Tuesday

Today was a pretty average Tuesday. It was rainy and windy and I guess in Albany, the county right next to Auckland, there was a tornado today! I think only one person died, but it turns out that tornadoes are really hard to predict in New Zealand. They’re much smaller than ones in the United States and usually only affect small, local communities. I personally thought it was much windier yesterday than today. I spent today going to a few classes and then studying for my marine ecology exam, which went really really well! It’s so hard to know what to expect and the quality of work in this country, but I think I’m figuring it out.

After my test we had a scuba meeting, where a nudibranch (colorful wormlike thing in the picture that I took below) expert came in and talked to us about marine biodiversity in the Indo-Pacific. It was really interesting to hear from an expert and he pretty much just made me want to go diving that much more! I can’t wait to get back in the water. I paid for a dive trip from May 20-23, where I’ll be living on a boat for three days with five other underwater club members, a captain, and a dive mate. We’ll be diving White Island, which is New Zealand’s most active volcano. It should be absolutely amazing! The group that dove there this past weekend saw amazing life on the bottom, black corals, and sharks and seals! I’m SO excited!!! I guess the boat rocks and rolls in the waves kind of a lot, so hopefully I don’t get seasick.

After I came back we made Peeps smores with my friends with ginger snaps- New Zealand doesn’t have proper graham crackers. However, my kiwi friends really liked them! I’ve included a picture before we put them in the microwave (we also can’t really light fires in the middle of the city…).

My new love is dried mango and normal mangoes. I started eating mango and dried mango on my road trip- it’s potentially my newest favorite dried fruit. In other news, Flora got me to start eating muesli (granola and shaved coconut and yogurt and dried raisins and other fruit) with plain yogurt and pineapple or whatever the fruit of the day is on top. It’s SO good, a great, healthy way to start the day!

Tomorrow we’re doing a “fountain crawl” with the Underwater Club… similar to a pub crawl but you start at 7 in the morning, in a wetsuit, with a bottle of fizzy wine, and you swim and snorkel in the fountains in Auckland. Potentially the craziest thing I’ll do this semester. More on that later!