A Really Fabulous Seal

Ok so all of these seal posts makes it kind of clear that we saw seals this weekend. Tomorrow the full story will be revealed...

By the way, what you are seeing above is my first GIF! Made from two pictures that my sister took.

A Seal in Wellington

A Sheep in Auckland

Sticky Buddy

Whoever sat at this desk before me definitely had a cat or something because there are white hairs everywhere.

Somebody needs a Sticky Buddy.

Things Aren't Going Wrong

I’ve been feeling comfortable at my work in New Zealand… too comfortable. It’s calm. And it feels a little off to me. Don’t get me wrong, things going smoothly and as-planned is a good thing! I’m just not used to the lack of chaos and activeness in what I do, so perhaps that’s why I feel a little sedated.

My boss and I meet every week for a formal check-up and review of the work I have done during the past several days. He acknowledged that, yeah, a lot of the work done by the office is done in front of a computer and that it can sometimes seem a little unvaried. He is very correct in this.

In my job last summer and in my academics, which is either very on-your-feet or very let’s-talk-about-it, there is little time to let the mind settle into a state of what I like to call mental cruise control. And it is interesting to compare the work I do with the Society to other parts of my life. But before I go all “I NEED TO BE ACTIVE”, I have to ask myself: is this “mental cruise control” appropriate for the task at hand? And I think the answer is yes. As my boss said, the very nature of the work is sit-down-and-concentrate.

Figuring out what stimulates my mind as I reach the end of week 5/12, what method of driving (so to speak) best suits my personality, is something positive that I will definitely take away from this experience. It’s also bettering my ability to cruise control because let’s face it, I like to talk. I can be quiet (though my sister would beg to differ), but most of the time I find that learning and work gets done by speaking. As for my work here… there might be some days where I speak only 10 words during work hours, and they’re almost all pleasantries. But hey, it gets work done.

Really, things aren’t going wrong. There aren’t things for me to fix and there aren’t moments where I am forced to problem-solve, which I would say I’m already good at. Instead, there are things for me to find. And “fix” and “find” aren’t even on the same spectrum; I can’t see a way to compare the two words. So this is definitely something new… something different… and I’m simply trying to figure out how finding can help me fix things in my future endeavours.

So that’s sort of what is going on in the back of my mind as I read about New Zealand researchers conducting Antarctic ice sheet studies and making volcanic activity hypotheses. Because while I can see what I am doing immediately and the effects it has now (words being written in a document), I also need to stay focussed on what all of this is doing for me in the future.

Mushrooms!

Ok, I’m picking up with my blogging this week. Here in New Zealand, the Queen’s Birthday is celebrated on the first Monday in June, so long weekend for us! I’ll get to what we did over the long weekend later this week though. First I want to go back a couple weekends to when my sister and I climbed Mount Victoria in Wellington. It is part of the city’s greenbelt. It is also where the Hobbit’s Hideaway in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was filmed. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the bit right after Frodo and Sam run into Merry and Pippin after they’ve “been into Farmer Maggot’s crop!” Then they roll down that big ol’ hill and a carrot breaks and then Pippin sees mushrooms and then Frodo yells about getting off the road and then they almost get caught by the dark rider and then they go to the Buckleberry Ferry. Back up to the mushrooms. Whenever I see mushrooms in the wild now, I always quote Pippin.

I thought that this would be the MOST appropriate time to quote this line seeing as we were ON the path on which the scene was filmed and there were mushrooms there so of course I got onto the ground.

Here’s a view of where we think that big old log that the hobbits hide behind was. We think that we remember the special features DVD mentioning that the tree was a set piece, and this divot in the ground is the perfect place for it.

I’ll put one more picture of the path below as I sign off from another LOTR-based blog. After we finish up our LOTR adventures in July, I am going to write a blog post on this… phenomenon (?) as I see it.

Canadian Canoeing Down the Puhoi

The Maori, when first arriving upon the shores of New Zealand centuries ago, did so in large sea-faring canoes. Not the typical kind of canoe that we see on the lakes in Ontarian cottage country. This leads to the distinction between “canoe” and “Canadian canoe.” When Emily and I saw the opportunity to take a Canadian canoe down the Puhoi River (map below), we grabbed our paddles – as all Canadians travel with their canoe paddles – and took to the water.

I think a couple things attracted us to canoeing in New Zealand. One, we had the choice to either kayak or canoe and since adding kayaks to our cottage a few years ago, we haven’t canoed as much. Also, it we thought it would be fun to canoe somewhere completely unfamiliar with different terrain – we’re used to lakes and cliffs and forest, but here we got rivers and rolling hills and the occasional marsh. I think the little taste of home – and Canada in general – was also nice as we took our canoe paddles and felt the familiar push against the water.

After a half hour trek through Wenderholm Regional Park (about an hour away from Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city), we met the people from whom we were renting the canoe. We got into the canoe, they gave us our paddles, then asked:

                “So, have you ever been in a Canadian canoe before?”

                “Yeah, we’re Canadian.”

                “Oh. Well I won’t bother giving you the lesson.”

Then we were pushed off down the Puhoi River. Our canoe was bright yellow and plastic, much opposite from our quarter-century-old (right? Mom and Dad?) green, fibreglass-and-wood (right? Mom and Dad) canoe in which our parents paddled us around Ontario when we were little. I had no plastic toy ship to drag alongside the boat, no sandwich on homemade bread in a Tupperware container, and certainly no father at the stern taking his paddle and holding it over my neck letting cold water dribble down my back. So it was a different experience, but with Emily and her handy J-stroke steering the canoe and me with my ox-like work ethic (ha), we got along just fine.

For about the first ten minutes. Then, the navigator in the bow might have led the vessel into some shallow waters. He probably should have taken the bushes growing out of surface as a hint, but instead he optimistically said, “We’ll be fine.”

We were not. We didn’t sink or anything, but I did have to get out of the canoe and step onto the muddy riverbed. This mud was more like a sponge, though, and the texture on my feet made me cringe… and I was very vocal about my displeasure (in a fun sort of way) as I tried to correct my mistake by dragging the canoe into deeper waters. I was convinced that it was quicksand and I was going to die. I did not.

ANYWAY, the rest of the trip went fairly well. We had beautiful weather, a lot of food (they suggested taking a picnic for before or after the paddle, but we expertly ate during), and the incoming tide made the paddling pretty easy. A few hiccups along the way: I missed announcing some sticks in the river which we may or may not have hit, some ducks took off from within overhanging foliage and I legitimately screamed for all of New Zealand to hear, and my sister “accidentally” splashed me with water when I was acting like a GPS (in response to the aforementioned stick problem). We said hello to some passing kayakers, too.

                “Is this what they call a Canadian canoe?”
                “Yep! And we’re Canadian!”

                “OH! How APT!”

Clearly our human interaction is thrilling.

So yeah. A great day. Canoeing. In New Zealand. Who would have thought? Some pictures below for your enjoyment (we didn’t bring Emily’s DSLR just in case we tipped over… but with such expert canoeists, that was HARDLY a worry! [Sarcasm intended. It was most definitely a worry.] Instead we took my point-and-shoot [which we diligently wrapped in a grocery bag] and my waterproof GoPro. Ok, enough parentheses and brackets, enjoy the pictures.)

Just a couple Canadians in a canoe.