It's finally arrived, the day that I leave for my New Zealand study abroad program. It's weird, it didn't quite hit me until today that I will be leaving the country for 17 weeks. I'm super excited, and super nervous, and overall just feeling wholly unprepared. I've read travel guides, bought all of my gear, gone over checklists time and time again, but somehow I still feel like I don't know what to expect.
I'm traveling to NZ to study for a semester with Ecoquest NZ, an ecology program through the University of New Hampshire (check out their website here). For 11 weeks I will be studying ecology, resource management, and environmental policy with 20 other students from across the US. The last 4 weeks of the program consist of directed research projects with Ecoquest professors. After the program ends, I've elected to stay another two weeks to do...whatever I feel like doing, I guess. Take a trip to Australia? Fiji? Kick it in NZ for awhile? Only time will tell. We're based in a field centre on the North Island in Whakatiwai, near the small town of Kaiaua, which is near the city of Auckland. I can't pronounce most of the names of the places I'll be going to, so we'll see how that goes.
The journey there is going to be a long one, with a 13 hour flight from LA to NZ. I leave today at 3pm for Los Angeles (with a connection in Dallas) to meet up with the group, and then we'll all fly to NZ together. NZ is about a day minus seven hours ahead of us. So while it's 10am here in Des Moines, Iowa, it's 3am tomorrow over in NZ. O HAI JETLAG. Whatever, I'm armed with my trusty copy of The Hobbit (the novel from which this blog steals its name), so I'm probably good, right?
I should probs go finish packing (i.e. stuffing everything inside of my ginormous backpack) but I will update the blog once I get there. I will try really really hard to stay on top of this and actually write things, post pictures, etc., but I'm pretty bad at actually keeping up with these things, so bear with me. See you later, the United States!
