First week of class update!
Kia Ora everyone! Once again, it’s been a long time since I have posted an update!
Still all has been going well down under! I will update you guys on some of the things I have been up to, and I will make a part two blog post with more so this one isn’t overwhelming!
After my student trip to Picton and the Marlborough Sounds, we had our first course Sustainable Community. Our professor was Dr. Mick Duncan who is probably one my favorite humans I have ever met. He taught us various frameworks on people and how to create community. It was a tough course emotionally and my heart broke over and over again in a good way. I explained in my last update that I learned issues people of this world face that I completely chose to ignore. The first week of Sustainable Community was thought provoking and made me realize many things about myself I hadn’t known before.
It is truly hard to explain all that I learned from Mick. But I now know all around the world there is hurt. There is damaged relationships between people as well as the planet we live on. The course ended with an exam and some homework assignments. It was a great end to part one of this class but what was even better was knowing another student trip was going to occur after classes!
Our program director Courtnay (who is the most genuine and amazing women ever) had to travel up to the Nelson area that weekend so us students could tag along to go tramping. Tramping is New Zealand’s name for hiking or backpacking! We left Friday afternoon to head to Abel Tasman National Park up north but still on the South Island. We started our tramp by hiking about 40minutes into the trail way and set up camp on a beach campground. It was a beautiful first night there! We had Weka birds trying to steal food from us and ate hot dogs on a gas stove. We adventured around this beach and stayed up late to see the stars. It was beautiful to see the milky way and some of the sky I would not see in the northern hemisphere.
The next morning, we woke at sunrise to see dew on the ground and waves crashing into the beach. We chilled at the beach that day before we started our Saturday by tramping 8km further into the trail. We had to filter or boil our water to make sure it was “potable” as my friend David would say, which was new for me. This was my first tramp/backpacking adventure, and it was a blast!
We headed towards Anchorage which was a campground that was full of fellow adventurers. There were a variety of families and people of all ages camping there. That lunch time we made PB&J with smooshed bread! We set up camp and got to adventure the mini harbor there! There were some caves there with Weta which are like huge crickets I believe. That night we sat around a fire and ate some ramen around the campfire. This campsite was nice because there were actual toilets and not smelly port-a-potties (Is that how you spell that?). But this campsite reminded of me of when I was young and our camping days!
The next day we packed everything up and booked it back to the entrance! It took about 3+hrs to tramp back but passing random people and saying Kia Ora makes the tramp go fast too! But we made it back to Courtnay with a few blisters on our toes and hips (from the packs I did know how to wear it—thank you new friends hehe).
It was a blast of a first week! I will defiently be updating the blog soon on the week after this one but all is going well down under! I have been crazy busy but also taking my time to rest by reading or being outside instead of my phone!
