Week 1

I do not just want to sit and recap what has occurred throughout this trip. So far this trip has been so much more than just a site-seeing tour, it has been a very emotional experience for me. This trip so far has been a week of new experiences. I have been overseas before yet this trip is something completely different. The fact that the trip will last for nearly an entire month makes this trip by far the most independent thing I have ever done. The first week has been a very hectic week. With little down time it has been difficult to sit and get a real taste for this country. Until we arrived at the University of Waikato we had been living very much the tourist life. Moving from hostel to hostel, with little time to relax was the plan for the first few days. Although this was hectic it seemed like a great way to get the most out of the first few days. The trip has allowed me to take a tremendous amount of pictures. My favorite part of the trip so far would easily have to be the trip to the glowworm caves. The fact that I could just walk down into a cave and witness the action first hand was incredible. The trip itself with the rafting allowed me to really appreciate the caves themselves. The guides were both knowledgeable and humorous, and we know that humor is a big chunk of my life. The whole setup of the caving experience was so very different to what it would have been had I gone in the United States. The van seemed like it may have rolled off of the lot in about 1987, and we were allowed to just walk into a cave with little more than an inner tube to protect us. The floor was slippery, the ceiling was low, and the rocks were loose. This made it all the more exciting; you thought that maybe there was a chance that you could get hurt. Experiences like this are few and far between in the U.S. guides are all too worried that they would be sued, so tours are exceptionally watered down. This tour made it seem like you were doing something different and exciting. So far I am very have, almost blissful that I decided to come on this trip. The casual style of blending the class material with the visual stimulation has been great. I seem to catch myself all too often just smiling knowing that I have three more weeks to experience even more.