me diving ever!


In 1823, the Maori chief of the tribe living on the islands decided to join other chiefs and their warriors to fight a war in the Waikato area. The chief and all the warriors left, while the women, children and elderly stayed behind. A slave from a neighboring mainland tribe was able to steal a canoe and escape during this time. He paddled the 22km to the mainland, and alerted his tribe how he had been mistreated, and how easy it would be to take the islands. The tribe attacked the Poor Knights Islands, slaughtering everyone except for the Chief’s wife and son, who were taken into slavery. The chief, upon return, saw the destruction and declared the islands sacred. It has been illegal to touch foot on them ever since. No one has lived there in almost 200 years.
Our first dive of the day was a series of underwater pinnacles (rock columns) called Trevor’s rock. The area was covered in kelp, clear blue water, nudibranchs, scorpionfish, moray eels, and tons of other organisms I won’t bore you with.

We swam under submarine arches, relaxed on the bottom, and had an awesome dive. The second dive of the day was called meditation wall, and I see why- it was colorful, full of life, and totally serene. There was even an undersea cave, but I did not enter- I don’t like overhead environments, and so I won’t dive in them.
Our second dive took us to the best dive spot on the Poor knights, and often considered the best dive in New Zealand- northern arch. The northern arch is an archway that is perhaps 10 meters across at the surface, but once you go underwater a few meters, the arch flares out to become much wider. It was breathtaking, literally. So literally, in fact, that one of our group had to surface without stopping to decompress because he used up air too quickly- as a result, we didn’t get to spend much time in the arch at all. It was astounding what I did see, however.

Our last dive was called Ann’s rock, and it was another undersea pinnacle. This time, we descended to 18 meters (60 feet) and began a spiral ascent, seeing everything that grew on the walls of the pinnacle. It is here that I, for the first time ever, got to handle an underwater video camera. The following is what you would have seen if you were me on Ann’s rock.



In some of the shots the fish look as if they are moving down and the entire shot looks like it is on its side, but it is not. Ann's Rock is an almost vertical surface, but it looks horizontal. The shots of nothing but blue are looking straight down- we couldn't see the ocean floor.

After the 4th dive, we visited Riko Riko cave, the largest sea cave in the world, at 8 million cubic feet. The boat easily fit inside the cave. It receives almost no direct sunlight- all light is reflected from the water into the cave, resulting in ferns that grow and hang from the ceilings. The water is crystal blue, the cave walls are every color of the rainbow, and they are filled with glowworms. Bands have played here, Maori have done haka here, Japanese submarines have repaired here, even a man brought submersible speakers here and played music- just to watch the dolphins come in and swim to it. The acoustics are fantastic. I want to be there now instead of writing this.




The cave photos were taken by me. The undersea photography was done by Brice (AKA Frenchie), my dive buddy. The underwater video was all my work.

Needless to say, the trip was… unforgettable.

Sunday night we made dinner and called it an early night. We got up at 5 or 6 am on Monday to make the half day trek back to Hamilton. When we returned we got unpacked and I went to class. The leaves falling and the scent of autumn in the air, combined with my supreme feeling of rightness, reminded me of when I was at NCSSM junior year, when all felt right. I love that sensation- it makes me strangely and happily nostalgic. Monday carried this feeling with it.

Tuesday was another good day- I got my photography assignment back, and I was given an A+. I worked long nights, weekends and lunch periods in the chemical soaked darkroom to get these assignments and shots exactly how I wanted them. I sacrificed time with friends and sleep to make them perfect. I wanted that A+, and I totally earned it. I felt like I was walking on air when I left that class. The rest of Tuesday was good as well.

Wednesday was filled with work, but not much else. Thursday was also filled with assignments and labs, and also was the day I took my SCUBA rescue diver certification test. I needed an 88 to pass, and luckily soared on by with a 92. All I need to do now is fill out some paperwork and get my first aid class in, and I will be golden! We went out to town on Thusrday, and we had a good time dancing- but due to my back acting up, I took off fairly early and went to bed.

Friday I went to physiotherapy (where I learned that I am likely going to have to do daily stretches and exercises the rest of my life to keep my back from shutting down). I then proceeded to spend 2 hours in a studio doing a photo shoot for a friend of mine- this was not for any classes or anything else- it is just good practice for me, and good pictures for my friend. I really, really enjoyed it, and I think this is a good sign in my steps to becoming better at photographing people. This experience is important for me. After the photoshoot, Fabian, Jens and I went out for a drink and some appetizers at a local place called Iguana. The music was awesome, the food delicious, and the atmosphere perfect. It was classy yet relaxed, a place where you could dress up if you wanted to, but you didn’t have to. One thing I have noticed here (and this is one of a very long list) is that it is quite a bit more expensive to eat out here than it is back home. I can count the amount of times I have eaten out while here in New Zealand on one hand- most of that is because my meals are covered by the cantine, but it also is because New Zealanders cook a lot more here than we Americans do back home. In fact, I know a few chefs that I have met here, who cook amazing dishes just to do it. I miss the food from home, but It is a paltry thing to long for in the midst of so much beauty here. Friday night I spent up staying up way too late hanging out with an RA I know. I love the RA’s here because they know that us internationals aren’t first year students- they know that we (for the most part) are responsible and mature, and thus they treat us as such. I am happy to say that many of the RA’s in Student Village have also become awesome, awesome friends of mine.

Saturday I woke up early and went with my German friend Jens (from the South Island trip) and we went to the local market here in Hamilton. In this market are local stands filled with all sorts of things- the entire market had a heavily Maori influence- me and Jens were definitely in the minority, and it was really cool. I actually have come to really love the Maori culture, and I feel that I am beginning to understand some of the contemporary issues that surround it; nonetheless, I love the Maoris I have met and know they will stay good friends for a long time.

The stands had anything from food, to groceries, to clothing, to toys, to bone and greenstone carvings. Jens and I easily spent 2 hours (and a good chunk of change, we left when he was broke) at this market, and I would happily go back, just to look at the work again. Most of the stuff was really reasonably priced, and I got a few good deals… but you will just have to wait until I return to see what I got!

Saturday afternoon was spent watching movies (as it was a rainy day and I had tons of work to do). I generally do not like watching movies here- I feel I am wasting my time- but sometimes one gets so tired and lazy during a rainy day that a movie seems the best way to relax. We watched Slumdog Millionaire, and it was a really good movie. At least twice, the tension was so palpable that I could feel my heart racing, with me and Zia shouting at the screen. That’s a good sign of an awesome movie, I’d say. After the movie we had dinner, and I proceeded to spend the rest of the day just veggin’ out, doing nothing but hanging out with friends, just like I used to do before life seemed to get so hectic. I, of course, got nothing done, but it was everything I needed and thought it could be.

Days 86-95: A super busy week

So, this past week has been amazingly busy. I had a biochemistry test on Monday, on the Electron Transport chain, Beta oxidation, Oxidative Phosphorylation, Lipid and carbohydrate biosynthesis, release and uptake… you get the point. I spend literally my entire weekend in the cafeteria, where there are whiteboards for announcements. We would get in early after breakfast, use the whiteboards, study all day, take breaks for lunch and dinner (where people were giving us funny looks for what we had drawn up on the boards, entire diagrams of how electrons move in cells, and other unintelligible things) Friday, Saturday, Sunday and half of Monday were taken up on this. As soon (and I literally mean right after) as I finished my test, I ran to the darkroom and started working on my pieces for my second photography assignment. I will post them up once I put up my exhibition pieces, but they are all thematic- they deal with seeing biology in everyday life, and seeing everyday life in a biological context. I spent all my free time Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday working on this project. I have 24 hour Darkroom access, so I worked until early in the morning hours a few times. All the security guards know me by first name, and a few are photographers. So, as you can see, there hasn’t been much to write about or much time to write about the nothing I have to write about. I will write about this, though:
I am beginning to miss home. I don’t miss my house as much as I miss North Carolina. I don’t want to pick up and go home by any means (I am in love with this country way too much) but I appreciate more every day how lucky I am to live where I do. Two things have catalyzed this feeling. The first is that I have started going through photos of home, to edit them. I have about 8000 pictures, and I want to slim it down to maybe 2000 (a lot are duplicates). So, going through them has reminded me of the beauty of my state. The second is my civil war class- we watch a lot of movies and documentaries, where the misty green hills of the south are illuminated by sunrise. I miss the southern drawl the historians have as they describe a war that almost tore our country in twain. I miss the southern accent, despite how annoying it sometimes get, it has a sort of congenial warmth I miss. I am not regretting staying here in the least, but it makes me proud to be a North Carolinian. To take a quote from a friend:

“The red clay of North Carolina runs through my veins.”

How true. Once a Carolinian, always a Carolinian.

Day 85: Dylan’s birthday

Dylan is one of my friends here, from NY state. He turned 20 today, and as a result we had a little celebration for him. After a long day of class (which was mind draining) some of our group started cooking for Dylan and the rest of us, with the groceries I had bought the day before. By the end we had 2 chicken pasta bakes, baked potato, and pineapple for desert. It felt good to have home cooked food again. After dinner, we went to our friends room and gave Dylan his gifts, which included a necklace with a strawberry on it (as he dressed up as a strawberry for a party at the start of the year, he never really got over the stigma), and a bottle of Jagermeister. We were all in these rooms, having a few drinks and wishing Dylan a happy birthday, when we decided to play a game I hadn’t played since my high school days, during the winter months at Cold Stone Creamery. The game is simple: write the name of a famous person on a scrap of paper- give it to the person next to you, without them looking at it. Take the paper that you have received, lick it, and stick it to your forehead. Everyone now knows who you are except you. Then, by answering yes and no questions only you must determine who you are. The game is exceptionally fun, but I came in last place (I had a crappy person, Matt Damon). Other people had Napoleon, Jesus, Albert Einstein, Stalin, and Gandhi, among others.
After our game, we decided to go to town to celebrate the birthday. Two interesting things happened while we were there- first of all, our bus driver looked very familiar. In fact, he looked almost identical to Jermaine Clement, from Flight of the Conchords.

Jermaine is the one on the right. Our bus driver had the glasses and all.
Once we were in town, we went to a student club that we frequent. The running joke among us is that the clubs all over NZ play only 11 songs, and they take about an hour to repeat. This night they added a 12th song to the list: I think it is something along the lines of “I’m on a boat”. This has been a pretty popular song in the past few months, but I can’t help but cringe at the fact it is escaping beyond the realm of the internet scene, where I am sure it was made as a joke. Go look it up on YouTube if you want- but I warn you: it contains really strong language, and repetitive, idiotic yet strangely catchy lyrics. If you do know what song I am talking about, then kick your head back in laughter at the mental image of 150 people shouting at the top of their lungs “I’m on a BOAT! I’m on a BOAT! Take a look at me I’m on a ************* BOAT!” while bobbing to the beat. The night ended up being pretty fun, despite the constant rain. Dylan enjoyed himself.

Days 83-84: Getting back into things

So, Tuesday was a pretty uneventful day. I got some work done, worked with my first film shot on Saturday, and did a bit of studying for my Rescue Diver test scheduled for Wednesday. Later that night I shot my second film of the project with one of my subjects, models, whatever you want to call them. The focus of the main piece was about breast cancer, and ideas I really want to develop with it. I got a pitiful amount of work done the rest of the night.

Today I woke up to Waikato weather- during the winter, it gets chilly, but not piercing cold. The lowest temperatures here are around freezing. Winter is more like the rainy season here- for days it has been partially overcast, raining a few times an hour then stopping. This is normal, from what I have been told.
Anyway, I woke up and began to study for this SCUBA test. I spent the entire day working on the rescue diver manual. My first reaction was that I was a fool for putting this off so much- there is so much to know, and no possible way to determine it all in only one day. This would take at least a week of constant preparation to understand, and months to master. I slaved over the book, absorbing every detail as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Night came, and it was time to go and test my skills. I walked a half hour in rain, at night, to get to the dive shop. I arrived precisely at the appointed time. I was one of 3 people there.

Thanks to my wonderful, glorious, amazing internet service here, I did not receive a fairly critical email that notified the rest of the class that the test had been postponed a week to next Wednesday. Half relieved, half annoyed, I trudged back a half hour through the dark rain to uni. I used the rest of my night to study for an impending biochemistry test (on Monday) and developed the film I had shot the night before. On my walk back from the education building (where the security guards know me by heart since I am in there more nights than not, working on photography), I was listening to classical music, and walked past an artistically lit pond that I cross every day and most nights. I realized I was in no real hurry to get back to my room. I began to slow my pace, began to meander a bit. Perhaps it was just the music, or mood I was in, or the fact that my back was killing me, but I decided to lay on a raised portion of the wooden boardwalk and watch the stars as I listened to Anton Dvorak’s 7th symphony. Sipping the crisp autumn air, listening to an energetic symphony poorly chosen for something as passive as stargazing, a sense of peace and happiness came over me. Ask yourself, how often do you look up, stop everything you are doing at a whim, and stare at the unobstructed night sky? It is humbling. We go about our days and nights, our busy schedules and dramatic existences, and still the stars burn. They look down on us with constant and cold eyes, distant observers in a universe so old and vast that some of them have already winked away, unbeknownst to us. They sit, day after day, night after night, millennia after millennia. It makes one want to take life just the slightest bit slower. It made my night better.

Tomorrow is my busy day, with obligations from sun up (okay, 9 am) to sundown. Every assignment creeps the tiniest bit closer, but I think I’ll take it one step at a time. The assignment will get done, and the stars will still burn as bright as ever. No point in adding stress.

Days 69-82: My apologies

When I began this blog, I promised myself (and a few of you) I would update every day, to imitate the valorous ones who had done so before me. Well, as can be seen, I have failed in that promise. I would like to make excuses, and say that my internet has been down, that I have been too busy, or that I have had nothing to write about, but those all would be lies. The truth is, no matter what I do, sometimes I just don’t feel like sitting down and writing about it after a long day. Let me tell you, the days here are long. I often (especially when traveling) look back at the end of the day and wonder if what happened in the morning really was the same day. Here I will make a rather pitiful (though full hearted) attempt to remember the important features of the past 2 weeks. Here goes nothing…

My last post was on the 30th of April. On the weekend (the 2nd and 3rd of May) I began training to become an SSI certified rescue diver. The training involved an all day pool session on Saturday, with a trip to a lake in the Rotorua region on Sunday. We worked on rescuing panicked divers, unconscious divers, and tired divers. We learned to improvise on the fly, how to take control of a situation, and various other useful skills. The lake itself was freezing- the water was in the upper 50’s (think winter swimming in Wilmington) and we were in it for several hours. The wetsuits were absolutely necessary- without them, we all would have become hypothermic and died, and that would probably reflect badly on the instructor. After working out some skills at the lake, the instructor threw some surprises our way. First, while we were eating lunch on the shore, 2 of our team slipped off, got on gear, and jumped in the water. They swam out and began to ‘panic’. All of a sudden we had a group of inexperienced rescuers without gear on who had to go get these two before they passed out or drowned. I was the first one to be ready: and when I mean ready, I mean I had on fins and a woefully inadequate half of an under layer wetsuit on. I swam out in the freezing cold water with almost no gear, calmed diver number one, and began to tow her back. I got switched out to a properly equipped diver, and got up to help bring them to shore. This was the easy task we had to do (and this wasn’t just me acting, this was the entire team). Later on, we went out for paired dives with our buddies. Surfacing, we saw a panicked diver in the distance- her mask was on her forehead (a big no no) and she was flailing about. Again, me and my partner got to her first (as we were the first to surface) and found out her dive buddy was missing. Let me just say that the visibility of this lake was about 6 feet- any further and everything became murk. To find an unconscious diver underwater, with no visibility in an area a hundred meters or more on each side is HARD, let me tell you. Eventually after towing the first diver back to shore and calling an ambulance to treat her for shock, I stood on shore and looked for bubbles, the only way you can really find a diver instead of finding a body. Eventually we found the bubble stream and brought the diver to the surface, at which point she stopped breathing. We had to tow her to shore while giving rescue breaths, bring her up to dry land, and administer oxygen. We had ‘saved’ her- but it was a sobering experience that truly gave us an appreciation for how much could go wrong so quickly.
Our dive group was quite diverse, and included members from NZ, USA, France and Germany. I found the course (which isn’t finished yet) quite useful- I actually feel that I was unsafe diving before having started it, and I am sure that I will feel even more safe and secure underwater than before. In fact, I think my next step will be to be oxygen certified, so that if someone needs it I’ll be able to administer it without blowing everyone up.
After this tiring weekend was a week full of class. I had to turn in one paper, but not much else happened. On Thursday (day 75) a bunch of us hung out and had a few drinks at a friend’s flat- it was a nice relaxing night in the midst of stressing about photography and chemistry. This was only the beginning of a very good weekend.
Friday me and a few friends watched two very good films. The first was a German film called The Lives of Others, about East Germany in the 1980’s. It was an absolutely mesmerizing film- it was exceptionally long, but good. It took us over an hour to prepare for the film, because the dvd player would not work correctly. We tried to sort it out for 20 mintues, then failed. We eventually decided to play it through a computer onto the TV, so 45 minutes, 3 laptops, a VGA cable and very damaged speakers later, we had the movie running- on half of the screen. After we got it sorted and ate a snack, we watched The Boondock Saints, my favorite film. This viewing marked the 19th time I had seen the film, and I still will gladly see it 19 times more. The scary bit about it, though, is that now I can recite pretty much the entire movie by heart. It is so incredibly good.
Saturday, I did quite a few things. I used the early afternoon doing a photoshoot for my photography class, developing some ideas. The first half of the afternoon actually was spent developing my ideas, as I spent 2 hours with my models doing shots and then subsequently finding that I had no film in my camera- how I missed this crucial step can only be explained by my absentmindedness. I ran back, reshot the poses, and got even better shots than I anticipated. Once again, I am excited to work in photography. Saturday, I had promised I would go out with some people who live on my floor (they went out Thursday and were disappointed I was not going out with them then). We went to a local club called the Outback, which is split into two different parts. They had rented out half of the venue, which was awesome. We stayed late into the night, and it sure was interesting. I went in knowing only one or two people, and left after being initiated into about 3 families. By the end, several people I had talked to for hours (about everything from fireworks to evolution’s role in religion) had started calling me their brother, and introducing me to more people as such. It was fun because it was a true experience for me- I was the only non New Zealander there that I could tell (until later in the night at least), and I really feel like I connected with several people on several levels. It was the highlight of the weekend.
On Sunday, about 25 people from Student Village went to Waihi beach and a nearby gorge for Mother’s day. It was something I decided to do because, among other reasons, I needed to be around people and occupied on that day. We drove in a very bumpy route, and stopped at a gorge that used to be host to gold mines. We walked through the completely black tunnels, with nothing to light our way. My geologist friend marveled at the mineral deposits in the rocks (there were geodes sticking out the side of the rock walls that you could take out if you had the right tools). In the middle of the gorge was a flowing river, deep at some points with pits from erosion, littered with rapids and boulders. It was a refreshing scene.
After this we went to Waihi beach. After a non-wetsuit swim in 59 degree water, we went along looking for shells. The sheer abundance and diversity boggles the mind- back home, people will be walking early at the morning to get shells that here would be so subpar you wouldn’t even give them a second glance. Here, if you pick up a shell and it isn’t perfect, you can just toss it away- there are 200 more literally within an arm’s length that will suit you just fine. I have been coming back from every beach trip with shells, every inland trip with rocks. This can’t be healthy. On the beach we also caught dinner- Pipi, a type of burrowing bivalve. We gathered a few dozen and later cooked them up. After the beach, we went to some local hot pools- for 7 bucks, you could go into a series of pools of varying degrees of temperature that got their water from a geothermically active spring 200 meters below. It was quite the day- I was so relaxed on the way home that I just fell straight asleep. To finish off the weekend, I caught up with a few friends and watched a series called ‘Black Books’, a British comedy. I don’t watch TV anymore- I find that it takes away time I could better use to things that aren’t as passive- but this show is hilarious. The humor is so incredibly dry (my style) that I was in stitches for 3 hours. I highly recommend it.
Monday was full of work, a ‘top secret’ project, and a few bits and pieces, including *gasp* lecture. I have a test next Monday that promises to be a killer, so I guess I have some work to do.