Azure.

It occurs to me that all of you lovely people back home know much more about passing events than about what actually goes on in this semester. Since it is reading week and I have no scheduled classes, I thought it would be a good opportunity to fill things in a little.

I live at The Old Convent. Everyone in Kaikoura knows what you’re talking about if you say that’s where you’re from. It was built in 1911, so this is its hundredth year, and it started out as a convent and was a place for the sisters to live and teach until sometime in the 80s. All the names of the nuns are still on the doors, and I live in Sister Marguerite’s room with Moe. The three guys that are on this semester with all of us females live in the room that the priests would stay in when they came to visit. Since it was improper for the priests to walk past the sisters’ rooms, they have their very own spiral staircase that leads up to their room. I’m a little jealous. The only nun left here is a statue by the name of Agatha who lives in our backyard. She recently got some Moko (Maori facial tattoos) so she’s looking better (and more intimidating than ever.

There are 20 of us total, but we also have small groups of four that we divide up into to do short day trips or talk about how our weeks are going. Every week we are assigned to different jobs, from cleaning up after lunch to taking care of the chickens, and those happen in the small groups too. We also divide into groups and garden twice a week in the morning, which I really love. Even when we’re just pulling weeds, I love the smell of the dark earth, and when I find a patch where I know a worm has been feasting. There is something really satisfying about having to wash a bunch of dirt out from under your fingernails.

Anyway, on weeks when we have class, we have it from 9-12 in the morning and 7:15-9:15 at night. This leaves the afternoons open to do whatever we want or need to. Sometimes it’s homework, or slacklining, baking or reading, but a lot of times it’s biking into town. We all have assigned bikes to ride all semester, and mine is a yellow diamondback named Jeff. We live about 15 minutes away from town by bike. If you’re enjoying the scenery. Which you always should be. The best part is riding back home, because then the mountains are in front.

The landscape here is incredible. We live on Mt. Fyffe road, which runs another couple of km west and smacks into the side of Mount Fyffe himself. Next to him to the south is Mount Snowflake, and his neighbors to the north are Mounts Manakau and Te o Whakere. We live on the flats right before the foothills begin, so I eat breakfast every morning (when it’s clear) watching the mountains be slowly lit by the sun. Kaikoura itself is on the north side of a small peninsula that juts out into the Pacific Ocean with nothing between it and South America. There is another small section of town on the south side called, appropriately, South Bay. The sea floor drops off as quickly as the mountains rise up, so there is very deep water quite close to the shore here. You can even see where it happens because the ocean grows so much darker at that point. That means that juvenile male sperm whales will always have what they need to eat in this location, and you can find them here year round. We also have Dusky dolphins and Hector’s dolphins, along with New Zealand Fur Seals, which you can find lounging around most rocky beaches.

I am busy trying to pass myself off as a kiwi. Ok, not really, but I think it would be really cool to be able to do the accent before I leave, so I’ve been practicing. Kiwi slang is also fun (sweet as!), and learning all the different names they have for things (sprinkles = hundreds and thousands). We also have been embracing the rugby culture. It is New Zealand’s national sport, and they are pretty good at it. They call American football “grid iron” and everyone else’s football “soccer” because rugby is football here. Just about everyone in the convent has been converted into an All Blacks (their national team) fan, and in a matter of days have learned enough about the matches and the players to get seriously emotionally involved. It’s so fun that the world cup is going on while we’re here, and we even get to go see a game next Friday! It’s going to be Australia vs. the U.S., and we are going to be crushed beyond recognition. But that didn’t stop us from making really great outfits to wear to the match. Look for us on tv! Go Eagles!

Speaking of, I’ll be in Wellington all this week, learning about the communities there, so I’ll be fairly unreachable. Love you all!