Week number 2

Miriam Beard once wrote "Certainly travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living." I've been thinking about this a lot recently as we've been moving from place to place, and it has surprised me how true it is. In the past week, we've gone so many places and seen so much. We went geocaching around Hamilton, which was quite the adventure since no one in our group knew how to use the GPS, but we managed to find the box anyway (after about 4 hours). We stayed on a marae, which was a great way to get a look into the Maori culture, and we also saw the thermal pools in Rotorua. We went to the Agrodome, and stayed the night in Whakatane. When we went to Mt. Maunganui, we saw tons of marine life in the rocky intertidal area, and the rocks themselves were also interesting to see from a geological standpoint. Cathedral Cove was amazing, even though the walk top get there was brutal. Again, it was a great mix of the two subjects, with marine life clinging to the rocks along the waters edge. While it has been amazing to see all this, the deeper impact comes from simply being in a country like New Zealand, walking down the street and passing kiwis, struggling at times to understand their accents and abbreviations. While all the individual parts of the trip so far have been amazing, it is the overall whole that is what I will come away from here remembering. Long after I've forgotten how high Mt. Maunganui is, or what the difference is between a dissipative and reflective beach, I'll hold onto the memories of beautiful, rolling hills, friendly, helpful people, and lots of good friends.