Cobalt.

We just got back from our trip to the west coast of the South Island a few days ago. It was completely amazing, as things usually are here, but it's nice to be back home after living out of a backpack for ten days.

I finally got to see the temperate rainforests that were a big reason I wanted to come to New Zealand in the first place, and I have to say, they are weird. Weird in a good way, but so strange. In the pacific northwest, the temperate rainforests are made up mostly of conifers. Things like Sitka spruces and westen hemlocks and douglas firs. But in NZ, they don't have real conifers like that. What they do have are podocarps, these crazy ancient kinds of tree that have evolved all kinds of ways to avoid being eaten by moa. Not that they run into that problem often anymore. They also have palm trees. In a temperate rainforest. They are nikau palms, the furthest south any palm tree grow, and they make the forests look tropical. You can look at a forest on the Olympic peninsula of Washington and see immediately that it is probably a bit cold there. But if you looked at a forest in Paparoa New Zealand, you would think it was tropical. They are so sneaky. And even when you get out of the range of the palm trees further south, there are still fern trees that most people think are palms anyway.

As we headed back in an easterly direction, we stopped and spent a few days at Cass Field Station and did research projects for our Terrestrial Ecology class. My group and I studied the epiphyte communities in an older beech forest and a younger beech forest and looked at the differences. For the record, epiphytes are plants that grow entirely on other plants, and in a beech forest, those are probably mosses, lichens, and ferns. There may be nothing harder to do in all of ecology than identify species of moss and lichen. But we had fun and most of the time we had great weather. Even the sandflies weren't that bad, and at the end of the day we got to trudge back to find the amazingness of Emma's cooking. Not a bad place for field work, I'd say.

Another thing we got to see was on the way home. You know that scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at the end, when there is that epic battle between the White Witch and all of her minions, and Peter and Aslan and their whole army? And there are all those oddly shaped boulders surrounding a grassy field? Well, I've been there. It's a place called Castle Hill, and it's smack in the middle of the South Island. We turned off onto a random little gravel road and then walked for about fifteen minutes, and suddenly, we were in Narnia. I've climbed over all of those rocks, pretended to be a Narnian archer on some of them, and helped to film our own version of the epic charge. It was on our last day, as we were driving home, and it was a great way to end that trip. I've always wanted to go to Narnia.

Even though we're in New Zealand, we are a bunch of Americans, and we wanted a Thanksgiving. So Thursday afternoon, Emma and Sam whipped up a feast that was at least mostly like a Thanksgiving day meal. Most of the necessary parts were there, except we had chicken instead of turkey (no one really eats turkey in New Zealand, I'm not really sure why), but it felt really odd. And we had to go to class afterward, instead of going on a walk, or shooting things in the backyard, or playing a ton of games. It was good, but it didn't feel that much like an actual Thanksgiving day. Ah well. I guess I really don't know where I'll be next year for Thanksgiving either.

Last night we turned in our papers and gave our presentations for Terrestrial Ecology, so we are officially finished with our classes now. We still have to write one final, comprehensive paper, but that's it. And then we're done. Then we go home. I don't think I'm prepared for this. Where on earth have the last three months gone? I'm excited to see everyone back home, but I think it's going to be something of a shock to my system. For example, to publish this post, I biked for fifteen minutes into town to use the internet at a cafe, and I haven't turned on my cell phone for three months. Another example: Kaitlyn H.'s parents came to visit New Zealand, and as we were meeting them and talking to them for the first time, they mentioned something about an ostrich statue outside their hotel. Ostrich? No way. Moa. We hear about moa all the time. Everywhere you look there is a monument to them, a fossil of one, a plant that is specifically designed to withstand their attack. They have shaped this country in many and powerful ways, and none of us could ever mistake one for anything else. But Kaitlyn's parents didn't have any idea what one was. Weird.

Another thing: I'm going to have to go back to living away from both mountains and the ocean. New Zealand is not a wide country, and most of its people live on the coasts. So all of the places I've been here, have had both mountains, and bordered a large body of water. Kaikoura, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, Wellington, Paparoa, Bruce Bay, Oban, Mason Bay, Nelson, Picton - they're all on the coast. And even though Queenstown is in the interior, it's next to such a huge lake that it has beaches anyway. When we stayed at Cass for four days this week, it was the longest I've gone in three months without seeing the ocean. And it was weird. The United States is quite a wide country. It's going to be an adjustment.

But there are good things too, about coming home. I miss my family and everyone at Trinity quite a lot whenever I actually stop to think about it. And since our return is drawing closer, I've been thinking about it more often lately. And I'm glad that I'm going to be in the country for Ashley and Eric's wedding in January, and that I'll be home for Christmas, even if Kate won't be there this year. And it's not as thought this is the only time I'll actually be in New Zealand. I will absolutely be back. But enough of that talk, I still have two more weeks in this amazing place! It is pretty much summer now, the snow is gone from the mountains, and the sea sparkles in the sunlight pretty much every day. It is the season for slacklining in the back yard, eating breakfast on the back deck, camping on the beach, and Christmas music! Wrap your head around that one. We still can't.