Adventures three and four: Castle Hill and the Rangitata Rafts

I have decided not to recap everything I do now because (a) it's boring and (b) I can't remember everything that's happened over the last week and a half and (c) school's started so who really cares about what's going on in all of my classes all of the time? But I will do my best to stay as informative and detailed as possible.

As the title suggests, two really cool things happened this week. The first occurred on Sunday when we decided to risk missing out on the sunny weather in Christchurch and head to Castle Hill to go climbing. I say risk because there is no way to get a weather report for Castle Hill. There is a web cam one can look at, but there's no telling how the weather will change by the time you get there. Anyway, on Sunday the weather seemed nice so Jess, Cliff, Katie, Paul and I threw three crashpads, five backpacks and five climbers into Jess's Subaru and drove an hour to Castle Hill. When we were almost there, a cloud of doom seemed to be lingering directly over the valley. However, we decided not to let that phase us and drove in. It was raining a bit when we got there, so we ate some food to see if we could wait it out. We could.

The thing about Castle Hill is that the climbing is technically called "bouldering". When you boulder, you don't use any gear, just crashpads (exactly what they sound like). You just do one or two moves to the top of a 10-20 foot boulder and then climb down. In regular climbing, you use a lot of gear and it's not good if it gets wet. And thanks to New Zealand's neuratic weather, the rock in Castle Hill dried quickly once it stopped raining, so we were able to get some great climbing in.

Castle Hill is not only a world-class bouldering site, but the filming site of [part of] Lord of the Rings, and most importantly (to me at least) the "spiritual center of the Universe", according the Dalai Lama. Pictures are the best way to describe what he means:
The view walking toward Quantum Field. To give you an idea about how big the biggest rocks are, click on the picture to enlarge it...the smallest rocks are maybe ten feet high, maybe taller. Of course we didn't climb the huge ones shown here. These structures were just so powerful as you were walking toward them...it was really really neat.
This is Spittle Hill, to the left of Quantum Field. These are more the size of climbable rocks.
Getting closer! The square things on the backs of people are the crashpads. A man came up to me and asked me what exactly it was. I suppose if you have never seen one before, it must look pretty funny.
Paul and Katie on top of the first "problem" of the day. Bouldering routes are called problems because they're very puzzle-like. Even though they're short, the moves are very hard and it can take multiple tries to get to the top.

Castle Hill was the most serene and peaceful place I've been to. Even though we were climbing and working hard it was still very meditative.

So this week classes started. I'm enroled in Structural Geology, Geophysics, Biology II and Field Studies. It's only been a week, but so far so good. I guess. Geophysics is actually really boring. It's all about resource (eg oil) mining. Necessary, yes, but not something I'm terribly interested in. And it doesn't help that the professor just reads off of his slides the whole time. But (!) as I said before, it's only been a week so it might pick up. All of my other classes are way cool. For my field studies class, we have a week long field trip during our three week mid semester break. Awesome-ness!

This week I also signed up for clubs. I'm in the climbing club, the tramping (kiwi for hiking) club and the geo society (to, y'know, get in with the department). All three do what their name implies plus heaps of partying. Of course. This is New Zealand after all. Right now the plan is to go on the first tramping trip of the semester next weekend.

So classes blah blah blah...no one cares, I know.

Saturday, (yesterday) was the second adventure of the week. I went white water rafting down the Rangitata River, which is south of Christchurch. For a bit of money, we got transportation from and back to campus, lunch and dinner, and of course an amazing run down the river. We did two class fives (rapids are ranked from one to six. One being ripples, six being unrunnable)!! Again, pictures are worth way more than my words.

These were all taken by Vince, who works for Rangitata Rafts.
This is the base lodge, where we ate lunch, learned about the river, picked up our gear, took (hot!) showers and ate dinner. It definitely didn't look like this when we went...it was raining. But you get the idea (beautiful).
This is our boat. From left: me, the two Swedish girls Hannah and Sophia, my friend Elise, our guide Steve, and my friends Robert and Simon. This is before we got in the river.
Heading down the river. It's too bad it was cloudy because you can't really see in these photos that the color of the water was aquamarine. It is a glacier-fed river, so it's almost completely pure.
The boat celebrating our first class five.
Another rapid.
Everyone scouting the rapid.

Ok, ok! Best. Sequence. Ever!!! We were the last boat to go through the last class five. As we were nearly halfway down it, we saw that the boat ahead of us had flipped. In order to avoid a terrible collision, Steve pulled us off into an eddy. Right before it was safe for us to go again, he warned us that we would be re-entering the rapid at a bad angle and that there was a good chance we would flip too. Ok, now look:
We did what they call a "dump truck": everyone fell out but the guide. Now all of the other guides owe Steve beer.
So that was pretty neat. And if you're ever in New Zealand, I highly reccomend doing this trip. It was really cool.

And that's about it. Today we went to the beach and just relaxed. Tomorrow school starts again. Which is weird. I thought I was on vacation! Haha. Hopefully my weeks will still be as great as the last one. Even with school.

Well, I know that most people who are reading this (if anyone actually does, haha) do it for the information on my happenings and whereabouts and such. I hope that it is enjoyable. However, Northeastern not only requires us to keep a journal, but will not accept "a laundry list of day-to-day activities." Oops. I have a feeling that I haven't been reflecting much. So (spoiler alert!) at the end of each blog entry, I'll include some reflections. I won't be offended if you don't read past here. I won't be offended if you do. Because let's be quite honest here, I'm not going to write anything deep and dark and hand it in to Northeastern University. They would just use that information against me. They'd probably charge me for it! Ok...enough ranting.

Reflections, reflections. I guess the biggest thing for me is how much I don't realize I'm "studying abroad." Don't get me wrong, New Zealand is absolutely amazing, but it's not that culturally different. I just feel like I transferred schools again. But to somewhere very pretty. "But what about your Kiwi flatties?," you might ask. Ha. They're 18-year-old boys with accents. They play video games and watch movies all day. I guess going to school in Christchurch is sort of like combining the laid backness of California, the scenery of Hawaii, and the accents of people born and raised in Dorchester (you know they're speaking English, but how do they make it sound so different?). Everything American is included, from McDonalds and Pizza Hut, to Grey's Anatomy and America's Next Top Model, even Barack Obama stickers can be seen on cars and around town. And I guess it doesn't help that Ilam Village is crawling with Americans. But I am friends with other nationalities too. Canadians, Saudis, Swiss, French, Swedish, Malaysian, Indian, even people from Lousiana!

I was reading through the journal requirements and one of the questions it asked was "how does it feel to be a minority?" I honestly don't. And I guess that's the only thing I have to be bummed about here. The only time my nationality is brought up is when people want to talk politics. And by talk politics I mean they're really happy we finally pulled our heads out of our butts and voted for someone competant. It's embarrassing and humbling. I never realized how much people do look up to America. How much they rely on us. How much they care. They teach us in school that we're a great country, but I didn't know they taught it in schools across the world. I got into a conversation with a friend from Canada, and he made me feel like the world was on my shoulders. The way he felt about America. He really made me personally feel guilty that we lead the world into such a mess, but he also made me feel overwhelmed with the responsibilty we have. It's strange. So I guess the biggest difference I feel is that I need to pay attention to world events, I can't take our country for granted anymore, and I need to be proud. Because a lot of people are counting on us. And we can't have a society that's not proud of that. Maybe our actions have left nothing to be desired over the past decade or so, but we still need to lead with our heads held high, otherwise "excrement is going to hit the air conditioning" (KV jr).