I’m a bad blogger…

Its been an extremely long time since my last post. Sorry about that. I’m not very good at this whole journaling thing. Anyway I just got back from my spring break trip to Australia so I figured I’d write about it while its still fresh in my mind. More NZ stuff to come. I promise.

I left for Cairns, Australia the friday before last. My flight left at 6:15 AM (due to an extremely obstinate management professor. more on this later.) so one of my buddies Will was kind enough to drop me off at the airport around 4:45. After the trans-tasman flight and a 3 hour layover in Brisbane I finally arrived in Cairns (pronunced “cans”, its an Aussie thing). I took a shuttle bus to the office of the dive company of my trip. I met my roomate Alex who goes to Vanderbilt there, he was able to catch a flight the day before and got to play in Cairns for a day. After lots of waiting and boring paperwork, Alex and I and the rest of the dive group piled ino the buses to harbor to embark on our home for the next 4 days, the M.V. Taka. Its a 100 foot single hulled dive boat with enough cabins for around 30 passengers and 12 crew. Alex and I shared a room along with our new friends Steve (a retired attorney from virginia now sailing around the world) and Joe (a younger business man working in sydney but originally from Sri-Lanka).

As we left cairns, everyone was assigned gear for the trip and we got wetsuits and everything like that all sorted out. We steamed overnight to our dive site for the next day on the great barrier reef. That night we also got an intorduction to the crew, who were all awesome. We also got an inroduction to what it feels like to live on a relatively small boat that is making its way through the open ocean. I count myself very lucky in that apparently I don’t get seasick. The same couldn’t be said for some of the other passengers. THere were some green faces saturday morning.

At 7 AM Saturday we begain the breifing for our first dive and before I knew it itwas 4 days and 14 dives later and we were heading back to Cairns. I saw so many incredible things on the trip. We saw massive turtles at least twice the size of ones I saw in Hawaii. I also saw several white tip reef sharks, some stingrays, and a cuttlefish (kind of like an octopus with a really big head and small arms). I also found Nemo. Its amazing how much boidiversity there is on the GBR. I think I saw more different species of animal on a single dive that I’ve seen combined the rest of my life. It was astounding. I also had the opportunity to do my first 3 night dives which was a completely new experience. It wasn’t as scary as it sounds and it was actually kind of peaceful. We helped some larger fish who hunt by sight find some small fish and if you kept your light on a small fish out in the open you could watch the larger fish chase it down. It was awesome.

I’m extremely glad that I was able to do a liveaboard trip as well. The reason for this was that our last 2 dives were where most of the day trippers go and the coral and fish were nowhere near what they were further up the reef where we had been. The difference was shocking.

The food on the trip was great, as were all of the other passengers and crew. Most of the passengers were old enough to be my parents, but there were a few of us who managed to close the generational gap. Everyone was firendly and there weren’t any snobs. THere was even a professional photographer on the trip who has had work in nat’l geographic!

After a disembarking, we checked into our hostel and met up with some of the crew and passengers for dinner and drinks at a bar by the beach. THe next day I explored the city of Cairns (very touristy) and flew to sydney that night. But that another story and I’m tired of writing so thats it for now.

-Mike

School

Orientation and registration at UC were really no different than orientation anywhere else. Long, boring, and stressful. We had a full-day orientation and with a bunch of different sessions on where everything is and how to register and all kinds of other riveting stuff. I got into all the classes I wanted to. I’m taking Maori and indigenous development, Australia, New Zealand, and Oceania politics, and management and organizations. All of them seem pretty good so far. I think my favorite will end up being the Maori development one, the professor is awesome and the class size is really small (9-10 people).

One thing about the NZ school system that I really liked was that there’s unlimited space in all the classes so theres no mad rush to get into a class before it fills up. You just need to meet the prerequisites. I also managed to get a pretty good schedule and don’t have school on Fridays which has been really nice so far.

The campus at UC is awesome. All of the buildings kind of have that east-bloc industrial look to them, but in a good way. The library has won numerous architectural awards and has an excellent view of Christchurch out of the 11th floor window. The campus is nice and compact so none of my classes are far away from each other and my flat’s only a sub-5 minute walk away.

Speaking of which, my flat(apartment) is very nice as well. It was just built last year and the rooms are pretty big and have nice large windows. No washer/dryer though. I have four flatmates. 3 of them are Americans (Allie, Dana, and Alex) and one of them is from the middle-east somewhere. I’m not sure exactly what his name is or where he’s from because he just moved in this week and isn’t here very often. Everyone seems to be getting along pretty well. Dana won a drawing at the bank for a 32″ HDTV and a Wii so we now have the nicest living room in our building.

I’ve already had some fun adventures in Christchurch so watch for another post this week. Also, if anyone has any questions or anything feel free to ask.

Zorbing, Caving, and Shaving Rabbits. (Program Introduction)

The flight from LA to Auckland was wonderful. The seats were comfortable, the TV was on demand, and I was asleep for 10 of the 13 hours of the flight. After a nice dinner (and some complimentary wine) shortly after takeoff I promptly passed out for the majority of the flight. The concept of sleeping for most of a flight was a bit foreign to me as I’ve always had difficulty sleeping anywhere other than a bed. Thank you Unisom. Luckily the large Australian man sitting next to me had the courtesy to wake me up for breakfast as we came into Auckland. I was almost upset I hadn’t had a chance to watch any of the 100+ movies and TV shows we had the option of watching. Almost.

Once we had landed and gotten our bags, me and my Australearn group met up with our group leaders and boarded our coach bus bound for the adventure capital of the north Island, the town of Rotorua. As we drove across what seemed like half of the country (about 4 hours) I became acquainted with some of my colleagues. Our group was primarily kids going to Canterbury, but there were also some going to other universities around New Zealand. When we finally got into Rotorua, we checked into our hostel, the Kiwi Paka. My room was decent and my roommate was one of my future skiing buddies, Jon. The hostel had a nice little bar and a tepid thermal pool that was fun for about the first 30 seconds you were in it.

After check in and lunch we went on a little bus tour of the city and saw the boilng thermal mud pools in town. Apparently, Rotorua is a very geothermically active region. After a stop at the grocery (read: beer) store, we went back to the hostel for dinner and a good nights sleep.

The next morning we set off for the aggrodome to see a sheep shearing show. Hilarity ensued. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of sheep. There were also dogs herding ducks and dogs running on top of sheep. Though the best part, I’d have to say, was the realization that apparently I’m not allergic to sheep (big news in my world). Also, we learned that the are roughly 14 million sheep in NZ.

After our shearing exploits and some lunch, a group of us headed to the zorbing hill. For the uninitiated, zorbing involves getting inside of a giant beach ball with 2 other people and some warm water and rolling down a hundred meter hill. This experience was completely different from anything I’ve ever done and I recommend it to anyone who ever has the opportunity to do it. That night we went to the Tamaki village for a traditional Maori Hangi (feast). This was kind of fun but really cold because that night they got snow in Rotorua for the first time in 60 years.

The next morning we headed off to the caves at Waitomo, which is about 2 hours away from Rotorua. We into the glowworm caves for around 4 hours. This involved donning wetsuits, helmets, harnesses and galoshes. Once we were fully suited up in our bond villain henchmen outfits we descended into the cave. This was no cave of the winds. We had to rappel down into the cave for a total of around 50 meters through a waterfall.
Definitely one of the coolest sensations I’ve experienced. The deepest we got was 70 meters underground and at some points we were on our bellies squeezing through cracks that wouldn’t have tolerated a beer belly.

After our spelunking shenanigans we made a quick stop at a small Angora wool shop. Angora wool comes from Angora rabbits which look like cat-sized cotton balls with ears. Our group was lucky enough to see a rabbit-shearing demonstration by one of the craziest old women I’ve ever encountered. I can’t describe how funny this was to watch and unfortunately I forgot my camera that day. Hopefully I’ll find some pictures to put up.

The next day we checked out of the hostel and waited in the Rotorua airport for most of the day for our flight to Christchurch. The flight was uneventful, except for a brief glimpse at the snowy Southern Alps (i.e. Misty Mountains of LOTR).

Thats it for now.

Well it only took a few weeks to get my act together…

Sorry about that everyone. In case you weren’t already aware, my name is Mike Shumate and I’m studying at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, NZ for the semester. In the past few weeks I’ve already had some of the most memorable experiences of my life. I’m going to get to them all eventually, but it’ll probably take me a few posts to get through everything. Bear with me.

I got in to Auckland on July 4th, so as of today I’ve been here for 25 days. Its felt like about a week. This semester is going to fly by. I’ll try and post updates as often as possible, hopefully once a week. I’ll work on getting some pictures up as well.

Thanks everyone!

-Mike