School's out for the summer!

Hey Everyone!

School is done now, and I can't say enough HOW GRATEFUL I am to have gotten the chance to teach here in New Zealand. I have learned so much from my teacher and I know I going to be a better teacher once I get home. I have learned a lot about managing and classroom and ways to effectively evaluate children. I've also learned how to incorporate physical education throughout the entire day. The teachers here teach every subject, so I learned cool ways to teach P.E., music, art and drama. 

The last day of school was so hard for me. I love the kids here and I've grown so close to all of them. I got a lot of gifts and cards on the last day and there were a ton of tears all day long. I'm so glad I created such a bond with each and every one of my students, even though it made it borderline impossible to leave them on Tuesday. The last day, we got to make Christmas cookies and watch the video the kids made me. I will miss them all so much! 

Here are some pictures of my awesome kiddos!

This is a picture of the very special necklace I got from Mr. Guillians, the grounds keeper here. He carved it himself out of bone! It's a traditional Maori symbol meaning, "New Beginnings." I absolutely LOVE it! So incredible. 

I am so grateful to my parents, Iowa State and the teachers at the Terrace School for letting me have this AMAZING experience! Thank you SO much! 

Low Key Weekend!

Hey Everyone!

This weekend was kind of low-key for us here in New Zealand. I was pretty sick a couple of days this week and had to stay home from school and we all had a lot to get done for school this week on Sunday so we decided to just do a day trip to Dunedin to get out of the house and do something fun!

The drive there was fun as always, good music and beautiful scenery. Then, we ran into a herd of cows, literally. Apparently they were being moved to a different pasture and to do that, they walk along the road to get to their new home. We were instructed to drive through them very slowly and they will move to accommodate the car. So, we drove through a herd of cows. The other girls thought it was hilarious, but the city girl in me was absolutely terrified. It was smelly and the cows were looking right at me and mooing and I did not enjoy it. Of course, that didn’t stop me from taking pictures of it. 

When we got to Dunedin, the first we did was go to the Royal Albatross Center. (Royal Albatross are HUGE birds that look like big seagulls.) We were hoping to get a tour but then decided against it when we found out it was $40 and there probably wouldn’t be any Albatross flying, though we would see them nesting. We went on a couple walks down to the coast in the hopes that we’d see blue penguins and sea lions and WE DID! We got pretty close to sea lions, and saw some penguins from afar! In the picture of me, I’m pointing to the sea lions to show you how close we were but you can’t see them very well :(

Then, we went into the city! It was a pretty cool day, rainy, but awesome. It was the graduation from the college in Dunedin and they had a parade for their graduates so we got to watch that for a little bit!

Then we got some lunch at a really cool restaurant where they put your food on a hot  stone so it comes out and it still cooking so you can take your food off whenever it’s at the right consistency. Courtney really liked this place a lot! Then we participated in one of my favorite hobbies, shopping! Dunedin is one of the most urban places in the South Island of New Zealand and shopping is incredible. I got some really cute stuff that I can’t wait to wear! It felt like I was home a little bit because since it’s December the Christmas decorations have been busted out (at least they wait until December) and I was in a city shopping. All in all, it was a good relaxing weekend. 

I'm living in a postcard!

Hey Everyone!!

This weekend was another amazing weekend in New Zealand. I saw some of the prettiest things I have seen pretty much ever. We went to Mount Cook National Park and we saw Mount Cook and the Tasman Glacier. My roommate Courtney had been talking about how she wanted to see Mount Cook since we’ve been here. To be honest, I had never heard of Mount Cook and was just excited to go see a mountain and get some hiking in this weekend. Up until the day before we got here, I had been telling everyone we were going to go and climb Mount Cook. I was confused as to why everyone was so impressed with this because I thought it was just going to be an awesome mountain. As it turns out, Mount Cook is the training mountain for people wishing to climb Mount Everest. Needless to say, we were NOT going to climb the mountain, we were going to hike around it and look at it in all it’s glory. It truly is magnificent. There are hanging glaciers all over it. I can’t even believe how pretty it is! The Hermitage Hotel is one of the most famous hotels in New Zealand it’s the place where the Sir Edmund Hillary museum is located. We got some pictures with the guy out on the balcony of the hotel!

The first day we were there on Saturday, we went on an incredible tour called the Glacial Expedition. (If you’re ever in NZ, TAKE THIS TOUR!!!!) We went on a tour to the Tasman Glacier (largest glacier in New Zealand) and we got pretty up close and personal with it! It started out with a short bus ride to the car park for the glacier trek. This WHOLE valley used to be the Tasman Glacier during the Ice Age. 

Then, we took a walk from the car park to the Tasman Lake. It was only a short 2km walk, but of course it provided us with some amazing views. 

We made it to the Lake!! How pretty! The water is so blue and milky from all the glacial silt. 

2 minutes after our boat took off, we were up close and personal with our first ice berg. Remember, only 10% of the iceberg is above the water. 90% of the ice berg is still under the water!! That’s a lot of ice!

After that ice berg, we went really REALLY close to another one! This one was bigger too. 

The tour guide broke off little pieces of the iceberg and handed them to us! It was so cool and of course FREEZING! We held them up to the sun and they looked like diamonds. When we were too cold to hold the ice bergs anymore, we asked the guide what to do with the chunk of ice, is it appropriate to throw it back?? She said “You eat it of course!!” So yes, I ate a little bit of a glacier. It was so cool!! 

I know these ice bergs look dirty, but they’re not! It’s just the stuff from the inside of the glacier turning over and coming out to the surface. It’s a complicated process, but the water in the top 10% of the lake is too warm (2 degrees Celcius) so it melts a bit of the glacier. Because of this, it is forced to turn itself inside out for some reason to regain the 10-90 ratio for being in and out of the water. Interesting! I thought they were just dirty. 

At last, we got to see the Tasman glacier! We weren’t able to get too close because the 90% of this glacier that is underwater has created a shelf and if we got any closer, we’d eventually get stuck and be unable to get back out. It really is a beautiful glacier!! It’s been around since the ice age! This thing is super old! I wonder if the animals from the movie ice age were on this glacier?? 

Here are just a few more beautiful pictures from the tour on the Tasman Glacial Lake. Absolutely incredible. 

Here are a couple amazing photos from the view from our room in the hostel. 

We went on a hike called the Hooker Valley Trail and it was sweet. It took us about 2 hours and 20 minutes round trip and it was a relatively difficult track. We definitely were breathing hard at certain parts on it. It was absolutely worth it though because of the view!!! I am going to put so many pictures on here, sorry!!

Here's the start of our 3 hour hike!

The first bridge we had to get over! Very shaky. 

This should be framed!

Just taking a break from the hiking for a photo opp! 

Our first real good glimpse of Mount Cook

We finally made it to the Hooker Valley Glacier! It was so cool (literally cold) and ridiculously windy. We were getting blown around so we weren’t able to stay very long! We would have blown away. Mount Cook was beautiful from this view and the glacier was amazing as well. What a special place.  

I was being blown right over! SOOO Windy!

We stopped at the glorious Lake Tekapo on our way back home! These pictures don’t do it justice!! The water was SO clear and so aqua blue. Beautiful. :) I loved how the flowers came right out of the rocks. It seemed like such a contradiction. It was an incredible sight. I cannot wait to frame all of these pictures so I can remember this beauty forever! While we were there, we decided to go to the famous Lake Tekapo hot pools. They were like huge hot tubs that you could swim around in. It was so relaxing, I loved it!