The End...For Now

I have now returned to Boston and have been home for about two weeks. Leaving NZ was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I have never before felt so attached to a place. So with sadness, I embarked on my journey home that lasted for more than 30 hours. Right before the plane was to descend into Boston, the pilot came on the loudspeaker to announce that the radios had gone down at Logan and we wouldn't be able to land for at least an hour. So we landed at JFK and sat on the runway waiting. By the time I arrived in Boston, my plane was four hours late. I got home to find that there had been a surprise party waiting for me. Only, everyone had already left. There was a lovely note from everyone however.

During my last few weeks in NZ, I tried to spend as much time with my friends as possible before I would leave some of them for quite awhile. We had a few more epic donut nights. I will certainly miss donut mondays quite a bit, so hopefully Peter and Ingrid will carry on the tradition. Jessi and I hosted an 80's-themed graduation/going away party. We decided to have it despite a party ban in Ilam during exams. So unfortunately we were shut down before too long. But we had an awesome show of costumes, including Pac-Man, some rocking prom dresses, and spandex. I also said my goodbyes to Castle Hill on my last weekend before I left. Castle Hill trips were such an important part of my time in NZ, I will really really miss them.

And now I am back in Boston, biding my time (and trying to make some money) before my next adventure. Hopefully I will be back in NZ soon.

Getting Silly in N-Zed

A few weeks or so ago, as I realized that my time in NZ was fast approaching its end, I decided that I needed to amp up my adventure-taking and just general fun times.

One night, my friends Ingrid and Jessi decided to host a "WTF" party. The idea was to dress up in a costume that would make people say "WTF?" So I hopped inside my crashpad and waddled over to the flat where I thought the party was. I walked into a room of 20 or so people, none of them dressed up. But they seemed to know of the theme because many of them said "WTF?"

I finally tracked Ingrid and Jessi down. Their costumes were pretty hilarious. Ingrid was in a blue and white ski suit and Jessi was wearing a leotard with silver sparkly spandex tights. So I swapped my crashpad for a teal leotard and black spandex. We all donned pink bandanas cut from a big piece of fabric.

We decided to take our "WTF" party to the campus bar. It was a Thursday night, so the place was pretty packed. We spent the next few hours dancing through the crowds trying to rile people up and getting plenty of wierd looks in the process. Jessi and I pretended we were aerobic instructors and got people to do jazzercise with us.

We had one of the best nights we've had in NZ. We realized that it's way more fun going out wearing costumes when no one else is. We decided that every Thursday would be "WTF" night, and pretty much every week since then, we've dressed up crazy and rocked the campus bar.


Classes finished last week. I wanted to make the last day of class especially good as it was my last day of college classes. So a couple of friends and I decided to do the Rocksoc quiz night. Rocksoc is Canterbury's geology club and it makes me envious that Northeastern doesn't have a more fun geology club. But I am indeed happy that I could experience a bit of Rocksoc.

The costume theme for the night was rockstar. Most of my team didn't really plan ahead, so we ended up with some ridiculous costumes. Peter wore a one-piece black suit thing and my friend Lucy wore a black-and-white striped bathing suit with gold sparkly pants on her arms worn like a jacket. Jessi thought it'd be funny if we called ourselves "Team America" because half our team was Kiwi, and well America is just cool. So we played the role of obnoxious Americans pretty well that night. Whenever it was silent, Jessi, Lucy, and I would yell "America, F Yea!!" Needless to say some people told us to shut up, but I think we made some friends as well.

Team America ended up tearing up the quiz, especially the music round, because one of our team members knew single every answer. Somehow though we didn't win any of the cool prizes that mostly consisted of beer and wine. But we weren't too phased, as once the quiz ended, someone put on Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are The Champions and everyone started rocking out, professors and all. I don't think I've ever had that much fun with my professors, and it kind of made me sad that I can't stay at Canterbury longer. But alas, at least I was able to experience the greatness of Rocksoc for one evening. (My real regret is missing the 3-legged pub crawl they hosted earlier in the semester...)

And because I know I left you all in suspense about my dumpster bacon goodness, one night last week, we had a very ceremonial cooking of our prized bacon. I may have never before eaten such tasty, tasty bacon!

The Dumpster, My Friend

I must say, I have heaps to report!

I am now within a week of completing my final classes of college. The feeling is quite surreal and a bit sad. I am trying to savor these last moments more than I did at the end of high school when I ran out of that place without looking back. Realistically, I don't think this is the last time I will step into a classroom as a student. But since I don't see grad school or anything of the like on the horizon right now, it may be awhile.

For the most part, the endless days of warm, sunny weather that graced my first few months here have given way to balmy, rainy days. I've had to embrace climbing in the gym quite a bit, as the weather hasn't been conducive to climbing outside. Though unlike winter in New England, there are still often days when I can walk around in my sandals and a t-shirt. And I savor these days.

And on a positive note, the colder weather has made for prime dumpster-diving conditions. There's nothing like a power-free refrigerator to keep all your garbage (and potential treasures) cold! I've been frequenting the dumpsters of nearby grocery stores on a pretty regular basis and usually am able to find some nice produce, bread, and assorted goodies.

One night this past week, my friend Jessi and I hit the dumpster jackpot. We had a few items in mind that we would have loved to find: a hat and some bread. We were happily surprised with much more than that. We managed not only to find a new hat for Jessi, but a box of assorted chocolates, a bag full of unused journals, christmas decorations, a 10 kg bag of rice, a sac of goon, yogurt, milk, sausages, pasta, tons of brownies and caramel slices, produce galore, roses, tea, meat pies, and possibly best of all bacon!

And you may ask, "But Kate, aren't you vegetarian??" Ah yes, this is normally the case. However, how could I leave perfectly good meat to go to waste?!? My vegan friend Ingrid and I had been joking about "dumpster bacon" the past few weeks and how we didn't think we'd ever find any. Needless to say, Ingrid couldn't believe when I told her that dumpster bacon does indeed exist!

And to come...the night we eat the bacon...

And the adventure continues...

So to pick up where I left off...

The morning after I returned from Hulk Hogan, I headed up to Paynes Ford in the Golden Bay, which is at the northern tip of the South Island. After 6 or so adrenalized hours in Pete's Hyundai Pony (we weren't sure if it would make it), we pulled into Hangdog, the climbers' camp, right next to the crag.

Hangdog is a pretty sweet place. It's a lot like Miguel's, minus the pizza. Lots of people go to Paynes and end up living at Hangdog for some length of time. Also unlike Miguel's, there's a cool town, Takaka, right up the road (not that Slade, KY isn't sweet...). They have a bunch of old bikes at Hangdog that you can borrow and ride into town. Hangdog is also in walking distance to all the climbing. So if you have a car, you could conceivably park it and not move it until you leave the Golden Bay.

Paynes Ford is amazing as well. It has a few hundred sport routes. The rock is limestone like Castle Hill, but it is quite different. There are actually holds at Paynes, rather than just featureless bulges. There are a lot of slopey ledges and crimps at Paynes and the rock can be hard to read, so that took a bit of time to get used to.

I spent most of the week there working on my fear of falling. Somehow, I had managed to become more scared of falling on lead since the last time I had been sport climbing outside, which had been several months before, except for the cave. So I did a lot of freezing up as soon as I would start to go beyond my last clip, usually locking off on some absurdly small hold, just standing there not moving. And when I finally starting letting myself take falls, I would let out these blood-curdling screams. By the end of the week, many people knew that it was me climbing around the corner.

A lot of the climbs are pretty run-out and the first bolts are often very high. I decided to work on my falling fear on one of the most run-out climbs at Paynes, Dave's Arete. The route is a super cool 24 (~5.11d) that works along an arete with good holds and really fun moves. The climb is probably, oh I don't know, 30 meters long with only 4 bolts. It's a long climb and it gets really pumpy in the end, probably because you're so afraid of falling. So pretty much everyone takes massive whippers off this route. And if you manage to make it to the top on your first go, you probably take the victory fall anyway. So needless to say, I took a couple of rather big falls off Dave's Arete. But admittedly, they were some of the most fun falls I've ever taken!

It took several days to get the hang of climbing at Paynes, so I wish I could have stayed longer. Two days before I left I started working on this really fun 27 called Creative Confusion. I kept getting stuck on this one move and I know I could have done the route if I had just a bit more time to work on it. So who knows, maybe I will make it back there before I leave NZ.

So sadly we left Paynes about a week later on a day with beautiful weather and drove back to Christchurch.

And with that, I will end there for now.

And to continue where I left off...

About a week ago, I returned from a 3-week break from classes. I found it pretty insane that I only had classes for 5 weeks before having a pretty long vacation in the middle of the semester. Despite the fact that someone told me this was a "study break," I did what any sensible person would and went climbing!

The first weekend of break I went to this sweet bouldering spot a few hours south of Christchurch called Hulk Hogan. (Pretty cool name, I know.) Up until this point, I had only bouldered at Castle Hill while in NZ, so I was pretty psyched to climb at a new place. Before we got to Hulk, we stopped at a place called Elephant Rocks, which is like a mini Castle Hill. We all ran around for a few hours and did a ton of problems. A notable one was called something like Donald Duck. It involved mantleing a rock that is shaped like a beak.


After that we headed on over to Hulk Hogan. The whole crag is just one long overhung limestone wall. The climbing there is a lot more dynamic and powerful which was a really nice change from Castle Hill. My favorite problem there is definitely The Matrix, an 8 meter or so long V6 traverse. It's super fun with tons of heel hooks but is pretty beta-intensive, with a crux at the beginning and the end. When I went to Hulk for the second time a few weeks later, my friends and I worked The Matrix for several hours. After all our work, none of us were able to send one of the pumpiest boulder problems ever by the end of the day, but we certainly made progress.

I will continue the rest of my break adventures soon!

Progress!

Wow, so I've been seriously slacking with the blog posts. Sorry about that for all who have been checking for updates. But now I have lots to tell about! And I just posted a bunch of new photos to my Picasa page, so you can check that out as well.

Where to begin...this may come in a few installments.

I suppose I could pick up where I left off. So I've talked a bit about my frustration over not having completed many climbs. Finally a few weeks ago my perseverance began to pay off. At Castle Hill, I sent one of my projects, Element, after what felt like hours of trying. And the next weekend, I sent another project, Dominatrix, and made really good progress on a problem called Tricky, which I will hopefully get next week. I think what has mostly gotten in my way of finishing climbs has been my lack of commitment to particular moves that I don't think I can do. I've been working really hard at getting over this and I think it's finally beginning to get better. Here's a photo of me on Element.



A few weeks ago, I went to Castle Hill for the weekend with about 50 people from the UC Climbing Club. Every year they run a big trip there and stay at a nearby research station that the university owns. So for 2 days we ran around on Castle and Flock Hills. On Saturday night we got to the Cass station and ate delicious curry and bread pudding. That night we did a bit of table traversing and played in the squeeze box.

Paddy traversing the table.

Jan was convinced to get stuck in the squeeze box again so I decided to squeeze in there with him.


And though some may be surprised to hear this, I have been doing a few things other than climbing! I've been going to pretty much all of my classes, though admittedly not doing much work for them. For most classes here, there is just a test or two and an assignment over the course of the semester. I'm probably going to regret not doing work when it comes time for finals, but it's really hard to focus when graduation is so close.

There is a community garden at school that I've worked at a bit. They grow some cool things there that I haven't seen in a garden before, like quinoa and quince. For the most part, only plants with a practical purpose are planted, as opposed to ones that are just planted to look nice. No synthetic chemicals are used on any of the plants. They also try to use as many re-used and recycled materials as they can to build beds and for things around the garden. And after a couple hours of work, you can bring home a bunch of fruits and veggies and sometimes even jam!

I think that will be all for this installment. More soon...

The Learning Curve

I suppose it's time for another post. And as a warning to any of my loyal readers, this may well turn into a climbing blog by default, as pretty much all I've been doing is climbing. Which is great, I'm certainly not complaining.

So on that note, I've spent the last few weekends at Castle Hill and if weather cooperates, I'll be there this weekend as well.

Before I came here, I knew climbing at Castle Hill would not be easy for me. Though after a month and a half of climbing there, I'm starting to get a bit frustrated at my lack of progress. A good portion of the problems are mantles or at least end with one. I'm not very good at mantles, so I've been diligently practicing. There are two problems that I keep going back to that I'd love to finish: The Unrepeatable and Big Bubba The Buddha. I don't feel like I'm very close on Unrepeatable yet, but I know I can do Big Bubba. There are a couple of easier V4 mantles that continue to shut me down as well. So hopefully this weekend the wind will be behind my back and I'll be able to tick some projects off my list.

And in more positive news, I made some noteworthy progress at the Cave yesterday. My project of the moment is a route called Gorilla Grips. I got most of the way up it, which I thought was pretty good considering it's a 27. The individual moves are not so hard, it's just quite pumpy. So I think if I warm up as best I can (which is difficult at the Cave), I'll have a good shot at sending it. We'll see next week.

I think that's it for now. If I'm feeling inspired tomorrow, maybe I'll write a post about something other than climbing!

Hope all is well at home.

Life is Swell is Kiwiland

During the last week or so, I had been waiting for something really exciting to happen before I wrote a new post. While I didn't summit any glaciers or swim with dolphins, everything's been quite good here.

Classes started last week. For a moment I thought it might be nice to be in classes again, though after the first nice day I had to stay inside doing schoolwork, I thought differently. Fortunately, my class schedule doesn't seem like it will be too demanding, so hopefully there will still be plenty of time for climbing and other adventures during the week.

On that note, this past weekend, Peter took me to this awesome climbing crag in Christchurch called the Cave. It looks a lot like the Red River Gorge with its seriously overhung walls, only it's about half as tall as the Red. The Cave has some of the hardest climbing in NZ. The easiest climb is a 25 which is equivalent to about a 5.12a at home. So there isn't really any warm-up routes unless you climb 13's or 14's.

Check it out: http://mojozone.co.nz/climbing-location/the-cave.

Needless to say, I got pretty worked at the Cave. Luckily, it's only about a 20-25 minute drive from campus, so I'm going to try and make it there at least once a week.

I've been able to meet a bunch of local climbers, mainly people who go to UC and are part of the climbing club. A couple of us did some serious bonding the other night when we had a go at Peter's new "squeeze box." Peter needed a coffee table, so he decided to build one and make it a squeeze box as well. He defines a squeeze box as, "a box that you twist your way in and out of the helps practice getting out of cramped spaces, like when you're caving."

I was a bit skeptical at first as I was unable to visualize what this thing looked like. Turns out I was quite adept at twisting myself through the squeeze box.

Some of my friends weren't so lucky.

Matt can't believe that he's stuck. My other friend got stuck in the box for nearly an hour. One of the rules of the squeeze box is that if you get stuck, you have to stay in it until sunrise when someone will dismantle the box. So he was pretty worried there for a bit.

I think it's homework time for me now, I hope everyone is well at home.

I just posted some more pictures to my Picasa page, so check it out.

Climbing, Climbing, and more Climbing!

After about a week of being in NZ, I started to get a bit impatient to get climbing outside. Before I left, I had told most people that I was going on a climbing trip here, with some studying on the side, and I think I convinced myself of this as well. So I was a bit disappointed in my lack of climbing in my first few days here. My arrival seemed to bring bad weather, as rain continually dampened my climbing plans, and not having access to a car also proved difficult.

However, my luck began to change about a week ago. As more people moved in on campus, people kept finding me, saying that they'd heard that I climb. In one day, I met at least 6 or 7 people who seemed really excited about climbing.

I also had the fortune of meeting the UC Climbing Club president, Peter, at the climbing gym in town. He took my friend Paul and me to Castle Hill for the first time a few days ago.

Castle Hill was named the "Spiritual Center of the Universe" by the Dalai Lama in 2002. Take a look at some of my pictures and you will understand why. This is by far one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Castle Hill is one of the world's best bouldering spots and is only an hour from Christchurch!

I'll admit, I was nervous about climbing at Castle Hill. The climbing there is dominated by slopers and mantles which are not my strong suit. A lot of the moves and reaches are big, maybe too big for me. I fully expected to get my butt kicked on V1's.

However, things went much better than expected on my first day there. Peter proved to be quite a helpful guide, pointing Paul and I to all the classic problems. I sent a V4 barefoot, which was pretty fun. And I worked on a ton of mantle problems, as I am determined to get better at them! I'm now thinking about working towards my "Bachelor of Castle Hill," which is a list of classic problems that one needs to complete for the "degree." Four months doesn't seem like a very long time to finish the list, but it'd be quite a good time trying.

Check it out: http://castlehillbouldering.blogspot.com/2006/08/bachelor-of-castle-hill.html.

And with that, I think I'll call it a night and go nurse my bruised and scraped body from many days of climbing and get ready for the first day of classes tomorrow!

Behind the Wheel

I've now seen what it's like on the other side of the road...

The other day my friend Diego offered to take a few friends and me to a place called Hanmer Springs about 1 1/2 hours from Christchurch. On a chilly, rainy day, nothing sounded better than soaking in 105 degree water for a few hours.

So we hopped in Diego's van and off we were. A few minutes into the ride, Diego turned to me and said, "You want to drive?" He pulled over and I climbed into the driver's seat. Everyone in the car was looking at me like I'd never driven before. And I kind of felt that way. Everything in the car was backwards, the shifter was on the left of me, I was sitting on the right. I tried to switch on my turn signal before I pulled out, but I turned on the wipers. I made this mistake many times on the drive as the wipers and turn signals are on opposite sides of the steering wheel than usual.

The drive was pretty hilarious at times. I had a tendency to drive too far to the left of the lane and several times Diego yelled, "Move to the right! Move to the right!" as he saw his side-view mirrors nearly brush against a cliff. And for the most part, I didn't have too much trouble staying on the correct side of the road (except when I tried to make a u-turn).

We all survived and the drive was beautiful. I had been getting anxious to explore outside of the city, and this drive gave a little taste of what NZ has to offer. We passed tons of sheep, cow, and deer (!) farms. It's pretty interesting seeing a deer farm considering how many deer we have running around (and into our cars) at home.

So now I've learned all about NZ driving laws such as giving way (yielding) to traffic that is turning right, even if it is crossing over other lanes and no turning on red lights! And apparently they're pretty strict about all these silly laws they have. Throughout my driving lesson, Diego rattled off all of the pricey fines that NZ traffic cops love to award lucky winners.

Sidenote: Police officers do not carry guns in NZ! This is basically the safest country in the world! So for anyone that was worried about my safety here, hopefully this fact will appease your troubled mind.

So that's it for now. Chances of climbing several times this week are looking good, so there will be more to write very soon!

Metric, Ozone, and Voltage, Oh My!

So who would've guessed? NZ is a tad bit different than the states. So needless to say, I've learned a thing or two in the past couple of days.

As soon as I got here, I tried to fully immerse myself in the metric system. I was introduced to the world of grams, meters, and celsius years ago in chemistry class. Basically, I know that 0 degrees is freezing, 100 is boiling, and 25 is about room temperature. Not terribly helpful for understanding weather reports. And I know that my rope is 60 meters, roughly 200 feet. And my Nalgene holds 1 liter of water. So for the most part, these are my reference points. Ha, kind of lame I know.

So on my first day here, before I succumbed to jet lag, I armed myself with a list of handy conversions and ventured to the grocery store. I never imagined it'd be so hard to just figure out how much apples cost. First I needed to convert the kg price to lbs and then divide by two for the exchange rate before I could compare to US prices. Kind of silly. My other option is to just hand over my NZ dollars without asking any questions. But where's the fun in that?

So does anyone remember in the 90s when there was talk of this "hole in the ozone layer?" Everyone was pretty worried about it for awhile and we stopped using CFCs in hair spray, but 10+ years later, I think most people have forgotten about it. To tell you the truth, I kind of forgot about it as well, or at least where this hole is. So guess where it is? Yup, over NZ. So I probably chose the worst possible place in the world for my ghostly skin with the exception of maybe Antarctica. Ha. I'll live.

You know that advice that you received before going abroad about checking what voltage your electronics can handle before willy-nilly plugging them into foreign outlets? Yea well I forgot. I suppose I didn't completely forget, I just assumed that my ipod dock would be alright. But the smoking and burning smell coming out of the outlet made me think otherwise. Oops. At least I didn't get electrocuted, that's never fun, I would know.

I believe that is all for now. I will post pictures soon.

peace

An Epic Journey

And so my Kiwi adventure begins.

As I was forewarned, the journey to New Zealand was indeed epic. Three plane rides and 30-odd hours later, I arrived in Christchurch, my home for the next five months. After the cab driver crammed my massive amount of luggage into the car (I insisted on bringing my crashpad!), I proceeded to be quite wierded-out by driving on the "wrong" side of the road.

The University of Canterbury campus is lovely, with old willows framing a stream that runs along the school buildings. And there are plenty of ducks!

My apartment looks like an Ikea showroom, just a bit more bare-bones. As I'm trying to be frugal with my money, hopefully the next few months will improve my ability to live simply (like not having more than one pillow!)

I quickly learned that Kiwis are very warm, kind people. Usually when I travel, I try my best to blend in as much as possible. I hate looking like a tourist. Though here, I don't hesitate to ask people for directions or ask silly questions like what is capsicum. (capsicum is what we in the states call bell peppers. wierd, I know.)

I will return shortly to write some more, but for now I am sleepy! So goodnight.