stress (exam time)

Study week is almost over and I feel as if I've only done about 20% of what I need to do before exams...fantastic. Fortunately I only have 3 of them, but they're all worth between 40-60% so it adds just a tad bit of pressure. Not to mention that mcat scores get released next week (talk about perfect timing). I'm debating whether or not to check them when they come out or to wait until after exams. I'm not sure I have enough will-power to wait.

On a somewhat happier note- I went to the observatory last night with Kathryn and her friend Sarah (who knows a lot more about astronomy than I do!). Unfortunately when we got there it was too cloudy to actually see anything, but the view of the city from the top of the observatory was impressive in itself. The observatory is on the old UC campus (downtown, now known as the Arts Centre) which dates back to the mid 1800s. It's a really beautiful campus with all stone buildings...it's really too bad that they moved out to the suburbs and now have 1960s concrete buildings. The telescope dates back to 1891 (perhaps the oldest in NZ?) I'll have to go back on a real starry night to check out the Southern sky.

Nothing else too exciting at the moment- I'm planning on going to ski in Queenstown during our semester break (first week of July) and am also moving to my new home then! I'm living with a family next semester who has two boys- Hayden who is 10 and adorable Jamie who just turned 3! I'm really looking forward to having a Kiwi family and my own bathroom!

'night

s.

PS- they are forcasting snow again for the South Island tomorrow...maybe not all the way down to sea level but I wouldn't be surprised!

snow!

June 12....not even officially winter here yet and it's snowing. Apparently it ususally only snows here every second year or so and rarely this early in the year. Yesterday the weather forecast for Christchurch was "fine" with a high of 10C. The weather website did say that Queenstown (south of here) would have "bone chilling southerlies". All weather here is based on the wind direction which I am slowly but surely figuring out. Southlies means cold wind, although it's weird to think that the further north you go the warmer it gets.
Anyway, so I woke up this morning to white stuff. The ground isn't frozen so it likely won't stay for too long. But it's 11am and it's still snowing. It's a shame that classes are over for the semester otherwise they probably would have been canceled today. I did go to the gym this morning in shorts...probably not the smartest idea! Oh well. It's a good day to study and look outside at the snow. I'm going to a Rotary meeting for lunch today so I need to shower and get ready.

Have a great day!

cheers

s.

Shrek the sheep

One of the guys who went tramping yesterday was telling us about "Shrek" the sheep who somehow escaped his herd and ran wild for 6 years was found in 2004 with a massive wooly coat. Below is an article about Shrek and a few funny pictures.









that's a lot of wool!
















Shrek, the sheep from Central Otago





Shrek's golden fleece finally comes off
29.04.2004
In the end he was just another spindly, skittery sheep. Once shorn on national television - a broadcast that went to Japan, Australia, Britain and the US - the enigma that was Shrek, the Central Otago superstar, disappeared. He no longer looked like his namesake. He just looked confused and cold. It all began two weeks ago when the wether was discovered high on Bendigo Station near Tarras, woolly and wild and sporting a merino fleece of six years' growth, having eluded many an annual muster. He was captured and brought down to the homestead, where a visiting Hawkes Bay pony club team dubbed him Shrek. The wool and the meat on the 9-year-old were not worth much to station owner John Perriam. But the fleece "is worth a goldmine and more" to the Cure Kids charity, says chief executive Kaye Parker. She has organised for the shorn wool to be auctioned online to raise money for sick children. Interest from media in New Zealand and across the world about the hermit sheep finally being caught prompted Mr Perriam to select Cure Kids as the recipient of proceeds from the shearing. The Shrek hype spread across the globe, from Alaskan newspapers and Chinese news websites to the BBC and CNN. The news was out - a very woolly sheep had been found in NZ and it was going to be shorn. The media frenzy did not let up last night as the cameras and reporters descended on Cromwell.Peter Casserly, a former world blade-shearing champion, peeled Shrek's coat off with ease and nicked the skin only twice. Soon it was all over.

i feel like jello

wow!- what a day. A friend of mine, Darragh, who's working on his PhD here (originally from South Africa) called me on Thursday and asked me to come along on this tramp (hike) in Lewis Pass this weekend. The conversation started with him asking if I was actually a member of the Tramping Club and commented that he hadn't seen me at the past few meetings. I am indeed a paying member of the club, but after a few long drawn out meetings of people doing a show-and-tell of their tramping pictures in detail (total overkill), and since I wasn't going on any of the trips anyway, I stopped attending meetings.



But, after some convincing and a little arm twisting, I ended up going to Lewis Pass today with 5 others to hike/tramp to Lake Daniels. This weekend is "hut bagging" in Lewis Pass for the tramping club, meaning that several groups were going out to try and "bag" (aka visit) all of the DOC (dept. of conservation) huts in the area. Right, so we had two huts on our mission. We started off from ChCh at 7am and found out that the sunrise was well worth getting up for. Unfortunately I don't have a picture (driving and photography aren't really compatible) but trust me, it was stunning. We arrived at the trail head around 9:45am and set off just around 10am. We knew that we had a long day ahead and that our daylight was limited, sunrise is around 7:45am and sunset is just after 5pm (damn winter) so the pace was set pretty fast from the get-go. The trail was well-maintained and not too taxing, although there was a fair bit of mud to navigate through and some slippery roots. The path went up a valley next to a beautiful river (it looked like someone had put blue food colouring in it!) to Lake Daniels. The lake was pretty, very tranquil and calm and extremely shallow. We ate lunch at the hut there and then set off to find the second hut on our list, somewhere in the next valley on the other side of the lake.

This is where things got a little interesting...we didn't really have a path and our map (c. 1987) said that there was a 4-wheel drive track that led to the next hut. Not so much! After some 90min of pseudo bush-bashing we find out that there's a reason the hut isn't marked on the new maps...it's private and is located in a field of cows surrounded by an electric fence. I think great, we see the hut, we'll take a picture, mark it down. Oh no. We hop the fence and start trekking through the cow field/bog/marsh. We make it to the hut and take a group photo to prove that we accomplished our mission.

Approaching the second hut (and cow field). Note the (electric) fence.

Tramping through the cow field.

Cows!

On the way back, we were all commenting on how despite all the mud, we had all kept our feet dry. Ha, well at least most of us had. Somehow in the last hour of the walk I ended up misjudging two mud holes and soaked not one, but both feet in about a foot of mud. Cold, wet, dirty, mud. I think my legs were screaming at me by then. They're not used to such abuse.

Leaves, and my poor foot around km25. This was right before I got it stuck in the mud.

So..some 7.5hrs, 36km (22miles) later we arrived back at the car park. We made it just before dusk and overall had a great day. We stopped in Hamner Springs for a quick dinner- my juicy cheeseburger and chips were certainly satisfying.

I'm off to bed for what promises to be a long deep sleep. Monday is the Queen's Birthday holiday here so yay for no lectures! This upcoming week is the last week of the term (yikes) and I have my first exam, in Abnormal Psychology, on Thursday. Then it's a week for study week, which I definitely need and I have 3 more exams before June 27.

Hope all is well in your corner of the world...I bet it's warmer there than it is here!

just to prove I was there!

cheers-

s.