I Could Live Here

First and foremost, this country is BEAUTIFUL. From the first drive to the Ecoquest center from the airport during sunrise, I was sold. I know I haven't gotten any pictures up yet... we've been doing a bunch of orientation... but picture this:

My base camp is this campus with a few bigger house/buildings for the staff quarters n offices.. we have one building where we cook, eat, and have classes. It's interesting because we sort of cook our own food, but we get major help from some kitchen staff, so we still get really awesome food. Haha. Four of us are in charge of kitchen duty every day, but they pre-make a lot of fresh stuff for us to put in.. like last night, we had potatoes, these awesome veggie and bacon quiches, and 3 or 4 amazing veggie or fruit salads. A ton of the stuff is gotten locally... the meat and eggs for the most part are, and we have fruit trees (plums, limes, apples, passionfruit, oranges, etc) on campus along with a big vegetable garden. It's sweet. The 25 of us live in about 10 small 2-3 person cabins, and each one is different and unique... theyre really small, maybe 10x15 feet or something.. but theyre nice.
Of course my roommate (Alexa) and I got the slightly ghetto one. Haha. Well, let's just say it has some old charm.
Everyone else has like brand new windows, some floor to ceiling, and these awesome brand new porches.. and we have none of that. Butttt thats alright. I'm new Zealand, I can't complain.

We have plenty of open grounds to do whatever we want in free time, and we basically have a beach in our backyard! We're on the firth (bay) of Thames.. it's not a great swimming beach because it has a ton of rocks and shells (MILLIONS OF SHELLS, they're EVERYWHERE) but its beautiful to walk on, and the sun rises over the water and the mountains that are across the bay (they consider them to just be hills here, but trust me, theyre mountains haha... especially to someone from Illinois). Its beautiful.

The air is just so much fresher here.. to be outside and have the wind blowing in your face is just so refreshing. They weren't kidding about the New Zealand sun though.. I already look like Zorro because of the pattern of sunburn on my face haha
But hopefully thatll go away soon.. I've begun wearing sunscreen religiously so hopefully that'll help. But there's huge rolling hills of pastures everywhere dotted with sheep and cattle, and mountains of forests, and views of the ocean, and the sides of the roads and houses have beautiful colorful flowers.
Even the downtown shopping areas here are awesome.. every single shop is bright and colorful and unique in its own way... its almost like walking through a shop area in an amusement park. It was sweet.

I'll have to tell you more about everything later cause I have to be somewhere in 10 minutes.. but until then,
Peace and love!

Bye Guys!

So it's the Sunday before I leave for my semester in New Zealand... I still have plenty to do and people to say goodbye to before the day is over.. I just hope I don't forget anything. But lets be serious.. I ALWAYS forget something. :) Hopefully its just not too important.

I dont suppose I have a whole lot to say.. I just felt like I should write something before I posted the link for this blog on facebook. Haha. I'm not good at following other peoples blogs, so I'm not sure how great I'll be at keeping one, and if you're reading this, I definitely dont expect you to be following this all while I'm gone.
Honestly, people only like blogs for the pictures anyways.. we're all guilty of reading the first couple of lines of a webpage before getting bored and skipping right to the pictures. It's the best part, after all.

But if there's one thing I AM really good at (usually!), its making sure I take lots of pictures. So I'll try to do that for you.

I expect I'll be learning quite a bit while I'm there as well... I apologize if starfish invaders and kokako breeding doesn't interest you much. You can just skip to the parts where I go camping in beautiful places, bungee jumping off cliffs, sky dive, go jet boating, and spelunking in hidden caves!
Just kidding mom, don't worry. We'll leave off spelunking and jet boating. ;)

Anyway I just want to say thank you to my family and friends for making my month off at home entertaining.. it was definitely NOT boring. Thanks Rach, for my last weekend here. I'll miss you all! Eric, Ash, Caiti, my roommates n everyone in Ann Arbor... but not really that much. :)

Peace and love guys! Talk to ya from the other side of the world..