Glaciers, Icebergs and Horses... Oh My!!

Kia Ora!

It's hard  to believe I am saying this, but last weekend was our sixth weekend here in New Zealand! Each weekend seems to get better and better, it's crazy! We started this past weekend by driving to Aoraki, the village in New Zealand that is home to Mount Cook, on Friday night. A former teacher from the Terrace school now lives there and was able to hook us up with some great deals including our hostel for the night. It was a great little set up. It had two bunk beds and we had our own bathroom and mirrors (impressive compared to some of the hostels we have stayed in) for only $30.. not too shabby! There was also a little pub attached so we were able to have a couple of drinks and eat when we got there.


In the morning we were up bright and early for a glacier cruise. Once again we snagged a great deal because we are 'teachers!' Our tour group met at a hotel where we took a fifteen minute bus ride and then walked twenty minutes before getting onto a small speed boat. We spent about an hour on the lake and got to see New Zealand's largest glacier, the Tasman, and many of the icebergs that have broken off of it. It was so amazing! I have always pictured icebergs as just looking like big pyramids sticking out of the water but each one was a different shape and different colours. They all looked like huge masses built out of crystals, they were absolutely breathtaking! It was really interesting to learn that every few weeks the glaciers rotate or flip over. You can tell how long it's been since the last time it flipped by the color. If it is really blue it has just flipped and the dirty brown ones haven't flipped for a few weeks and will probably flip soon. So not only was our little adventure tons of fun, but also educational! :)

After our glacier cruise we decided to go for a 'wee' hike to Hooker Valley to see another one of New Zealand's fine glaciers! The trail we took had been closed lately and had just opened up on Saturday. It was the most beautiful trail I have ever walked! There were two swing bridges, a board walk, and tons of rocks to climb! Since we were only anticipating an hour walk (we were told the trail was still closed past the first swing bridge) we weren't ready with enough water. Luckily for us, in New Zealand it is kosher to to drink from most streams. So about an hour in we found a good place to fill up! We kept trekking on and finally made it to a beautiful lake that ended with another glacier. I should also mention how gorgeous the lakes are because of their colour. They are the most gorgeous pale blue colour due to glacier flour. It mixes with water from the streams where the heavier particles sink to the bottom of the lake. Then all the colours of the rainbow are absorbed except blue which then reflects off which makes for a beautiful blue lake! After spending some time admiring the lake we made our way back to the car, about an hour and a half walk, and headed back to Alexandra.

 We haven't planked for a while, so we planked the second swing bridge.. SCARY! 

 How amazing is this??

Sunday morning we woke up early and got all dolled up for the Cromwell horse races. We went with a couple of guys from Alex that we know. We took a bus over and set up a little camp and just sat and watched the races all day. Ellen and Alex bet through out the day and had a few small wins but I was too chicken, so I just sat and enjoyed the day in the sun. It was so much fun, until I woke up Monday morning with sun-burnt lips and a sun-burnt forehead!

Over all it was another truly amazing, fabulous weekend! I feel like I am just babbling as I try to type in all the details of my weekend.  My trip has honestly been something that I can't describe with words. Everything about it has been amazing and so hard to type into a blog! Coming home will be great in the sense that I get to see so many people I miss, but it will be truly be a sad day leaving such an amazing country!


Until my next adventure, take care!

Michelle

Week One... again!

Hi friends!

Look at me go, blogging twice in one week, I can feel how impressed you are... Well be prepared to be even more amazed.... I have compiled a little video of our first week in New Zealand. It is made up of my favorite videos and pictures from our first week together. Hope you enjoy it!! (And just a forewarning, it is 14.5 minutes long, but hey that sums up a WHOLE WEEK!)

Much love,

Michelle

Thanksgiving in Alexandra

Well here I am at school, about to start making plans for my writing lessons this week, when I thought blogging sounded more fun! (And I don't need my lesson until tomorrow anyways ;))

This was our first weekend not traveling and it turned out to be a lot of fun! We decided that since we weren't going to be home for Thanksgiving this year, we would have it here and invite people from school that we work with. We cooked a big turkey (and by we I mean Ellen) and all made our favorite dishes from home. Everyone had a good time and really seemed to enjoy the food. They were excited to celebrate with us, none of them had been invited to previous Thanksgivings held by ISU students before. I think it earned us some brownie points! I'm excited to graze on left over turkey and other left overs all week. This morning I am eating left over strawberry fluff for breakfast, what could be better??

 The roomies with our feast!

The fooooood! :)

Now that our Thanksgiving weekend is over I am slightly depressed starting another week. The weeks here seem to fly by so fast and we only have three weeks left! It is such a sad thing to think of how much time I have left. There is still so much I want to see and do. Not to mention going home to cold weather doesn't seem like any fun at all! It will be good seeing everyone for Christmas. I have been getting lots of emails from Emma and she has sent me a couple of hugs, so it will be fun to see the kids again and get some real hugs! Until then, I am excited to squeeze in as much as possible in these last three and a half weeks!

Until next time,

Michelle

Weekend Update!

Greetings Mates!

It's about six on Tuesday evening and I thought, "Hey, why not update my blog?!" Last week was super busy but lots of fun!

As you may have read in my last post the roommates and I had quite a few dinner dates last week which was awesome. Our supervisor from Iowa State, Ann, was here. It was really nice having her. We spent a lot of time with her eating and at school. It was fun to have her come watch us and to just chat about how things are going. Friday night Krystal and I went walking with her along the river before she took us all out to dinner.

After din din we headed to Queenstown for the weekend. We didn't have many plans when we left, just knew we wanted to shop and go out for some drinks! We had a lot of fun the first night and met some fun people. Then on Saturday we spent our day shopping which was super fun and then decided to take the gondola ride that everyone was telling us about. The gondola ride was gorgeous!! On the way up we saw the most amazing rainbow! It had been spitting earlier, so it was perfect timing! At the top of the gondola there is a really cool luge course. We spent a couple of hours there and had a blast! It was so funny looking back at pictures and videos (mostly from Ellen).  After the luge course and gondola ride back down we went to Fergburger to eat. It's a really popular burger place with HUGE burgers. However, I was a little let down until my second trip there later in the evening.

After a nice nap we started getting ready to go out for the night. The hostel we stayed at had no mirrors in the room, so the girls were getting ready in the bathroom when we met another guy staying at our hostel. He invited us to hang out with his friends so of course we did. Three of them were from Christchurch and two of them were from San Diego. We had a really good time with them, they were fun guys to just find in the bathroom! We went to a few bars in Queenstown and went back to Fergburger (which was much better the second time around).

Over all it was a really great weekend. I was happy to come back to Alexandra and get to skype with my good friend Michelle. It's always good seeing my friends, especially since I haven't seen most of them in person or on skype in over a month! When Monday rolled around I had an easy school day luckily. I spent most of Sunday watching movies, so no lesson planning got done! After school we had Ann over for tea. It was her last night in town and it was really fun. We played dominoes and drank wine and chatted. She also brought us some groceries which was both funny and nice.. she said she was impressed with how well we were feeding ourselves!

This week is a crazy one! We are doing lots of arts in our rooms so my lesson planning has gone down quite a bit. I call Tuesday my 'P.E.' day. I start with teaching swimming in the morning, then dance after lunch, and ending the day with coaching year 3/4 t-ball. So Tuesday's also involve a little less planning, but take a lot more energy! This Tuesday ended up being terrific because I got to skype with Taylor and plan a skype date with Emily, these two things made me more than elated! If I weren't so lazy I would add in some pictures, but you can always see them on facebook!

Take care and be safe!

Michelle

Full Belly!

Hello mates!

I can't believe tomorrow is Thursday already! I have had a great week, so I thought it would be a good time to share (as well as put off lesson planning!)

To start this blog, I must tell you about all the yummy food I have been/will be eating this week! (Hence the title Full Belly!) On Tuesday the roommates and I were invited to one of the associate teacher's homes for dinner. She made us a delicious roasted lamb with potato wedges and lots of veggies. It was so nice to have a home cooked meal again! It was fun getting to know her and her family. Definitely made for a better Tuesday night then sitting around watching TV! Tonight our ISU supervisor arrived and she took up to eat at a little restaurant in Clyde called The Post Office. Once again, the food was amazing. Krystal and I split a chicken and honey mustard cheese burger and chicken lip (fingers). I think the best part was the aoli is came with! It is a dipping sauce that is used quite a bit here. It has sour cream and garlic in it, very good and unhealthy :). We finished dinner with dessert and tea, which I have grown to love! I can't remember the name of my dessert, but it was so good, I wish it was a never ending plate! It was fun to sit down and chat with Ann and tell her all about school. It was fun to see someone from home too! Tomorrow night Ann is taking all of the associate teachers out to dinner. I am sure it will be a great time. We all have really great teachers we work with so it will be fun to have a social night to get to everyone better!

School has also been really great this week. My students have been so focused! Every year at the Terrace School the Life Education bus comes for a couple of weeks. It is a bus that travels around NZ to school and teaches the kids various things with the help of Harold the giraffe. This year our kids will be learning about friendship, so Maria had asked me to do a friendship unit to go along with what they will be learning. Today I taught my second lesson. In my plans I have left a lot of time for discussion in small groups and then sharing time in large group. Each and every one of my student's has participated and it's been wonderful! There are a handful of kids who I have never seen raise their hands, so seeing them so involved has been a good boost this week!

Our classroom has also been filled with creative kids! We have been focusing on narrative writing this term. I have been trying to help the kids be more imaginative and creative in their writing. We have been talking about ways to expand stories and the importance of using lots of verbs and adjectives. On Tuesday I was giving a lesson on using more verbs and some how we began talking about how 'said' is a boring word. On my white board I wrote "New words for said." I told all the students by the end of the day they should write a word on the board. It was great! We banned the word 'said' from our writing and now have a list of 30 alternative words. Today we came up with new words for 'happy' and tomorrow we will think of new ideas for 'walk.' It has been soooo awesome to see the things my students have come up with! It has made for a euphoric teacher!

I hope you are all having wonderful weeks back home! I have heard it's snowing in Iowa.. I'd like to say I'm bummed to be missing it, but I'm not. Sadly it was raining here today, hoping for better weather tomorrow.

In a while crocodiles,

Michelle

There's no doubt, Doubtful Sound was Amazing!

Hello all! It has been a while since I have taken the time to blog and to be honest there wasn't much to blog about. Everyday it feels more like home here, so with that there are fewer exciting things happening.

However, I don't want you to think I am leading a boring life by any means! In fact, this weekend my roommates and I traveled to Doubtful Sound in the southwestern corner of New Zealand. While it is called a sound it is really a fjord. A fjord (pronounced fee-or-d) is a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between high cliffs typically formed by the submergence of a glaciated valley- to be exact. In more simple terms it is an amazing place carved out by glaciers a really, really long time ago. You may be wondering why it is called Doubtful Sound if it is really a fjord, that I can not tell you. What I can tell you is a sound is very similar and that when it was first discovered they named it wrong, same as Milford Sound.

Now that you know what Doubtful is I can tell you all about our journey getting there. Towards the end of last week our spring weather vanished and it seemed like the Iowans had brought along our yucky weather. It was rainy and cold outside. When we woke up Thursday morning the hills were COVERED in snow (luckily none down by us!) and the weather went down hill from there. Friday morning we awoke to the a rainy day and to make matters worse, we had hung clothes to dry the night before. None the less shortly after the school day was over we hit the road and started our trek to Manapouri.

Our drive was snow covered, but luckily we had a good driver, Alex, who always seems to get stuck driving at the worst times! We made pretty good timing and arrived in Manapouri around 8:30. We stayed at a little holiday park/campground in a tiny, and very cheap, cabin. Though it wasn't the nicest of accommodations, we had a lot of fun there and only 200m away from our cabin there was a bar. Since it happened to be the fifth of November the whole town (of 300 people) was outside the bar around a huge bonfire celebrating Gui Fawkes day. It was so much fun. Along with the fire there was fireworks, an island dancer and a fire thrower. 

 Our scary drive! Ekk!

 Our quaint and cold cabin.

The girls at the bonfire. 

The next morning we woke up and got ready to catch our bus to Doubtful Sound. When we got outside we sadly noticed the ground was covered in snow. It definitely felt more like we were at home and not in New Zealand. I was beginning to wonder if this trip would be worth my money. On top of the snow is was freezing and foggy. Nonetheless was I still excited to see what the day had to bring. Our first bus took us to a boat which took us across Lake Manapouri. It was about an hour ride and because of the fog it was hard to see the beautiful scenery surrounding us. When we got off the boat we got onto our second bus which proceeded to take us underground to the Manapouri Power Station. Along the way our driver informed us that in the winter it is unusal to see as much snow as they had and it is less then a month till summer. At point we almost got stuck and he had to go out and put chains on our tires. It was a scary moment as we were on the pass of the mountain with no where to go but down! Finally we made it to the Manapouri Power Station.  It is an underground power station and probably New Zealand's biggest engineering accomplishment built back in the 60's. Sounds a wee big dorky, but was a very cool thing to see. 

 The winder wonderland we awoke too.

 Our Scary drive up the mountain!

 Finally in the fjord! (Out of order, sorry!)

 The power station

 Our group on the second boat (Also in the wrong order)

After the power station we got onto our second boat which took us into Doubtful. It was beautiful, freezing cold and raining, but still amazing! Being there was very comparable to Jurassic Park. Everything was untouched. It rains about 200 days a year there which makes for 100's of gorgeous waterfalls. The mountains were covered in trees. Every once in a while you would see a bare spot or a spot only covered in moss. The mountains have no top soil so the trees are simply held in place by each other, like they are 'holding hands.' If there is an earthquake or something else to disrupt them, they all come down. Like an avalanche of trees! Eventually they grow back, but it takes about 150 years to reach full size again. 

The whole cruise was amazing, but my two favorite parts were the waterfalls and seeing penguins. For those of you who don't know, I am in love with penguins. I think they are the cutest little animals. Lucky me, I got to see four Fiordland's Crusted Penguins! Needless to say I was excited as a kid on Christmas morning! I also loved seeing and standing under one of the waterfalls! It was beautiful and a really fun experience, even in the cold weather. Our tour guide kept talking about how clean the water was, so Ellen and I also decided to fill our glasses up and take a drink!

 Excited to be on the boat!

 Drenched after filling up our glasses!

 Cute little penguins!

 Happy as can be!

 Before we got soaked (not sure why they are out of order...)

 My reaction to seeing penguins outside of a zoo!

After a few hours in the fjord we began our journey back home. This included going back down the snow covered mountain which was surprisingly less scary, we even got to play in the snow! After getting back to our cabin we went back to the bar for a yummy kiwi dinner and headed home in the morning. The weather on the way home was much nicer and we realized how much beautiful scenery we missed on the way there!

 I felt right at home!

 Krystal made a snowman!

 The view across from our cabin Sunday morning.

Our drive home along the coast. 

One of my favorite things about New Zealand is how it keeps changing. Usually it is the scenery you drive by, but this weekend is was the weather. Hard to believe all of these pictures were taken with 72 hours of each other! If you are still reading, many thanks! This was a long blog, but what can I say, I had an amazing weekend and felt the need to share it all!

Peace and blessings!

Michelle