Taupo, Tennis, Tongariro, Tasty Trails, and Tenacious Tramps

So I've come back from a second vacation! Yes, you heard me. SECOND vacation. But this one had a lot of things that had NOTHING to do with camping. A.K.A. we were in an actual house! Hooray! Anyway, here I go.



This was a vacation that we didn't have a house for until about 4 days beforehand. We went to an area at Lake Taupo called Kuratau. We rented a bach of sorts, except it had more than 2 rooms, unlike other baches. For those of you that don't know, a bach (pronounced "batch") is a small little holiday home with basic anemnities. This one was quite good though. It had a garage, TV with Freeview (slight cable, not many channels but more than at home), fridge, stove, and 3 bedrooms. I was in the third one, which was actually a little room off of the garage, and it even had its own ensuite shower, toilet and sink! Nifty, eh?

Our vacation in Taupo lasted 5 days. So what interesting things did I do during those 5 days? Well on the night we arrived, Asher, Jonty and I checked out the tennis courts in the area. There was one by the lake, and 2 in an open field area with a great view of some mountains. But more on tennis later, as we didn't do much that day. Though I actually did test out a new racket that we had bought so we could have more than 1 full-sized tennis racket. I did terribly as usual, but a little better than with the junior-sized ones.

Aaaannyway, on the first full day, we went to Turangi, a small town close to Kuratau. I was going insane over wanting to get 20$ sent to the leader of the Global Game Jam, which I'm going to tomorrow (48 hours straight in Waikato University! W00t!), but after I got that sent I calmed down a bit. We went to the information centre, where we found out about a small trail on the Tongariro River. We drove there, and I was interested in the rapids that apparently weren't too bad for swimming on as long as you got back to the shore. Though all those thoughts flew out the window when I stepped one foot into the water. Z0mg!!! GAH! That water was REALLY REALLY UBER COLD! It was so cold, that when we were walking across a shallow area to a small island in the center of the river (the river wasn't very wide), my feet and legs were numb and hurting from the cold. To add insult to injury, I kept smashing my toes into rocks in the ground, and I lost my balance quite a few times, barely keeping myself from falling in. It's a good thing we didn't go on those rapids, since when we got to that island, we saw the speed of them. They were pretty fast, and if we swam in them, we would probably have been swept away quite quickly. Though I still don't think that was the area the guide was talking about.

We then went on a 40 minute walk along the river, going over a bridge, up some cliffs, and finally going back to State Highway 1 (the highway that goes all the way from the top of the north island to the bottom of the south, it doesn't seem to be very busy for a highway, even though it goes through residential areas) where our car was. The cliffs offered a nice view, but it was starting to rain, and we were eager to get back.

Second day: Sun and laziness. We didn't go anywhere. All I did was play tennis and write in 3 notebooks of mine. Though I played a LOT of tennis. I practiced for a lot of the day, serving, trying to get good topspin power shots (that worked perfectly in practice but in games I completely messed up), trying to get a slice that didn't lob...I spent most of the day at the tennis courts. It was actually very fun to do that though. A good day, in my opinion.

Third day:BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Alarm: 5:00 A.M. I get up, silencing my alarm within the first second of it ringing. In a very quick and quiet fashion, I got some clothes on, creeped through the really cold garage, into the hallway and into the lounge, where I turned on the T.V. Why? The Obama Inaguration of course! I watched quite a bit of it, from the first speaking to the people by that woman from Congress (can't remember her name) to Obama walking back into the Capitol. It was a great thing to watch, and I'm glad I had gotten up so early to see it. I went back to bed to warm up a bit since I was quite cold, and ended up falling asleep, quite by accident in fact Then the rest of the day came...

We went to the Waihaha river area. Another not very wide river, there were also some small rapids. However, there also were nice amounts of rocks to jump around to and fro, and I spent about 15 minutes exploring the area. After that I saw that everyone else was urging Chrissy to go on one of the boogie boards that we had down some of the rapids. I was still pretty far away so I didn't see it happen, but she did it. She then said "I'm the only one who had the courage to go on those rapids!" or something to that effect. It didn't look like something that was that hard to do, and everyone else was starting to do it as well, so I gave it a shot. When I went down the rapids, I managed to stay on the board for most of the time (which was better than Jonty's attempt, he fell off quite quickly, but was perfectly ok anyway), but then slipped off as I tried to get a rock to grab on to. I couldn't keep my hold on many of them as they were all quite slippery, but after going a moderate distance I managed to get a firm hold, and climb up. Apparently I went farther than anyone else. We got back to the van, and went to the other side of the river where there was a trail. We walked the trail and saw some good views of a large gorge. We were able to go down to the gorge's bottom where the river was, and Jonty and Bella jumped in the water a few times. Now, one thing is really different about these rivers from the Pittsburgh ones: These rivers are NEARLY COMPLETELY CLEAR! Seriously, they were extremely easy to see through. So when Jonty and Bella jumped in, it was quite cool to see their bodies just suspended in the water before they surfaced. On our way back, we ran into 2 North Island Robins, which apparently were an endangered species.

We came back, and Asher and I played some tennis. We came back and found everyone rushing around packing. Why? Well there's something I didn't tell you (muahahaha!). We were planning to do the Tongariro Crossing the next day (as you may have guessed from the alliterative title), and we needed to get as prepared as we could. So we did.

Fourth day: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Alarm: 6:00 A.M. This time it was for Tongariro. Everyone quietly had some breakfast, got all their stuff together, and we went out in our van to a campsite. Why? A guy was there who was going to drive our van to the Mangatepopo start area for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Van ride to the start...It's still a bit cold. I'm wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt, remembering a key lesson from my first time: "Start out with light clothing, you'll heat up as you walk. If you start out hot, you'll tire out really easily." And so we went. Going through the lower areas to Soda Springs was a breeze (almost literally, it was cool as a breeze but no breezes were blowing). Then was the climb to the South Crater, one of the hardest parts of the Crossing. Tiring, constant uphill for 40 minutes, but when we got to the top, it was great since the view was so good. I've spoken about the Crossing in my post "A Mountainous Task", so I won't go into as much detail. We went into the south crater, and headed up the way to the high point at Red Crater, taking many a break for chocolate chip muffins, cashews, peanuts, and bits of my very own 250g Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate block. I pointed out my favorite spot, the little area at the top that was perfect for eating as it was ALWAYS warm from the thermal gases. We climbed down the scree slope, me having a lot of fun with it but getting pain in my feet from the scree entering my shoes. We got to the bottom of that slope, had a big shoe-emptying fest, and went past the Emerald Lakes to Blue Lake. From Blue Lake was a long, long, LONG downhill that had good views but a lot of foot pain, all the way to the Ketetahi hut, and later the Ketetahi carpark, where I had a well-deserved rest after 7 hours of walking. With a bit of timing issues, we got back to our bach, where we immediately started to pack. Again.

Day 5: The final day at Taupo. We had finished our packing, and were cleaning up the place, when suddenly, NOTHING HAPPENED! Sorry, had to do that. Anyway, we cleaned, said goodbye to that bach, and drove 4 hours to Hawke's Bay. On the way there, we stopped at a small park area, where I noticed a man tending to a horse. I walked over, and got to have a nice talk about horses and how having a horse was so much nicer than having a motor vehicle. It was a nice chat, and I got to pet the horse Nanu a bit. That felt quite nice. We continued driving until we got to our new area, which was a full house! Yep, the last 2 days of our vacation were going to be spent at a nice house with some extravagant things like a large plasma-screen TV! So what did we do? We went to Domino's. We got 3 pizzas for 20$, thanks to a promotion they were having, and later just did nothing interesting until we all went to sleep.

Day 6: We had heard about Food Trails on our way here, and we decided to check out one of the farmer's markets that the Cooks had been to before. We went onto a food trail where we got to see a ton of vineyards, but the main attraction was the farmer's market. Everyone there had various different things, from jams to breads, gelato to knives and cutting boards. And walking all around it was a dog who walked up to ANYONE who had food, begging. I bought myself a croissant (baked at 2 A.M. that morning along with the other hundred or so bread items), which was awesome, and got some gelato. There was also a small wine cellar nearby which we checked out, and it was moderately interesting, but not as good as the market. However, I noticed a dog tied to one of the grapevines, who looked rather neglected by the people passing by. I felt sorry for it, and went up and stroked it for about 10 minutes. Man, that dog was happy to have some attention. After I felt it looked like it was cheered up a lot, we left for a moderate-height peak area where there was a trig station. A trig station...um...It's really hard to describe. It just showed a map of the surrounding area, even as far as Mt. Ruapehu, Tongariro, and Ngaruhoe, as well as a mountain that has the longest name I have ever seen, and I believe it is the longest one-word name in the world. We had some nice views of the many vineyards, and I looked down a cliff that really creeped me out.

As our last destination for the day, we went to a place called Ocean Beach. Yes, as you probably guessed, it was a beach at the Pacific Ocean. Nice name, huh? We stayed there for a while, eating the Mediterranean flatbread with cheese, rosemary and rock salt that David and Chrissy had bought, as well as talking to various people. With that, we headed home, had some dinner, and packed up. Again. Again.

Day 7: Driving home. It was a moderately long drive, but it was probably made much longer by the fact that we made like 4 different stops. 3 of them were in Taupo, and we ended up just about doubling our time on the road. However, one part of it I found quite interesting, and that was Huka Falls. We stopped there before getting some dinner, and I saw this pretty small but really fast and REALLY blue waterfall formed by the Waikato River combined with some erode-resistant rocks. It looked really good, and I really liked the color especially. After more driving (with more stops) we finally arrived home, me with an agonizing 5 days before Global Game Jam, and now my anticipation is nearly over.

Such ends this blog post. I've got to help move around a lot of stuff tomorrow, but I know I'll be just counting the minutes until I can get to Waikato University. After Game Jam I get straight back into school, and that'll be good as well. As for my family situation, I'm going to stay with the Cooks for two more weeks, and hopefully in that time a family will be found. I'm not worried. She'll be right in the end.

Coromandel Camping...uh...camp

Yeah, I've been in the Coromandel Peninsula area for 9 days or so recently, camping with some of my family's friends at Fletcher Bay, and later at Waikawau Bay. It was quite an interesting trip, with 3-hour walks, rock-hopping, wave bodysurfing, and a whole lot of bug bites. It started out with a 4-hour drive through Thames, Coromandel (the town), as well as driving over many a precarious edge road. I brought 9 books with me to read over the trip, and I went through 8 of them by the time the trip ended. But anyway...

I might as well tell you about Christmas first. When I woke up on Christmas morning, nothing was really different at first. The other kids were awake, and we were all impatient to open our gifts. Jonty was quoting lines from Kung POW! Enter the Fist, as usual, Bella was singing a High School Musical 3 song, and Asher was talking about the birds and other natural features we would find in the Coromandel area. When Chrissy and David got up, we began opening the presents each of us got. From my host family I got a Chocolate Orange (Terry's, just like at home! W00t! My Chocolate Orange Christmas Spree continues!), a nice 250g bar of Black Forest Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate (chocolate biscuit[cookie] pieces, and chewy cherry jelly-ish things, not sure how to describe them), and a black shirt that showed a globe with nothing on it except a ridiculously oversized New Zealand. From everyone back home I got a nice chunk of cash, which the day after I spent on getting some summer clothes. I then after the camping trip got some sandals (W00t for breaking the NZ fashion frenzy of jandals[flip-flops] for the sake of comfort and running ability! =D). But anyway, we then went to my host family's (grand)mother's rest home (or whatever the PC way to say it is, I'm not completely sure), and attended a short Christmas service. I also got a box of Favourites (a collection of Cadbury mini-bars) from Rona (the name of the Cook's [grand]mother) as well as a $30 Whitcoull's gift card (Whitcoull's is just like Barnes and Noble, a bookstore with various notebooks and games as well).

Later, we went to the house of our friends Susan and Tony (the people we were going camping with) and had a GIANT lunch, because apparently that's the traditional Kiwi thing to do on Christmas. I also condemned the unicycle for being so ridiculously hard to keep your balance on, played some petanque (in which I epically failed. Petanque for people who don't know what it is, is a sport kinda like bocce, but you use metal balls on a special court, and you have to throw them in a distinctive manner that will take too long to explain), and later barely won at croquet. But we weren't done yet! We then went to Chrissy's cousin Jenny's (or Jenni, I never saw the spelling) house. After I watched a bit of Home Alone 2, I noticed 2 guys outside on the porch, who were named Ed and Paul. They were shooting an air rifle at something I couldn't see. I went out after a bit of internal controversy over what to do, and found that they were taking turns firing at 3 beer/mineral water bottles on a fence. I noticed they had another rifle, and asked if I could also give it a shot. They were perfectly fine with it, and we made a nice cultural mix of things. An American student and 2 British guys were sitting in New Zealand firing Spanish air rifles with Australian pellets at German beer bottles emptied of contents brewed in Mexico. I ended up scoring 7 hits out of the...I don't know, a moderately large amount of shots fired. The 7th shot actually knocked one over and shattered it. Nifty, eh? Anyway, that's how Christmas went for me.

The day after was a big packing day, as well as a shopping day for me (and you all know how much I love shopping!!! That's right, I don't). I got some shirts, shorts, socks, 2 scoops of green tea ice cream, and a book called Dewey (a great book about a library cat in Spencer, Iowa. It's really awesome and if you've read Marley and Me, you will probably like Dewey too. Man, I sound like a bad book critic). But other than that, not much happened.

This trip was a big vacation that was being planned for a while, and it started 2 days after Christmas. We planned to stay with 2 of my host parents' friends for about two-thirds of the trip. After the somewhat grueling 4 hour drive (with the last hour being over complete gravel roads on the edge of mountains, combined with having to edge past drivers going in the other direction), we finally arrived at Fletcher Bay. Asher and I set up our tent, a canvas pentagonal thing that is hot in the day and cool in the evening. I then started an 3X7R3M3 R34D1N6 FR3N2Y!!! (For those of you that have a hard time reading 13375p33k, it says EXTREME READING FRENZY)

..So that's how the first day ended. I read a lot of one of my books, ate dinner, tried to get some people together to play Hearts, failed, and went to sleep after a while. On the first real day, we walked a 3-hour walk to a nearby bay called Stony Bay. There was a stream there which we swam in...until we found there were eels in there. Ugh... On the way back, Jonty finally actually managed to clearly explain to me the rules of test (5 day), one day international, and 20-20 cricket. Next day, Asher's birthday. And to go with it, we had perfect weather!!!...for plants. It was rainy, and occasionally gusty, probably one big gust every 2 minutes. The rain persisted throughout the entire day, while we were eating molasses cookies that I made beforehand (about 90 of 'em), lemon cake, and pavlova.

The next day, we actually did have good weather. We went to some other bay that I can't remember the name of. But, we did take a shorter walk, while I got to listen to Bella and Jonty keep asking if they could open the bag of Rashuns (since you guys don't have that back home, they're cheese-and-bacon snacks kinda like puffed Cheetos). We saw a smaller beach area, where there was a random pole there, probably from some old rail thing that involved a winch that was found farther up the hill. We went up a hill (or large hill, whatever you wish to call it, or even a small hill if you're in a big mountainous area) and saw a nice view of the ocean. However, Asher and I saw that we could go farther by going down and up a slightly steep area with a large slanted drop to either side (it was nice and wide, don't worry). So, Asher and I went to that while Jonty went down one of the steep sides using the bajilliion flax plants as handholds. Later, I climbed down that steep slope using a different method, mainly just not slipping on gravel and making sure I was standing on nice grassy tufts that worked well as footholds. Yeah, we saw a rocky beach, ate some chocolate, ate some Rashuns, ate some apples, and headed back. HOWEVER!!! I went back a different method than everyone else. I climbed back up that hill, while everyone else jumped across rocks to get back to where we were. I got back about a half-hour before everyone else. So I got to wait! Fun, eh?

Yeah, on New Year's Eve, Asher, Jonty and I decided we would climb across rocks to another beach that we passed by on our very first walk. So we headed out. We climbed a bit, and after a while I found myself going a slightly different route...mainly edging across a 4-5m gap over the water on a small ledge of rocks with grassy ground right below it. Just my luck, the rocks crumble, and I slip. I attempted to brace myself with anything at hand, and I caused a small rockfall before I managed to stop. Unlucky for me, a rather large rock fell right on my hand. It didn't hurt for some reason, though it seemed the rock punctured my hand somewhat deeply. I saw that it went straight through my skin and hit something hard, possibly bone. I think that because when I looked in the puncture, I could see my vein perfectly. Yet, it wasn't bleeding, so luckily it didn't hit it. I showed it to Asher and Jonty, and they didn't think much of it since they have had much more serious wounds before. I was a bit nervous however, since I don't experience things like that often, and I was a bit worried. The puncture wasn't very wide, maybe a centimeter at the widest point (and much thinner at other areas), but I had never had a puncture so deep I saw my own vein. Anyway, we finished the rock climbing, got to the beach where I ate some Crispy Noodles (an awesome snack that they really should have in America), and we walked back to our camp.

In the evening, I played some cricket with other kids around the campground, and later, closer to the evening I heard a surprisingly quiet amount of noise. That's not to say it was silent, not even close, but it wasn't nearly as loud as say, Pittsburgh on First Night. Though, since First Night has much, much more people, that's understandable. Everyone except David, Jonty and me just went to sleep early, but we stayed up until midnight, and at midnight, nothing really new happened. A firework or two went off, but that's about it. With that, we went to sleep.

New Year's Day, we pack up to head somewhere else. We say bye to Susan and Tony who are going home, and after driving through Colville (where I got a nice pack of gum, something I always do since I'm sort of a chewing gum addict. Don't worry, the gum I get is sugarfree), we arrive at Waikawau Bay. Stuff happens, I swim in the bay a bit (probably the best of the bays since it has good waves to bodysurf on), we walk up a hill again, and we sleep. Next day, walk, swim, rockhop, lather, rinse, repeat, etc., whatever other "repeat the previous day" statements you can think of, except this time we walked to Little bay, where we did just about the usual things. Day after, drive to some other bay that I also can't remember the name of, perform usual activities. That night, walk a bit in an area that is a Kiwi zone, don't hear anything, head back, play cards, sleep.

Final day. Pack up, and begin driving...to CATHEDRAL COVE!!! Now what's that you may ask? Well, if you've seen Prince Caspian (which I haven't, I haven't even read the book), than one scene or something takes place there. Yeah. We walked to Stingray bay, where everyone saw a bunch of fish, a jellyfish or two, and of course, stingrays. But when we got to Cathedral Cove, I swam out to a rock with Asher, and we saw a GIANT jellyfish. It turns out that the jellyfish we saw were the biggest species ever or something close to that. And man, it was pretty creepy since there were like 7 differently sized jellyfish all around those rocks. But yeah, after we got back, we headed home. When we got home, I went to check my e-mails and such, and voila! I couldn't. Someone had gotten a virus onto the computer, though we don't know who. There were some people taking care of the cats, and it was probably accidental. Though, I am still writing this from a neighbor's computer, since we still haven't gotten ours back yet, a week after we sent it to a tech place. I think I might have been able to take care of it, but I wasn't really sure. It's a good thing I didn't, because it turns out there were more viruses on it than food items named after sports players/teams. In other words, a lot of viruses.

Yeah, that's my post for this while, and now I'm back into filler episodes. I'm most likely going to be switching families somewhat soon, since the Cooks have found a house, and it'll be hard for me to go about my usual school stuff while in the process of moving. Or something like that anyway. But I'm not worried. Anyway, thanks for reading!

Twas the Night Before Christmas...

...And all through the house,
There were some people stirring,
But no signs of a mouse.

After baking for ages,
the oven finally lost power,
And the cookies and cakes
begged for one to devour.

An exchange student typing
a ridiculous poem
thought, "Say, what would happen,
if I were back home?

I'd be sitting quite close
to a roaring lounge fire,
while here heat travels daily,
with no threat of expire."

As he looked around thinking
of molasses and gifts,
he thought of world culture,
and all of its rifts.

Realizing how people
don't always agree,
he remembered his purpose
for being in NZ.

Mending false generalizations
and bad stereotypes
was a great noble calling,
that outweighed his gripes.

So as I now sit writing,
of the differences here,
I wish you Merry Christmas,
And a Happy New Year!


-Copyright Fledgeling Inspiration Poetry Division (not really, hehe...)

So, that's my poetry writing for the year. I won't be posting anytime really soon, as I'm heading to the Coromandel Peninsula on a 9-day camping trip. I'll be taking pictures for Picturesque there, and I really hope I can locate my camera connector or an SD card reader or something, because I've got almost half a year's photos to upload.

From Zelandia with love,

Andy Scherch

Filler episodes!

Yeah, I'm probably not going to have a whole lot to say over the next month or so, as not a whole lot is happening that soon. The soonest thing is that we're going camping at Coromandel starting Boxing Day. Though, I'll start trying to compile my Picturesque post, so you'll get to see some stuff. Hmmm...not much else to say.

Fun Fact: Fiordland, New Zealand, has Mitre Peak, which is the largest sea cliff in the world, at over 1600 meters!

SUMMER!!!...Again...*sighs*...

Yep! Now that my NZQA (New Zealand Qualifications Authority) exams are over, I'm on summer vacation! Now if only I was enthusiastic about it as I was half a year ago. I've got Christmas coming up here, but it's going to be really REALLY different. I mean, it just doesn't seem so nice to have Christmas decorations and lights and such without the accompaniment of snow, crisp air, a warm coat, and seeing your breath slightly condense in front of you. There'll be a really long day on Christmas day, and that also just doesn't seem as good as having a nice Christmas dinner while a fire is crackling in the living room and/or there being a nice thin (or preferably thick =D) coat of unblemished snow outside... I deal much better with colder temperatures than hotter ones, as much of my family and friends know, and that's also why I'm not as enthusiastic. Finally, I'm quite nervous as to the results of my NZQA's, since I have no idea whether they will count for anything whatsoever back home, and whether my getting an A, M, or an E will change into any other school grade. I'm quite worried on that front as if an A translates into a C or something, then my physics won't do very well since I can barely manage an A with the lack of knowledge that I have.

By now, you're probably wondering what I mean by A M and E. Well with the NZQA's, they have standards-based assessments. Certain questions merit only part of an A (Achievement), while some harder ones merit an M (Achievement with Merit) if done fully, and there are also some still harder ones that merit an E (Achievement with Excellence) if done fully. Now I find there are a few problems with this system. First, it's possible to get all of the Excellence questions fully correct, but still only get Achievement because you didn't answer enough Merit questions fully. That is because of this grading system (The numbers change depending on the exam, I'm taking this from an old Spanish listening exam that we took in class):

A: Any 9 correct answers
M: A + 4 other correct answers, 3 of which must be Merit-granting (meaning you must have answered a question to achieve the Merit standard for that question, whether you fully answered a Merit one or managed to reach the Merit standard on an Excellence question)
E: M + 3 other correct answers, 2 of which must be Excellence-granting

If you add this up, at minimum for E you need: 11 Achievement questions, 3 Merit questions, and 2 Excellence questions. However, if you got say...12 Achievement, 1 Merit, and 4 Excellence, you would only get Achievement, not even Merit let alone Excellence. A tad messed up wouldn't you say? So it's like saying "You got all of the really hard questions fully right and got every one of the easy questions right but missed a part of 2 medium questions, so I'm giving you a C." So you see why I'm worried?

Anyway, yeah I've got summer again. I like winter though, so I'm not as excited. Though I do like playing pool here and I'm going to go swim in the Waikato University pools soon. Apparently one of them has a diving board, so that'll be fun. But that's just about all I have to say for now, except...

Fun Fact: Did you know Hamilton, New Zealand and Cordoba, Spain, are direct antipodes of each other? That pair is one of only 7 pairs of direct antipodal cities in the world! Want to know what an antipode is? Look it up. You're only getting 1 fun fact out of me per post =D.

Thanks for reading!

A Mountainous Task

Ja, I haven't posted in a while, so a quick (extremely quick) summary of things that have been happening since my previous post...
First, I've finished normal school. However I've still got exams, though now I've gotten through of them except for Spanish. Physics went moderately well, maths went pretty well, and English went really awesome. I've been also walking up Mt. Karioi, playing tennis, and examining the Hamilton Gardens. Want to know more about them? Look them up. This post is about something completely different.

This post is about the TONGARIRO CROSSING! This is New Zealand's deadliest and most awesome 1-day walk. It was planned for about 2 weeks beforehand, but I only found out the equipment information about 2 days before the event started. But, either way, I still went. It lasted 2 days, Friday and Saturday on the last weekend of November. On Friday we were driven to a lodge where we took our stuff, had dinner, talked about the crossing, and got some early sleep because we had to be at a bus at 8 AM. On Saturday, we had to wait for another bus because the 8 one was full, luckily the second one arrived at about 8:05. The main guide had a whole ton of stuff, since he was a member of New Zealand Search and Rescue. So I mainly got most of my equipment from him. The thing is, you shouldn't wear cotton of any kind on the walk, because it soaks up your sweat and soaks up rain, either way it's bad. Unfortunately, all the clothing I had was...yep, 100% cotton. So I wore it anyway, and borrowed a few things from our leader just in case I needed them. It turns out I didn't.

But, the walk! It took us 7 hours. And this is what it consisted of...*cue explanation music*
The walk starts out at the Mangetepopo parking lot, and starts going up to Mt. Ngaruhoe, following the Mangetepopo stream (by the way, did you know Ngaruhoe is Mount Doom? Didn't didn't you? Didn't think so!...hehehe...yeah, for those that have seen LOTR3, Mount Ngaruhoe plays the role of Mount Doom). We go to Soda Springs, which is up a small incline, then we go up a quite steep one for about an hour until we reach the South Crater, in the valley between Mount Ngaruhoe and Mount Tongariro. We walk across the South Crater, and go up another steep incline to the Red Crater. That is the highest point on the entire crossing, at 1886 meters. You get a good view of the Emerald Lakes, which are 3 really really green lakes that are in the next crater, and there's also Blue Lake, which is a larger lake that is in a different part of the mountains, but you still pass it as you walk. You then walk to Mount Tongariro, down through a podocarp forest, and arrive at the Ketetahi parking lot.

Our walk, was quite easy. It was a sunny, cloudless day. The walking was quite easy to Soda Springs, and we split up to go at our own paces to the South Crater. I ended up arriving there 15 minutes before everyone else. I seem to have a moderately fast uphill pace...hmmm. We joined there, and walked through the South Crater. Even though it was quite warm, there still was a small amount of snow around, and that was nice to have since it kept us a bit cooler. We then had an easy (well, as easy as a walk after a steep incline can be) walk to the Red Crater. That was even steeper, but it was shorter, and we made it up. And there was quite a view! Unfortunately, I had forgotten my camera (I'm still not a photo-y person), and I had to ask one of the other 3 students who came to take pictures for me. Once they're emailed, I will post them. At the top point, there was also an interesting phenomenon occurring. There was volcanic gas going up the hill onto where we were. Now while that may not seem interesting, consider this: When you are standing up, there is wind blowing against you, and it is a bit chilly. But when you sit on a rock that's on the ground, everything becomes completely warm. Although it would be better to sit on a rock than the ground because if you sat on the ground, let's just say your pants would become steam-cleaned, and quite hot. The ground is surprisingly hot.

That area made it the perfect place to have lunch. So we had lunch, then headed down a very steep, and scree (gravel found at volcanoes, made through the process of shattering frost) filled slope (getting much scree in our shoes in the process), and got down to the Emerald Lakes. They looked nice, but we just kept moving anyway, after emptying out our boots/shoes of scree. We walked through another snowy area, threw a few snowballs, and got to Blue Lake. There was like a complete ring of snow around that, surpringly. But, as we wanted to make the 4:00 shuttle, we kept moving. We went through the rest of the walk with not a whole lot happening. Walking down a hill, eating the rest of our lunch, walking down the rest of the hill, sore feet, walking through a forest, even more sore feet and ankles, and finally getting back to the shuttle. Surprisingly we actually made the 3:30 shuttle.

Now, after a 3-hour ride back to Hamilton, I'm back here, writing this blog. Sorry for taking so long...um...yeah, as most of you know, I'm terrible at closings...so...um, ja. Um...er...bye then...?...I guess?

Fire and Ice, Plot Progression, and a whole lot more...

WARNING! This post is RIDICULOUSLY LONG! Make sure you have enough time before you read the entire thing! Also, there will be no pictures in this post since it’ll already be hard enough to upload the amount of pictures that I have taken, even without the dial-up connection I’m using. Instead I will later post a post completely composed of just pictures and captions.

Now with that taken care of, let’s begin… and man do I have a lot to say…

Let’s start out with the first thing addressed: Fire and Ice, or rather, hot water and snow. That’s right: I managed to experience the parts of both summer and winter while in neither of the respective seasons! It all started on Friday of 2 weeks ago… I finally managed to get myself prepped up as much as I could for the trip. I got out enough money to pay for lodging and mountain passes. However, I didn’t have ski goggles, a headband/hat, or snow pants. Luckily, as we drove there, we were going to rent skis off of the mountain anyway and we stopped at a nearby rental place. I was first thinking of buying some snow pants when I looked at the price tag…275 NZ$...Z0mg! And like that, I ended up renting a ton of stuff: skis, snow pants, goggles, boots, poles, and unfortunately a helmet as well. I did buy a headband anyway so that when I got back I would have something to remind me of mountain skiing, as well as not have to use Mom’s on every Allderdice ski trip. The reason why I found renting a helmet unfortunate was because it defeated the purpose of having a headband. The reason why I like wearing headbands so much is that they leave my hair open to the air, and when I’m skiing down a slope my hair gets to fly behind me. Obviously it wouldn’t fly as much as on my previous ski trips, since my hair was cut since then, but it would still fly. Anyway, we rented our stuff, left, and went to a backpackers’ lodge. Since I was with AFS people, I was allowed to stay there. I started walking to where our room was, when I was pleasantly surprised…by a room full of climbing walls! W00t! I dropped my stuff off in my room, and we then went to the nearby bar/grill restaurant. We had lunch there, and then for the heck of it, drove up to the mountain to take a look around. We got to the top, and even though it wasn’t really snowy, it still looked good. There were also quite a few good views of the land below. We threw some snowballs around, then went back down part of the way, where we stopped at an info center that basically showed a bunch of stuff relating to volcanoes around the area (since where we were was on Mt. Ruapehu, a volcano), where we looked around at a few things I found only moderately interesting, then we went back to the lodge. The other students that were with me on the trip were 2 people from Germany named Matthias and Henry, a girl from Belgium named…well I think her name was spelled Saara or something, but it’s kinda like saying “Sarah” except with more emphasis on the first a (as well as making it really short-sounding), and barely any if any at all on the second a. The last student was one from I think Switzerland (but I’m not fully sure) named Toby.

When we got back, Henry, Matthias and I paid an extremely small $15 each for use of the climbing wall. We learned how to belay each other, and one of our leaders, Grant, belayed me since Matthias and Henry constantly belayed each other, shouting instructions in German. I started up a few walls, and some of them are much harder than they look. But my favorite part of the whole room was a little area that jutted out…The fun part was on the inside. That area was for bridging/chimneying (whatever you might want to call it). For those who don’t know what that is, chimneying is going up a relatively closed in space with no handholds or footholds whatsoever, only using your own body to slowly shimmy up. It is an exhausting task, but it’s surprisingly fun to go straight up by only pressing yourself between 2 walls. Throughout the trip I did the chimneying 5 times. We had a good dinner with an interesting chocolate/orange cake for dessert. We then went over to the bar to watch rugby (union, not league. In NZ most people refer to union as “rugby” and league as “league”. If you want to know the difference, look it up on Wikipedia. This post is long enough as it is). I can’t remember both teams, I only remember that Waikato was playing (the team we were rooting for, basically our area here in Hamilton). We ended up winning, but I also spent some time playing pool. It was quite fun.

The next day, we went up to the mountain with hopes that we would be able to ski a bit, but there were also some thermal pools a bit of a distance away, and we brought swimming clothes as well in case we couldn’t ski. At the mountain, most of the lifts were closed, but we still had hopes so we stayed there for a while. Grant and I walked up a small (quite small relatively) part of the mountain just to look around, and I had some fun rolling and penguin-style sliding down the hill. Everyone else was just sitting inside drinking hot chocolate and eating chocolate fish (A big Kiwi thing, pink marshmallow shaped like a fish dipped in chocolate). After about an hour, we left to head for the thermal pools. It took a while to get there, and we stopped at a Subway along the way there (mmm…Italian herbs and cheese bread with ham, cheddar cheese, lettuce, and red onions…). We finally got to the place we were looking for. There were private mineral pools and a public freshwater pool. We decided to go into a private one, but we had to only stay in it for 20 minutes max, and we couldn’t dip our heads underwater for risk of getting some disease, I can’t remember what it was… Anyway, as some of the readers may know, I don’t go very well with anything hot. Everyone else got into the pool moderately easily, but I had to edge into it pretty slowly. It felt kinda good, but I did feel a little pressure from the heat on my lungs or chest or something (it just felt kinda weird, not totally uncomfortable). I did notice that the mineral water kinda made your body a little more buoyant. I managed to last the 20 minutes. We had cold showers, and then went to the public pool. It wasn’t as hot as the mineral ones, but it was still pretty warm. I couldn’t even dip my head underwater there for a different reason: When I did, it burned. Remember, I don’t do well with hot things nearly as well as cold. Anyway, afterward we went back to the van and went to New World (kinda like Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh, it’s a food store) and bought some ginger beer, ginger ale, orange juice, and 2 boxes of ice cream dipped in chocolate on a stick, 4 bars peppermint, 4 bars vanilla. I had one of each on the way back as well as some Twisties (spiral-shaped puffy corn snacks extremely similar to Cheetos, except Kiwi). We got back, and I did more climbing along with Henry and Matthias. We had dinner (both nights it was lasagna that people brought from home), and went to the bar again to watch rugby again. This time it was Hawke’s Bay vs. Canterbury, but unfortunately Canterbury won. Also I didn’t get a chance to play pool since there were a ton of people there, and a few guys were at the pool table throughout the entire 90 minutes of the match. But that was the second day, yeah…

Third day! We hear that the ski fields are GOOD!!! Well, good enough to ski on, anyway. W00t! We pack up most of our stuff, planning to leave after we get back, and move out! We get there, and are some of the first on the lifts. And let me tell you, Mt. Ruapehu totally OWNS anything around Pittsburgh, and maybe in the Appalachians too. When I get up the first lift, the sight is majestic. There’s also a few lodges as you head up the lift as well. I get off a lift, to go straight onto a second one. That takes me, Toby, and Saara even higher. The view is awesome, and we begin skiing (and in Saara’s case, snowboarding). We find even more lifts, go up them, ski down, for a long, long time. Eventually we go back to one of the upper lodges (I haven’t fallen yet, and am slightly disappointed) for lunch. We meet Roxane and Grant (who are just sightseeing, since Roxane has a bad ankle [they are the leaders of the trip]) as well as Matthias and Henry. We get some lunch (hot chips, hot wedges, and a Powerade, oh and a chocolate muffin. Healthy, eh? At least I had a nut/yogurt bar), and immediately head back out. We all ski (or snowboard in Saara/Henry’s case) together for an hour or so, but then the other 3 guys leave to go somewhere else, and Saara and I just go around aimlessly. It remained that way for the entire rest of the trip, and we are trying to get back to the van, when we kinda have to take a roundabout route thanks to some lack of speed making it impossible to get over a small ridge. We then start going down in an area where it’s really hard to see (then again, the visibility was quite poor throughout most of the trip), and some place where the lack of ski/snowboard tracks means that barely anyone has been there that day. We go round, and we go on a long trail down the mountain in an unfamiliar area. However, once we get to the bottom, we see a familiar sight…The parking lots at the bottom! We had made it! We also get a bit of a last laugh by calling out to the rest of the people who are looking up at the original lift, trying to see us fly down, and we come up from below them, ftw! Van ride back, nice last view of Ruapehu, we return our ski stuff, and head home.

WARNING AGAIN: This is NOT the end of the post, not even half way through! There are many stories to tell! Prepare to continue relentlessly reading the ridiculously reaching recollection (alliteration hehe…)

I get back, and I find out something quite good: I have a 4th family set! This family is known as the Cooks, but I don’t have a chance to meet them until I get there for the first time. After 2 days of school, that day comes. Jenni (the support coordinator for those who may have forgotten) takes me to the Cooks, but I don’t stay there for long. The Cook’s house is quite a ways from Fairfield, so the Kelly family allowed me to use Sean’s (the student in Thailand at the moment) bike. So I drop off my stuff, then Jenni takes me to the Kelly’s house. I let Cameron know I’m there, I get Sean’s bike from the shed, and start the ride. Unfortunately, some mishaps occur. The main mishap is that the bike seat, being somewhat old, must have loosened a bit, and started to strangely angle when I hit a bump. By angle, I mean that the back of the seat dips down, kinda like the bike seat is a seesaw. That makes the ride a bit longer, and it is a half-hour later by the time I get to the Cooks. And since Fairfield College is near the Kelly’s house, that means I have a half-hour ride to school. I get some quick dinner at the Cook’s house, and we head to a political meeting.

Before I continue, I’ll talk about the Cooks a touch. There are 2 parents, Christina (everyone calls her Chrissy) and David, and they have 4 children: Zoe, who is 18, but is on an AFS exchange in Mexico at the moment; Asher, who is 15 and goes to Hamilton Boys High School; Jonty, who is 13 and also goes to Hamilton Boys; and Bella, who is 11 and goes to Knighton Normal School (strange name of a school, but there you go). They have 4 cats, Caramel, Pompy (I think that’s how it’s spelled), Sassy, and Justin. Sassy likes sleeping on my winter coat when it’s lying on the bed next to mine. The Cooks have a dial-up internet connection, a trampoline, and a ping-pong table (or as they say here, table tennis since ping-pong is actually different than table tennis here). Anyway…

Chrissy, David, Bella and I go to this meeting at the Hamilton Celebrating Age Centre, where the current candidates for a few seats in Parliament are there debating. We come in a bit late, but we aren’t noticed too much. The parties that are there are Labour, National, NZ First, Kiwi, Green, and Republican. The Labour and National parties are the main parties, and there are 2 members of the National party there. People are asking questions, and the topic comes to education. I remember how I managed to get close to passing some of my exams that I didn’t know anything about, and actually passed a few of them, and I come up with a question. Now here I kinda pulled a bit of a political thing myself, not telling the whole truth about my assessments, but I’ll explain that after I tell you my question. A paraphrased version of my question is this: “I’m an exchange student and I’ve noticed how you were talking about giving each child equal chances to get an education. Well, I’ve recently had some assessments that were meant to be similar to what we will receive this year in our NCEA exams, and I managed to get through a good amount of them passing, including some with very good marks, on topics that I know next to nothing about. Now if I can pass an exam on a topic I don’t really know, it’s a bit hard to say whether the standards truly test students on the education they receive. I know you’re trying to help give all kids an equal chance for an education, but do you have any plans for making sure that the standards will fit to show that their education was good, and if not, do you have any plans to improve the quality of education that they receive?” Now 2 things were funny about what happened. 1st, they all assumed I was a university student, making various comments that hinted at that, and 2nd, they all basically dodged the question. Now the political not-full-truth-telling that I did was that I did get through a good amount of assessments…for someone who came into the assessments in the middle of the school year and knew nothing about them. Some people call that lying, but I was at a political meeting where people were attacking each other (verbally obviously), making shady statements, and dodging questions. So basically, I’d just call that politics. It was still quite funny though.

The next day, I started heading off to school on Sean’s bike. I still hadn’t had a chance to fix the seat yet, so the half-hour ride was kinda annoying, having to keep moving the seat back into its original position. However I eventually got to school. At school, I finally found out the results of my English mock exam, which it turns out I got an Achievement with Excellence, the highest grades! W00t! With that I’ve finally decided that I think I’ll want to go into journalism, since I like critiquing things, and many people have said I have complex opinions on certain things. I also seem to have done well in all of my English classes, whether here in NZ or back in the US. I’m thinking now to become a video game critic, since I like things involving electronics and video games. So it seems I’m going to have to learn programming and journalism when I get back. But back to the previous topic…I got an Excellence on my English exam. Yeah…On my bike ride home, I stop at the Kellys, and ask Cameron if he has a wrench, which he does, and he helps fix the seat. The ride back is quite uneventful, and my time at home is normal.

Next morning, ride to school. I’m riding on the ridiculously gravelly and just plain rough roads (not very hilly, but still a pain to ride on, especially since people in cars yield even less to cyclists than in Pittsburgh, and that’s saying something), and I’m about half way there. Suddenly, PSHHH! I feel air on my face and a green slime is coming from my bike tire. Oh, for crying out loud, the road punctured my very old front bike tire! I sit on the sidewalk, with my finger over the hole which is slowly filling with the slime which is apparently some temporary solution. I begin riding again once the air loss has stopped, but then, soon after, KA-CHUNK! To add insult to injury, the bike seat angling problem returns from beyond the grave! I’m really annoyed, but I still have to get to school, so I just head to school. Yeah, normal school day, nothing new, head home, rant about bike. David offers to let me use his bike to get to school, since I desperately need a bike to get to school because by walking it would take like an hour and 20 minutes to get there. The next day, I ride David’s bike, and it’s really good! The brakes are really squeaky, but the tires are good and the seat is comfortable! I ride to school uneventfully, head home uneventfully, lather, rinse, repeat until Friday.

Chrissy and David are going to Lake Taupo (A lake on the way to Ruapehu) to relax for a few days, and AFS-approved friends Liza and Richard come to take over the parenting job. On Friday, Asher and I go to his church’s youth group, and it’s quite fun. We do a bit of bible study, a bit of volleyball, and a Pirates of the Caribbean-style Survivor game set. Most of the games are good, but my favorite was what I call the 5-position game. The leader calls out a phrase and we have to go to the position she describes. There’s “Captain’s Coming” (salute), “Lighthouse” (two people raise and touch hands and say “beep, beep, beep…”), “Man Overboard” (One person goes on hands and knees, another places foot on other’s back and acts like they’re looking over a ship), “Periscope” (Lying on back, foot in the air), and “Lifeboat” (Groups of 3 or 4 get in a line and act like they’re rowing). There are 3 teams, green, blue and red. I’m on the blue team. We kinda fail the 5-position game after a while when some people get a bit confused, but it was fun anyway. We have a worship (not at all traditional, rock band style with clapping and contemporaryish singing), have some cookies, and head home.

Next day, we just stay at home, but at night we play Cranium, which is undoubtedly one of the most fun games ever created. Sunday we go to Hamilton Zoo, see a bunch of animals, and at one point, a Kaka (kind of bird with reddish-brown feathers and a long curved beak) lands on my shoulder. I have my hoodie on and my hood is up, and the Kaka (who was led to us by the zookeeper in a free-flight sanctuary) jumps onto my head, and starts eating a walnut that it was given by the zookeeper. It jumps onto my other shoulder (my left), and jumps to Asher. It then jumps back to me, jumps on my head again, and continues eating the walnut. After wiping its beak on my hood, it flies off with a loud squawk. When it was on my head, Liza took a picture with her phone. I’m hoping I can get that picture to post. We come back after a while, David and Chrissy come back, and we go to the 21st birthday party of someone only David and Chrissy have heard of.

It starts out awkward, but then we find the ping-pong table that they have. Asher, Jonty and I spend most of our time eating or playing ping-pong while everyone else talks, and my feelings of awkwardness cease as I meet some of the people. It was a nice house too, and the family who lived there had their own vineyard. Dum dee dum, we have Labor Day on the last Monday of October, so we have no school, W00t!

Tuesday, I go to school, and I find that we have a new Computing teacher who will actually teach! So now in Computing we are working with Visual BASIC, but most of the people are confused, and I’m confused a tad, because even with hour-long classes, learning a new language is long. On Wednesday night, Asher and I went to Ventures, a kinda Kiwi version of Scouts. We learned 9 different knots/lashings, played bingo for chocolate, and made stretchers and raced them. It was quite fun, and some of the activities they have planned I am really excited for (LaserZone Laser Tag and bowling ftw!!!)

I head home and see that something has happened to Asher. On his way to school (he and Jonty bike as well), he was in the cyclists’ lane, and some woman opens her door right in his face! He flipped, and ended up getting a tooth knocked out and hurting his nose. He still hasn’t gotten a cap for the remaining tooth piece back yet, and now the woman has said it was Asher’s fault. With some talking to the senior constable, Chrissy convinces the police to start an investigation. That’s right, Wright fans, we are going legal! We’ve gotten 4 witnesses whose testimonies equal with Asher’s, and the woman doesn’t even know we’ve got the police investigating yet. Thanks to the witnesses, the woman can’t change her story without cross-examination revealing contradictions. So yeah, that is good. On Wednesday, in the FFC notices, I see that there are auditions taking place on Friday for next year’s musical! I find out info, and since the audition is pressure-less and the song doesn’t matter, I actually managed to come up with a good audition piece. But more on that later, because the audition took place after this…

On Thursday, I got to leave school early so Asher and I could head to a match in the Under-17s Women’s FIFA World Cup! We arrived about 15 minutes through the match of France vs. Paraguay, but France was winning 3-0 already. It was actually quite fun to watch, though the players were overly dramatic (rolling 6 times after getting knocked over? Wow…). France ended up winning 6-2. It turns out there was a Japan/USA game before that, where Japan won 3-2. People are going to kill me for saying this, but I actually am rooting for Japan on this one. Japan has 3 more matches soon, and I’ll be going to the Japan/France one on Sunday, but USA/Paraguay will be interesting too, but I’m not sure if I’m going to see that one or not.

Last Friday (a.k.a. yesterday) I had my audition that I was completely ready for. It was quite easy, since I just sung an excerpt from "Domine Adadjuvandume festina", a very fun song to sing. I managed to do the reading part of the audition really easily as well, and it was quite fun. Right after I had done my singing part however, the woman who was listening immediately said "Why aren't you in the choir?" But I am planning to check out the FFC choir next Tuesday, should be interesting... Anyway, after school, I went to youth group again. This time we played soccer instead of volleyball, and we had small groups in which we had extremely unhealthy but tasty cookies known as Mallo Puffs. But we played the same Survivor style games, but there was a 4th team, yellow, and I managed to win the 5-position game for our team! W00t! I was the only one left from blue about halfway through, but I made it all the way to the end and won! It was quite exhilarating for such a plain youth group game, hehehe…

Finally, earlier today I went to watch Jonty and one of Hamilton Boys’ cricket teams play cricket against another Hamilton Boys team. Cricket is a somewhat confusing sport. You have 2 batsmen, and one is bowled to at a time, depending on what side of the bowling crease they’re on. There are 2 wickets, and the object for the fielding team is to hit those wickets while the batsmen aren’t there. The object for the batsmen is to score runs by running between wickets, basically switching places. Only 2 batsmen, no more, no less, are on the pitch at a time, and there are 11 players on each team. These high school games involve 1 inning, which is 1 round of batting per team. There are things like overs and such, but I could spend another page or 2 talking about cricket, so I’ll just gloss over the rest.

The fielding team needs to get 10 outs to begin batting, and each bowler can only bowl a certain number of times. The ball is quite like a baseball, but harder and fielders don’t have any gloves to catch the ball with. They must use their bare hands. Any ground hit that goes out of bounds counts as 4 runs, and any “Home run” style hit that goes out of bounds without bouncing scores 6 runs, but the batsmen don’t leave to switch with another until they are out. The batsmen keep their bats with them and also wear padding, unlike in baseball. Why the game’s called cricket, I don’t know and neither does anyone I spoke to. It’s a mysterious game, and it’s also at most moderately interesting to watch, and games last a long long time (4 hours at least for local games, international test matches are always 5 days).

So, you have managed to reach the end of the post. I applaud you for your patience in reading this really long post, but just to make sure, if you leave a comment, add an asterisk or other unusual symbol to the beginning of the comment to prove to the world that you had the patience to read through this. It’s not like I don’t expect you guys to read the whole thing, it’s just that I’d like to know people are reading all of the adventures that I’ve had while I am here. Once again, I applaud you for your patience, and thank you for reading this post.

A little bit of funny things about this post, I started out typing it in Microsoft Word, and it reached 7 pages, and is over 4,500 words! Take that, usual English exam essay requirements! And some Allderdice students think that a 700-word essay is long, ha!