I woke up this morning the same way as all others since I arrived, hearing the sound of rain on my metal roof. The rain never fails to wake me up. Apparently, this is an exceptionally wet spring. But I don't know how much I believe that; it has at the least sprinkled every single day for the past 4 weeks.
I'm not complaining though. Rain is not the worst way to wake up. I could be waking up to feet of snow - similar to what my family at home will be experiencing within a few months.
As I woke up, I remembered how busy my morning would be. Today was Quiz #1. Quizzes here are not like the quizzes at home. NZ quizzes: 1 hour long, 20 questions, 4 subjects, and enough material to cover half a semester in the States. Yikes.
We started the day with Monday morning chores. After chores, we had until 11 to study for the quiz.
The quiz honestly wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I knew all of the material, but my problem was writing it all down in a way that made the most sense in an hours time. After the quiz, Chris handed back our first paper. I was surpassingly pleased with my grade, as were many others. So that's exciting!
Once lunch was cleaned up, we headed to the garden for a few hours to let our brain cells re-coop. Because my garden patch is "sleeping," I helped Maree move rocks and dig up invasive species around campus.
To end the academic day, Jono lectured about the Treaty of Waitangi. It wasn't a long lecture, but it did cover a great deal of material. The mentors gave us the rest of the night off to work on the Opoutere map, graph, and paper that is due at the end of this week.
Speaking of the end of this week!!!! We leave for South Island on Sunday! I can't believe how fast the semester is flying by! So, Sunday we travel down to Wellington, where we stay the night, wake up early Monday morning for the ferry down to the South Island, and then we travel to various cities for 3 weeks! I'm not exactly sure what to expect down there, but I'm ready to experience the New Zealand mountains that I've been dying to see ever since I discovered my acceptance into this program.
The rest of the night involved tea, hot chocolate, Grannie's, and much chatter regarding the South Island. As one of the other EcoQuesters, Chris, says, "Lord of the Rings, here we come."
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