O is for...

Operation Wallacea

So this is along the lines of my E and N posts.  Operation Wallacea is a program that offers biological and research conservation opportunities across the world.  And it is the next program I want to be involved with.  OpWall is great because they have many location options as well as length of time options.  Some locations cater more to one area or another, and you can chose a location based on what you want to do.  They offer programs in 11 countries: Indonesia, Honduras, Egypt, Cuba, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Peru, Guyana, Romania, and Mexico.

I personally have my eyes set on Indonesia for summer 2013, hopefully participating for the full eight weeks.  This means, however, that I need to raise over $5,000 to cover the program costs, travel costs, and extras.  I was making a fair amount of progress on that until today when I walked into the Bursar's Office and gave them a check worth $1,518.00 to pay for my summer class.  Man that was painful.  However, if that means I will definitely be graduating next spring instead of the following fall, I guess I'm okay with it.  

E is for...

Education Abroad Network!!

That's right, this is a straight up plug for the Education Abroad Network. The Education Abroad Network (TEAN) is the company that I went through when I went abroad to New Zealand last year (has it already been that long?!).  Anyways, I was and still am completely satisfied with my experience with TEAN.  They were there for me from start to finish, and even now everyone still knows who I am.

For any of my readers out there who may be thinking about studying abroad, I would definitely recommend going over with TEAN, if you can.  If you can't, for whatever reason, I still advise you to go.  And even if you're not studying, just GO!  GO ABROAD!  Travel the world and have fun! There is so much more in this world than where you live now.  Even vacations aren't quite the same as traveling, especially without an agenda.  There's something freeing when you realize that you don't have any plans to be somewhere or do something.  You can decide to take a train north or a bus east or a ferry south, etc.  Yes it can be scary occasionally (where am I going to sleep?) but then when you get to your destination for the day and you find this mostly empty hostel with an amazingly kind man running the place, it doesn't seem bad at all, especially when you have friends with you.

Photo Contest Update

Hey Everyone! 

So I had a request (from my mom) to put up a post about the photo contest outcomes.  You can find the plea for votes here- Photo Contest.  Anyways, the final tally was taken on November 30 and what do you know but I came in first!  YAY!  So that is super cool and I just wanted to thank everyone who helped me out and voted.  Here is the winning picture...

Where Has the Time Gone?

Well everybody I think this is the longest I have ever gone without a legitimate blog.  It's a little disappointing to me to be honest.  But at the same time, what was I going to write about.  I guess I just feel that the few things that I do do aren't very blog worthy.  Interesting.  But that is about to change! (Have I made that promise before?)  Anyways, the semester is finally winding down.  We have one week and then it's Thanksgiving break.  I get a whole six days at home, Yippee!!!!  Then we have two weeks of classes and then it's finals already.  Wow.  So I have 17 more days of class and 6 days of finals, of which I only have exams on 3 days.  Things are looking up!!

So what have I been doing for the past 2.5 months?  I don't even know, hahaha. My last blog post was on October 19, almost a month ago, and that wasn't even a real post, it was a pitch to get more votes for my contest pictures (which, if you haven't voted you can check it out here- Photo Contest).  The time is just flying.  The days seem to go by slowly, but the weeks are going by quickly. So let's see what I've been doing for the past month, shall we?...

Ok so on October 15 I participated at Monter Pumpkin Madness at the market on campus, manning the OxFam America at DelVal table.  We were given the duty of being the crafts table for the kids.  So we had those scratch-off paint things where there is color underneath, and we had Halloween themed masks and picture frames.  The event was actually two days but almost everything was gone by the end of the first day.  I'm not sure what they did for the second day because I wasn't there. 

I was, in fact, at Hawk Mountain with The Wildlife Society.  Hawk Mountain is a sanctuary in Kempton, PA committed to "conserve birds of prey worldwide by providing leadership in raptor conservation science and education, and by maintaining Hawk Mountain Sanctuary as a model observation, research and education facility."  It is quite the lovely place.  We hiked up the mountain, stopping at a couple of observation points along the way.  Once we reached our destination we joined the multitude of other bird watchers and kept our eyes peeled for some birds of prey.  We saw quite a few, but I didn't get any pictures of them because they weren't exactly close.  But I did get some shots of the beautiful scenery...

 

So that was a pretty nice weekend overall.  The next weekend was homecoming weekend.  Woot!!  October 21 began the festivities with a parade through town.  The parade was a competition between the clubs, each having their own themed float or car.  The theme this year was Bright Lights, Big City.  I participated with Animal Science Society (abbreviated A.S.S.) like I did last year.  Our city was Sydney Australia.  We decorated our float and dressed up in character and hit the road to impress the citizens of Doylestown and the judges awaiting our return.  As a part of decorating the float I, for some reason, volunteered to make a tree.  Well, after about four days worth of construction we finally had a tree.

Pretty beast if I do say so myself.  Any ways so we rode our float in our costumes...

And we had a grand ole time.  We didn't place, and therefore didn't win any money, but we still had fun... and a tree.  My roommate and I decided to keep the tree, not knowing at the time just how handy he would become.  Oh yes, we named it Ferdinand.  

Photo Contest!

Hey everyone,

So I am entered into a photo contest hosted by my study abroad program. The final category is people's choice. Whoever has the most votes for their photo by November 30 will win $200. I appreciate all votes. It only takes a minute, I promise. Please vote for my first link and my second if you're interested. I personally like the first one more. Feel free to forward this on to anyone and everyone!! Also, if you are interested in seeing more of my photos I will list a couple of websites at which you can view them.

Thank you for your support,
Caitlin Kenney

Picture One- http://www.educationabroadnetwork.org/photo-voting/photo_20.html

Picture Two- http://www.educationabroadnetwork.org/photo-voting/photo_49.html

Website One- http://nowlic76.500px.com/

Website Two- http://ckenney76.blogspot.com/  (This one!)

Auckland Adventures

Between all of the planned trips and sessions and dinners which Education Abroad had planned for us, there was a lot of free time.  During this time we took the liberty of exploring the city of Auckland.  The following is a brief picture compilation of our time exploring the City of Sails...

Abseil Me Down

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Maori Tour was only part one of our Auckland experience that TEAN put on for us.  Part two was a Canyoning Trip.  What’s Canyoning, you ask?  Canyoning is “traveling in canyons using a variety of techniques that may include other outdoor activities such as walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling, and/or swimming.”  Apparently it’s known as Canyoneering in the U.S.   Either way, Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize the word. 

Our canyoning trip included abseiling (rappelling) down waterfalls, both the sides and the middle.  It also included the hike up to the waterfalls, and the descent down the river afterwards.  The descent included such things as jumping, crawling, sliding, walking, and swimming.

So we began the day (Feb. 11) by jumping in two vans and riding out to literally a shed in a parking lot.  There we changed into wetsuits (top and bottom), old shoes, and helmets.  we then got in the vans again and travelled out to the trail.  There we put on a harnessy thing and practiced both the abseiling and the waiting with the rope for a fellow abseiler.  with that out of the way we began our trek up the mountain.  Now normally the trail we hiked would not have been a problem, but we were all in ill-fitting wetsuits and had an interesting time breathing.  Finally we reached the start of our real journey.  The top of a waterfall.  We were properly fitted into our gear and proceeded to jump into a freezing cold pool to swim out to the edge of the fall.  For the first descent we went down the side of the waterfall.  If you don't already know, I am quite afraid of heights.  As such, I let the big kids go first and hung near the back of the group, plucking up the courage to lower myself over the edge of a waterfall.  That done, I hooked up to one of two lines and slowly, ever so slowly, began my own descent. 

This doesn't look that imposing to be sure, but right where that rope disappears is a 90 degree angle.  So anyways, I took my sweet time to get down to the bottom.  Once there, I was extremely proud of myself.  However, that was only the first of four.  The third and fourth ones being the hardest, apparently.  So I swam through the pool at the bottom of the first falls and set myself up to go down the next.  The next one didn't even have water, though.  It was more of a connection between Point A (small waterfall) and Point B (big waterfall).  From the top of the second waterfall, it doesn't look that big.  even after you go over the edge.  Because guess what?  There's a second edge!

That's it.  I'm not sure if that's both waterfalls, but I would say at least the bottom 3/4 of it is the second waterfall.  I was shaking by the time I reached the bottom of that one.  Once there, I rejoined the rest of the group and we moved on, leaving a few people to finish up and join us.  We were guided to our next starting point where we all sat down and ate some tasty sandwiches for lunch.  While we ate, our guides prepped the fourth and final abseil.  The one in the waterfall. 

Māori Tour pt. 2

Continuing on now from the previous blog, which you can find here... Maori Tour

After getting wiped out by a very sneaky wave in rugby, we changed into our bathing suits and went swimming!! ...in a waterfall.  We walked maybe five minutes up the road from the beach to a pretty little waterfall. 

The water was absolutely freezing, but I was determined to touch the rocks under the waterfall.  By the time I got out there, aka after my lower half went numb, there were only five of us left in the water, everyone else having bailed.

Fear us, we are strong women!!  As soon as this picture was taken though, we got out too.  No need to turn blue or anything.  It seemed almost planned that as feeling was returning to my lower half Staci began a little weaving tutorial.  We each cut a flax stem and proceeded to make a very simple... thing.  I don't recall the name, but it was supposed to represent a flower.

City of Sails

Auckland.  The City of Sails.  The largest city in New Zealand with over 1.4 million occupants.  Auckland lies on an isthmus.  An isthmus, for those of you who do not know, is a strip of land connecting two larger pieces of land, usually with water on either side.  Auckland is set quite north on the North Island and it borders Waitemata Harbour, which opens to the Hauraki Gulf to the east, and Manukau Harbour, which opens to the Tasman Sea to the west.  A very interesting city to say the least. 

We touched down in Auckland right around twelve pm on February 9.  From the airport we were bused to the Quadrant Hotel, where we would be staying for the next five days.  The Quadrant was a very lovely four star hotel right in the city.  It was also right across the road from the University of Auckland and Albert Park. 

Upon arrival we were greeted with a nice lunch and a general overview of the schedule, as well as a refresher on who was who and an introduction to our new student addition, Will, and our new TEAN guide additions Lauren and Tommy.  From there we were given our keys and headed back outside to collect our luggage and find our rooms.  Our luggage was becoming seriously annoying by this point let me just say.  Anyways, I was placed in room 1310 with the lovely Patience.  The first things we did?  Claim a bed, toss our luggage in  a corner and jump onto the free wi-fi.  Oh the grip of technology.

Happy Birthday to Me?

As many of you know, I only had about a four hour birthday this year since I literally flew right through it.  Well here is that story...

February 3-4-5, 2011

The Boston and Dallas flights both ran very smoothly.  Once we reached LAX there were about eight of us with the program who found each other in transit.  We meandered from one terminal to the next, only to discover that the line at the next check-in desk was crazy.  We also discovered that the new airline only allowed for one free checked bag, where we were all told two.  So after a good two hours of waiting in multiple lines, and $115 later, I was heading through security (TEAN was awesome in helping us get a reimbursement for this).  Security only took about 20 minutes to get through.  It was probably the fastest part of the whole trip.

Once on the plane I sat in my seat, 64E if I remember properly.  It was in the middle row, a row which was totally empty.  So I sat waiting for the rest of the group of eight to show up, wondering who would sit beside me.  I didn't have to wait too long.  The rest of our group of eight showed up, and Travis, a fellow Palmy student, sat next to me.  Soon after that a girl sat on my other side.  Come to find out her name is Kristen and she's going to Palmy too.  So now all of us wanted to know who was sitting on the other side of Travis since there are only four students going to Palmerston North this semester with this program. 

Not too much time later and Kaleb, our fourth, showed up.  So yes, all four Palmy students were seated next to each other for the international flight to Fiji.  It was crazy.  It was also the beginning of the end for us.  It was a great friendship from the start (that's what I think anyways).  To steal a quote from Kaleb's blog: "California to Fiji was a quite lengthy flight, but I was able to meet the 3 amigos joining me from the States in Massey University at Palmerston North.  They are: [Kaleb from Minnesota], Kristen from Kentucky, and Travis from Texas (Too bad [Kaleb] wasn't [Melvin] or something for yet another alliteration)."

So in introducing ourselves to each other, I 'let slip' that my birthday was in two hours and asked if they minded staying up.  They agreed to stay up and sing before falling asleep.  It wasn't  hard either since we were served dinner about 30 minutes or so after takeoff.

Appetizing, I know. So we were slowly approaching my twentieth birthday.  At 11:56pm, four minutes to the big day, the time changed.  10:56pm.  WTF.  But we were all tired and wanted to go to bed so they sang to me at 11:00, which just four minutes earlier would have been midnight.  And then we passed out.

I slept for most of the plane ride, though I did keep waking up due to some pretty extreme turbulence.   But we made it to Fiji without any major issues.  And what a place.  It was around five in the morning when we landed yet there was no need for a jacket or even pants.  The place is amazing.  More on that to come...