Some of you might be wondering why I haven’t posted at all during the last month. There’s actually some pretty good reasons, namely that I didn’t get a chance to post at all during my last week and a half in New Zealand, and that by the time I got back to the States, the webserver, because it’s sitting at Gustavus, was down for all of Christmas break, and since J-term started up this week at GAC I’ve been busy seeing friends again and working through grad school apps. But I’ll try to sum up what I’ve been up to.
Let’s see, where did I leave off last time…? Oh yeah, Edoras! Back on Dec 11th David Strijbis took his kids, a couple of his friends from town, and me out to Mt Sunday, where the LOTR set for Edoras was built. It truly is out in the middle of nowhere (hence why a nearby sheep station is called Erehwon), an hour from the nearest town that has electricity. No traces of the buildings are left, but it was still amazing to hike up Mt Sunday and stand where the Golden Hall of Meduseld once stood, and see so many grand vistas from the movies. It was amazing to see it from afar, to notice how utterly puny Mt Sunday looks when compared to the mountains that are around it, and then to see just how big it actually was when you got up close to it. That night I went with Strijbis’s to a barbecue at one of their friends’ houses, where the highlight of the evening was a hysterical couple of games of “Mexican Train,” hehe.
On the 12th I went to church with Strijbis’s in the morning, before saying goodbye in the afternoon and striking out on my own for my final week abroad. On my way north from Ashburton I stopped in at the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch, which was actually a pretty cool little museum. At the hostel that night in Kaikoura I met and talked with a few cool people, including a German kid named Simon who was at the end of his year as an exchange student in Wellington. Hostels are awesome that way, in that you can meet so many interesting people from around the world.
The next day I drove up to Picton, dropped off my rental car, took the three-hour Interislander Ferry over to Wellington on the North Island, where I had another rental car waiting for me right when I stepped off the ferry (if any of you ever go to New Zealand and want to rent a car, go with Apex, they’re awesome!). I stayed a couple of nights in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, and I loved it there. “Windy Welly” is a cool city to walk around, there’s quite a bit to see. One of the highlights was Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of NZ on the city’s harbourfront. I spent five or six hours wandering around Te Papa, and I could’ve easily spent more time there if I hadn’t also been wanting to see some other stuff in Wellington, like the National Film Archive.
On the 15th I drove a lot. In the morning I went up to the Mt Victoria lookout in Wellington, and walked a short distance along a couple of trails to the film sites of where the Hobbits were fleeing for Bucklebury Ferry, in particular where they fell down the hill and found a bunch of mushrooms, and also where Frodo told them to get off the road. It’s amazing that they were able to film those scenes in a park in the middle of Wellington, a city of 200,000 people. About 45 minutes north of Wellington I paid a visit to Kaitoke Regional Park, the film site of Rivendell. It was really hard to visualize where the buildings once were, because all the trees and shrubs had to be moved back once they were done with filming, so there aren’t even empty patches in the vegetation to indicate where the structures were. Then I made the long drive into the Volcanic Plateau in the center of the North Island, taking a little side-trip to Mangawhero Falls north of Ohakune in Tongariro National Park, where a scene was filmed of Smeagol slipping and sliding down a rocky river while fishing. That area is in the shadow of Mt Ruapehu, an active volcano which most recently erupted in 1995-6 (one of its ski fields, Whakapapa, was used for the Emyn Muil scenes, and pretty much all of the Mordor shots were filmed somewhere in Tongariro NP). 
The other two volcanoes in Tongariro NP are Mt Tongariro (which has been dormant for a century), and Mt Ngauruhoe, which last went off in 1975, and since it has the classic “cone” volcano shape, it was used as Mt Doom in LOTR. It was starting to get pretty late when I finally rolled into Taupo for the night, but on the way there I drove on the beautiful Desert Road. It was especially pretty since there were dark blue-grey storm clouds ahead of me, with the sun backlighting the burnt orange tussock grass and soil. Spectacular! Anyway, Taupo sits on the shores of Lake Taupo, NZ’s largest lake, which was formed by an immense volcanic explosion in AD 151, the world’s largest eruption in the last 3000 years or so. In fact, the eruption was so big that its effects were noticed as far away as China and Rome! It was so catastrophic that it apparently extinguished almost all life on the North Island when it happened.
I had hoped to do the Tongariro Crossing the next day, an 8-hour hike past Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe that is labeled as the best one-day hike in all of New Zealand, but the weather was bad in that area, so the track was closed for the fourth day in a row. Oh well. So instead I just made some stops along the way on the short drive to Rotorua, first at Huka Falls and then Aratiatia Rapids, both along the Waikato River, NZ’s largest river. Aratiatia Rapids is kinda cool in that every couple of hours they open the dam just upstream of the rapids for half an hour at a time, which causes the water levels to rise rapidly and turns the placid river into a raging torrent. Then I also stopped at the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, which had lots of thermal rock and water formations. It was a really neat place, but because of all the sulphur and other gases and steam, it was really warm and humid, and it reeked horribly. I hadn’t ever seen anything like it though, so I was glad I went.
On the 17th I bought a genuine NZ jade necklace at the Jade Factory in Rotorua before heading out to Matamata to take a tour of the Hobbiton film set. It’s on private farmland, so booking a tour was required. It was so cool to get to see that place, it’s amazingly beautiful land. It’s also the only LOTR film site that still has any of the set remaining; 17 of the original 34 hobbit holes are still there. Most of them are just facings on the hillside though, except for Bag End, which has just enough room inside for a couple people to stand and for a couple cameras to be in there looking out the front door (all the interior shots of Bag End were done at a sound stage in Wellington). After that I took the “scenic” route to Auckland via the Seabird Coast, but it wasn’t particularly scenic, oh well. When I got to my hostel in Auckland I found a cool place to eat — Burger Wisconsin! I did a double take when I saw the sign, and I just had to go there. It was super-tasty too. ๐
I kinda hung around Auckland and surrounds for a bit on the 18th, mostly because I was hoping to meet up with CJ, who, as it turned out, managed to catch a flight home to Minneapolis a day early, so I had plenty of time to take in lovely views of Auckland from a couple of the 40-some extinct volcanoes that surround the city. Late afternoon I made the 4-hr drive up to Paihia, the gateway to the lovely Bay of Islands. On the 19th I drove up to nearby Waitangi for a tour of the Treaty Grounds. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed back in 1841 by the British and Maori for the protection of equal rights for all, and is widely regarded as the founding document of New Zealand. Among the sights at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds are the world’s largest existing waka (Maori war canoe), and a beautifully carved and decorated whare (Maori meeting house). 
In the afternoon I took a nice three and a half hour cruise through the islands with Dolphin Discoveries, with the highlights being cruising through the Hole in the Rock, seeing a pod of dolphins swimming just a few feet away from the boat, and also seeing where another cruise ship had run aground and sustained serious damage the day before after having engine trouble in stormy seas (it was kinda humorous to see, but only since nobody was injured). Because of my stubbornness regarding applying sunscreen, I sported a really intense sunburn on my face for my return trip to Auckland, oh well. I’ll learn one of these days…
To wile away the hours on the 20th before flying out, I went to the Auckland War Museum for awhile with this cool Norwegian kid named Jorgen who I met at my hostel in Auckland the night before (and two nights before that when I also was in Auckland at the same hostel). There were lots of fascinating Maori and WWI/WWII exhibits of course, but the highlight of the museum was the performance by Manaia. Manaia is a group of six Maori (three men, three women) who perform traditional Maori songs and dances. They were all really cool to see, but the most memorable was the haka, the Maori war dance. If it were being performed by more than just three guys, I can definitely see how it’d be extremely frightening and intimidating. But the haka is still performed today by several of NZ’s sports teams, most notably the All Blacks, the national rugby union team.
After we were done at the museum, Jorgen & I made our way to the airport (he was also flying to L.A. on my same flight) in time for our 8pm flight. The flight was pretty uneventful, I wasn’t able to sleep a single wink the entire 11.5 hours of it. After landing in LA at 10:30am (still Dec 20th) I had to wait around there until my flight to Minneapolis left a bit after 3. By the time I landed in the Twin Cities, it was still Dec 20th and only half an hour or so after when I off from Auckland. Crazy. My parents met me at the airport and drove me back home. I’d say that 22 hours of total travel time for going halfway around the world’s pretty good, especially when you can pull it off without suffering from jet lag at all. ๐
So a day or two after I got back I’d been planning on driving up to St Cloud and then on to Pelican Rapids for Seth’s golden birthday, but my car wouldn’t start or turn over or anything, so that idea was quashed. Instead I just hung around the house, enjoying to be back in Wisconsin just in time for an outbreak of frigid weather right before Christmas, and enjoying being around family again, and familiar faces. After travelling alone for two weeks, you kinda long for being around even one person that you know. So I was excited to get a chance to hang out at last with two of my best mates, Mike & Kevin, during the week, plus going over to Nathan & Laura’s for the Vikings-Packers Christmas Eve game and a game of Rail Baron. Ah, good times, good times. And then came Christmas, so I got to see Aaron & Eve and Jake again (plus Nathan & Laura again), it was really nice.
The week after Christmas I really started to crack down hard on getting grad school apps worked on, I got my car back from the shop (they weren’t able to find anything wrong with it, so I don’t know if I should be relieved or worried…), hung out with Mike & Kevin a couple of nights (including starting to watch the extended edition of “Return of the King” at 11pm one night, hehe), and on New Year’s Eve I went with my parents down to Linc & Ellen’s for a Chinese night, of food and then photos from Linc’s recent trip to China, so that was nice getting to see all the Taylors Falls church people again. I relished New Year’s Day and all the football games on TV — oh how I had missed football! And the Capital One Bowl and the Rose Bowl were both such good games! Needless to say I was pretty happy. ๐ And I managed to get basically everything packed up that night too for moving back to Gustavus. I’d forgotten how much crap I had, and how much of it I’d just thrown into boxes in the basement before I left for Australia. After sorting I was able to leave at least three boxes of stuff behind, I was proud of myself. ๐
So when I tried to leave for Gustavus on the morning of the 2nd, I found out my car had another problem … a broken muffler pipe. Argh! So my dad and I had to put a temporary fix on it (a tin can, a metal shingle, a couple clamps and some wire … needless to say I’ll be making an appointment to replace my muffler next time I’m home), and it was noon before we finally were ready to leave. I could’ve stuff all my stuff in my car, but since I wouldn’t have been able to see out of any mirrors, my parents came down with some of my stuff and helped me carry all my stuff up to the section. I’m back in the same room I was in before, Wahlstrom 202E, and it does feel good to be back at Gustavus, it feels like home. And my sectionmates even made it an entire week before they started forgetting about me being here and neglecting to ask me to join them for things, like, say, watching a movie out in the section or whatever. Oh well. I was busy or had other plans all those times so far anyway, so no harm.
t is kinda weird being back here and in class again though, although easing back into that with J-term (even with my J-term class being Intro to C++ Programming) is definitely helping. It’s so fun to get to see everyone again though, including all my physics buddies, and getting back into the routine of going to Proclaim and working at Admissions and stuff like that again. In addition to a couple of nights over at Carl & Seth’s or Jolene’s apartments, last Friday night I also went up to the Cities with a bunch of people to MN Orch (Minnesota Orchestra), for their weekend performance, headlined by Respighi’s “The Fountains of Rome” and “The Pines of Rome,” which were fabulous! It was my first time ever hearing a professional orchestra live, and my first ever being at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. Afterwards we went out to dinner at Brit’s Pub on Nicollet Mall, it’s a really cool place with darn good food. Last night Josh, Lindsay, Erin & I went to Trivia Night in The Dive, and we won two of the six categories — both of the literary categories, which is scary since none of us are lit, theatre or English majors. I even missed a couple of questions in the geography round, which cost us that one too, sigh. Can’t win em all I guess. ๐ And tonight I went over to College View again to have dinner with Loren, Laura & Erin. It was fun seeing Loren & Laura again too, since they were studying abroad last semester as well (Loren in England, Laura in Italy).
Oh and today I also FINALLY got all my grad school application stuff finished! I’m applying to the Meteorology programs at nine schools – Penn State, Wisconsin, Colorado, Oklahoma, Maryland, Florida State, Illinois, Colorado State & Mississippi State. Hopefully everything will get everywhere on time. Now it’s just time for me to wait and see what kind of offers I get from places. It feels so good to be done with all that at long last, now I can take some time for other stuff … like getting my photo albums web-ready, which will be a HUGE project. Goodness knows I’ll be spending plenty of time indoors these days, what with it being absolutely frigid, -5 to -10 for daytime highs the next two or three days. But the relative lack of snow is making me sad.
Anyway, this has really gone on for far too long. If you’re still reading this, I congratulate you. And I promise I won’t have any more posts that are anywhere near this long, because I highly doubt I’ll be have anything nearly as interesting to talk about as New Zealand. At least not for quite awhile. ๐