Its weird. Just now, I realised that I have effectively started my life over somewhere else. At the beginning, I thought about home a lot, wondering what other people were doing and if they were thinking about me. Since coming back from the vacation to the north island (which I still have to write about!) my life has been completely hectically full with school, assignments, friends and social things. And then there's my rugby team and choir, and training for running still. I never watch TV, and I barely check my email, becuase I'm actually too busy!

So. Now for an update. Last weekend we went out to a soft-shore and sampled benthic organisms out on the Otago peninsula. It was quite nice. Then my rugby team won 98-0. The benefits of having 3 world champions on my team. Then, we had this club lock-in with kegs where basically the idea was to get us absolutely hammered. This was effective. All the teams (4 mens and one womens team) were given themes to dress up as... ours was Chapelle Corby: an Aussie ex-model turned drug dealer who was arrested in Bali a few years ago. So the girls all dressed up as models- in prison uniforms. It was pretty hysterical. Then, on Sunday and Monday I wrote a 4200 word ecology report and a 2000 word microbiology paper-both wer due on Monday, so I had two days of straight writing, without sleep. It was wonderful for my health, but I probably did very well on them. Somehow I've developed the ability to really perform under pressure! This is bad, as it will probably pave the road for more intense procrastination in the future.

Four girls in my choir have formed a barbershop quartet, and of course, I got the bass part! Its hysterical, and we really are quite good. The choir is doing some concerts in Wanaka (west of here near the mountains) on May 19th weekend.

This week I basically went to rugby, got muddy and wet, slept, and hung out with a few friends. This weekend, we took on the inbred sheep farm girls and the big Maori girls from Invercargill at home, but they went down 24-12, we didn't have some key players, but it was a lot of fun anyways.

Today I've basically been at the library working on an essay and soon I'll be making dinner for my flat!

I'll post some random pictures too... as per the usual. These are all from the first few days of the trip- Wellington is the city in the day, and the nighttime pictures are from the countryside outside of Plamerston North.

BACK!

It was an effing trip of a lifetime, people! There are way too many details to explain right now, but I have had the most amazing time of my life.

The north island of NZ is beautiful- we saw beaches and rainforests, glow-worms and rainbows, waterfalls and gysers, geothermal lakes and 90-mile beach. We stayed the night in Wellington, Palmerston North x 2 (with Nanette's friends), Rotarua, Auckland, Paihia, Sam's farm, Auckland (with Nanette's friend Ben), and Christchurch. We also visited many other places and I can confidently say now that I know much of the North Island. If you ever get the chance, go there, I can't even describe how amazing it is to drive up to Mount Doom, or to stand in the same woods as Frodo and exclaim "Get off the road!" I haven't even uploaded pictures onto my computer yet, but when they get up I will begin to put some of the better ones up. Between the three of us who went (my American flattmates Nanette and Laura) we have over 1000 pictures. So therefore they will not appear here. However, once back in Canada, please bring me some food and a comfy chair and I will talk you through all of them.

Will be back later, but also wanted to let you all know I'm back and I'm safe.

Love Rebecca

Tn5 is the devil

Question: What is 31 pages long?
Answer: My stupid microbiology ab report.

It was due at 5:00pm, so have no fear, I handed it in at 4:58 and then had a lovely chat with my professor who came to pick them up. It was a little sad because I actually had to pull the allnighter, so I was in recovery for a bit of last night.

Today, I'm going to go to the the Fahmah's mahkit again because strawberries are still in season, and then apparently I'm supposed to go to this "Legendary Keg Race" beginning at 12 noon. Apparently you have to put the Kegs on wagons and drink at all these legendary places in Dunedin, in teams, in costume. My team is going as 1980s aerobics instructors, so I'll just wear some running tights and rugby socks scrunched down... and then of course the side-ponytail.

On Sunday is my friend Tim's 21st birthday party: Part II. We're meeting in the botanical gardens and having a lovely afternoon of: (directly quoted from the fancy invite):

"Petanque, Croquet, Pink Champagne and Cucumber Sandwicheds".
Ladies: summer frocks
Gentlemen: if its not tweed, its not a jacket.

Isn't that hysterical? I don't think I've worn a summer frock in my life. It sounds frilly and pink.
And tweed? All I can think of is Mr. Ross... and his tweed jackets.

Pictures: Botanical gardens- and the aviary.

More pictures and pompous profs.

Yes. I do take many pictures of myself! But I really was here... Not adept enough at photo shop to have edited myself into here. Besides... look at the waves... soooo shiny, and soooo beautiful... we wants them, precious.

Ok and this IS exciting. The guy who discovered Two-Component Systems is my "Topics in Microbial Genetics" prof! That's pretty sweet, eh? For those of you who don't know or care what I'm talking about he is very famous and internationally renowned and I knew the name Clive Ronson was ringing a bell for some reason. He's definitely the typical self-absorbed pompous high-class ivory-tower type with very distinguished facial hair, but it somehow makes it that much more awesome. His belly precedes him into class and he goes on something like:

"Well today we AHH going to TaHHk about my little contribution to science. For those of you who didn't know this (as if it was 2+2 = 4) I discovAHHH-ed the 2-component system. And at that time, of course, we didn't know we were naming an entire paradigm of science..." *smug smile*

We actually learned more about his time at Harvard discovering the genetic sequences involved than about 2-component systems themselves. Good thing I already learned about them sufficiently in Genetics 304 back at the U of A.

Pictures have anyone convinced yet?

Mary, I haven't figured out yet if I can bring back sand, but I think probably not if they count as soil- if so then I'll have to bake them into cakes... or something more sneaky. Maybe Alias could give me some ideas...

3 days... 3 beaches

Friday, I only had one hour of classes, so I was off to the beach ASAP afterwards as the weather was beautiful. I took along the camera and did a bit of a photo shoot. Friday night was Laura (my flattmate)'s 21st- the big birthday here- so we had half of Dunedin over for cake and then we went out to a concert at a bar, which was a lot of fun. The band was like funky big brass music so there were trombones, trumpets, as well as general band instruments.

Saturday a bunch of my friends and I went out to the Farmer's Market (thuh FAH-muhs MAH-kit) and bought some nice fruits (Strawberries are cheap and in season here!) Then I attempted to do homework for about 6.5 minutes but gave up when they all came by and yelled "BECKs we're going to the beach... get in the CAHH now!" We went to boulder beach on the Otago peninsula - which was amazing because it was really secluded. The only problem was that we had to bushwack for about 30 minutes and scale 2 cliffs to get there. Once we were there it was pretty awesome though. Later we went and met up with some friends at good ole St. Clair beach and went swimming, briefly. Later we played touch and tackle rugby, soccer, beach volleyball, and finally cricket. Cricket is crazy because there's a bowler and two batters! And you run with the bat! I got a pretty decent hit and was so excited that I chucked the bat and almost started running in a circle. That's another difference- you run straight in cricket! Finally I got home on Saturday night, and fell asleep right away.

Sunday, which was today, I had a field trip to Allen's beach for Marine Ecology! We did quadrant sampling of the eulittoral, littoral, and sublittoral zones! This mostly included counting and identifying barnacles, but it was a lot of fun- and kelp is so huge here! On the way out we all played in the beautiful waves and some of the guys brought out their surfboards. We also saw a beached seal, which was a little sad, but the tide was coming in so our profs though he'd be OK. Like everything else here, the Rocky Shore lab was extreme and involved 15 minutes of rock climbing over steep edges. I don't think we could have done the same thing with Bio 208 last year- the athletic skills of Kiwi's far surpass anything else I've seen.

For the rest of today I've almost considered doing something productive, basically just doing a lab report for microbiology.

I seem to have developed a cold, which is ironic, because I've never been so warm and content in my life.

North Island: prepare yourself.

After much antici- pation, the plan is in action, and the tickets have been purchased for the North Island trip of 2007. We have a break from April 6-16 and so on the evening of April 5 Laura, Nanette, and I will be out of here! We're going to fly to Wellington via Christchurch stay there for a few days, and then travel from Wellington to Palmerston North (via train and some friends) and then from P.N. we will make it up the North Island hopefully hitting Napier, Taupo, Rotarua, the bay of Pleanty and the Auckland peninsula (I really should know its proper name!) We'll stay in Auckland for a couple of days and then fly back to Christchurch, hopefully meet up with some friends there and then travel back down the south Island stopping in Timaru (middle of nowhere, NZ) with my friend Alex to see his parents farm. Yes we can do it all! And we will! Its still pretty hot in the north, as I've been told and they also have Black beaches! Can you imagine beaches where the sand is almost black? There are also glow-worm caves we want to see! And gysers! And extremophilic archaea. Well I guess any type of archaea...

In the last few days, I actually have done homework. I wrote something for my philosophy of bioethics class and I'm writing 3 lab reports at the moment. They're going very slowly.

Unfortunately there's not a lot of news to report! I hung out in the library for a few hours today and felt like I sometimes do at home (like a nerd!) but of course in a much more modern pretty library with lots of Kiwi's who Longboard (like skateboarding- except the board is longer!) all through campus.

Again, to make this less tedious, I'll put up some more pictures of random things around Dunedin: a) is the North Ground- which is actually is the Alhambra Rugby pitches- I walk through it every day to go to school. b) the building they put all the biotech spin-off companies from the University. c) Knox Pres. Church on George Street. We sometimes call it the House Of God (English accent required) d) the clocktower building in the centre of campus and e) St. Clair beach!

Have a nice night/day!

St. Patty's Day!

Why yes, Kiwi's generally are of Scottish, not Irish descent, but this fact is largely ignored when it comes to St. Patty's day. Any chance to drink will be taken advantage of. In the society of alcoholics I live in it doesn't matter what your nationality is- as long as some ethnic group is celebrating something, we all celebrate (by drinking Speights, of course)! What a sophisticated multinational place we are.

In other news, it seems that school has actually started. Yesterday I wrote the first draft of a critique of Singer's "The moral status of the embryo" for bioethics and I need to write a lab report for Marine Ecology and another one for Microbiology, neither of which I have really started yet, so I guess I'd best be getting a move on. Oh and get this, I was the first person to map my the Ampicillin resistance gene on transposon Tn5:lambda and where it inserted into the plasmid pBR322 when treated with a suicide vector by restriction with HindIII and SalI in my entire class and so my prof gave me a chocolate fish! At the same time I wondered how old we were, but then didn't complain. Chocolate fish are fish-shaped candies with caramel and marshmallow clearly covered with chocolate.

Oh and in Marine Ecology, we were supposed to go and collect plankton, but there was a red tide bloom in the last few days! This is horrible ecologically but also very interesting. In certain conditions the Dinoflagellates go crazy and produce neurotoxins in vast quantities and the sea actually turns red! Anyway the Marine science department needed our boats for more sampling. (Isn't it awesome that there is a Marine Ecology department here and they have boats!) I guess its not too often that your lab gets cancelled for a Red Tide! I was sad though about not being able to go and see it until my prof said that they needed help on the boats with all the sampling they're doing, so I will be going out researching next week!

Last night I went to a pot-luck and met a bunch of my friend Alex's friends friends. If you followed that then you'll get that he brought me because he only knew a few of them. The guy who's flat it was teaches Sorock- which I think is just fancy jiving- to old school music, and apparently its huge here. So a few bottles of wine later and food gone next thing I know the entire flat is cleared and he's paired us all up and is giving lessons! The most random things happen here, let me tell you.

I'm a little sad that I didn't go on either the kayak trip to Wanaka or on the tramping trip to the Fjordlands this weekend, but I have to do a somewhat "manditory" rugby thing on Sunday- when they'll decide for sure which position I'll play, and with the homework I think it'll be good to you know, maybe do it.

Alright that's the last few days in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed. Did you know? You can comment by clicking the comment button and then writing something that is witty and PG in response to this!!

And these are random pictures are of myself! a) in a church tower in Dunedin b) with a lot of sunburn and c) out on the Otago Peninsula.