Wow

What up peeps?

I officially only have 42 days left in the wonderful land known as New Zealand. Oh, boy. Where has the time gone?! Seriously, I was at a coffee shop today reading before class, and I had a weird flashback to the first morning we were in Wellington and before orientation a few of us went to this coffee shop for breakfast since we didn't have any food yet....and that was now over 3 months ago....sheesh.... And now all my classes decided to load all the work on us at the same time. Up until this point, the only big assignments I had had was 2 essays, a presentation, and one test. Now, within these next 2 1/2 weeks I have 3 essays and 2 tests, then it's finals time. Uffda....!

Ok, so since I've actually been having to do legitimate work, the month of May has been relatively boring compared to all the other months I've been here. The only thing I've done was on the first weekend (May 2nd and 3rd), I did a volunteer program that I had signed up for last November or something. It was set up by AustraLearn, so it was just fellow AustraLearners, and we went out to the Matiu/Somes Island that is in the Wellington Harbor. Before going we all had decided that the weekend was going to kind of suck because in our information packet we had received it was explaining what we would be doing and it didn't sound that exciting. We were going to have to perform some type of manual labor, there was only electricity on the island for a certain number of hours a day from a generator, we were going to be staying in some old hut that was built on the island during WWII, and they were going to give us food, which we assumed to be 2 days of peanut butter and jelly or something equally as lame. However, it turned out to be almost like a free vacation! The place we stayed was an actual house that families that worked on the island used to live in, the no electricity thing wasn't bad, and they fed us better than what I eat on a daily basis at my apartment...!

Quick history of the island: in the 1800's it was actually used as a quarantine area for people with diseases (which quite weird/freaky, apparently they'd just drop them off on the island and that was that). Then, after it was decided that that was a bit inhumane, they turned it into an animal quarantine area; any animals that were shipped to New Zealand had to stop off on this island to be checked for diseases and given the proper immunizations before being shipped to other parts of the country. Then, during WWII, they built a couple gun turrets on the top of the island to be used to protect the city from any possible attacks (the guns were never fired). So, through all of that, most of the natural plants and animals of the island had been eradicated, which is not good, which is where we come in!

So, basically, the island is a protected area, and we even had to have any dirt on our shoes washed off before we got on the island to make sure we didn't introduce any new plant seeds, bacteria, or animals to the island that weren't supposed to be there. After that, we dropped our stuff off in our rooms, got our "turd suits" on (as Quinn calls them), and were set to work, jobs including weeding nurseries/gardens, trimming trees/bushes, checking artificial animal nests to see if anything was living in it....not manual labor at all!

That night we got to have a BBQ, and around 8:30 after the sun went down, we went on a night walk with Matt, the Department of Conservation guy that works on the island. And guess what lives on the island that we got to see as they came back from sea for the night...PENGUINS!!!! Yup, the little blue penguins live on the island and we saw about 10 of them wandering around, and heard about 50 of them squaking at each other all through the night. Awesome! We also saw a tuatara, which is a species of reptile/lizard type thing that is endangered and only found in NZ, which was pretty cool.

The island as we were arriving on the ferry.

Look ma, another lighthouse!

(Wellington city is in the background)

Ok, so there are also these giant and really disgusting bugs called the Giant Weta that live of the island. Sooooo gross. The one in this picture is dead, but we saw a number of live ones too that Matt (the DoC) dude picked up and held like it was no big deal. They're completely harmless, but finding one of those right next to your hand as your pulling weeds in a garden....ugh....my heart skipped a few beats....

The girls of the trip, being the bad-asses we are

Quinn and I, modeling our "turd suits"

We also each got to plant a tree on the last day so we could all leave a piece of ourselves on the island...awwww...I named mine Charlie and he's going to grow up big and strong and in 10 years I'll come back to NZ and go to the island to visit him...! 

Pretty sunset from the island

After all our hard work we got to wander around on the island for about 2 hours before the ferry came to pick us up so we all went to the top of the island and saw the remaining concrete bunkers and stuff from where the gun turrets were. An overall exciting, and free, weekend. And I also got to give a little back to the country that has been my wonderful and welcoming home for the last 3 months! (I don't care if that part sounded cheesy, it's true!) 

Well, now, I'm actually sitting in the library, supposed to be working on a paper; I suppose I should get back to that...it's on dinosaurs...awesome, I know.

And, you know (Peace).