INTRO TO NEW ZEALAND

Greetings, Friends, Family, and Curious Onlookers! 

Welcome to my blog, where I will be updating all of my travel news in the coming months, and especially when I take off for New Zealand in early December!

For those who are new to this saga in my life, I will be in New Zealand for about a month, working on a sheep farm and then touring around the country. I leave December 8th, and return January 11th. This blog is an attempt to keep people in the know, to show pictures, and help my mother not to worry.

This trip is primarily to satisfy a "field study" requirement component of my masters from Iowa State University. The idea is that as writers we need practical, hands on experience in order to write about the world. We can't just shut ourselves up in garrets. It's unpleasant to do so, anyway. Other kids in the program have been directors of museums, studied/tracked wolves in Canada, volunteered on organic farms, taught English in Mexico, helped with wild mustang management, etc. This trip ALSO functions like a giant Birthday/Christmas/Graduation present to myself. (Yes, I'm graduating with my Master's degree this spring! woop woop!)

When I started thinking about my field study, I was absolutely sure that I wanted to go to New Zealand. First of all, the people there speak English, mostly. Secondly, I know from Lord of the Rings that it's fairly easy to get from one end of the country to another, over giant snow topped mountains and through mines--even if fiery Balrocs are chasing you. I mean, what, it took Frodo and Co. like, 14 hours? AND they had a cursed Ring to contend with? Piece of cake. In any case, I've been itching to travel more ever since I came back from Europe, and this is a great opportunity to do so.

I knew that I would probably want to go to NZ during our winter, so that I could take advantage of their summer, so last spring I started emailing about a thousand (ok, maybe thirty) people and organizations, looking for openings for volunteers. I emailed a lot of people in reserves or national forests who need park ranger type assistants. Ultimately  though, Ron and Gay Munroe answered my email with a really great deal. Here they are:

They have a sheep farm. Here are their sheep:

I spoke with them recently and they have 1400 sheep, with another 1200 lambs being born this year. They've got about one square mile of land for their sheep. My work with them would be helping them with the sheep, helping out with other maintenance around the farm, and helping to keep their wetland area thriving--weeding, planting trees, tracking predators, etc. 

Here is their wetland area:  

 They are located at the very southern tip of New Zealand. Here is a map of New Zealand, which is split up into "North Island" and "South Island," where I'll be.  "A" marks the town of Invercargill, which is about twenty minutes from their farm. Invercargill, for all intents and purposes, is a NZ version of  Towson (or any town that has a mall, grocery stores, movie theaters, etc, but not a lot of culture or museums.) It's fairly small. Fun fact: I'll be flying into Christchurch (which you can see is identified here) from Sydney, Australia. Then I'll take a bus to Invercargill, where Ron and Gay will pick me up and bring me to their house.

So you see, Antarctica and I will be neighbors! I will be able to wave to Antarctica!

I'll spend three or four weeks with them, working for my field study. While I'm with them I won't pay any room or board, my meals and bed are free. They have wifi and I'll have my own room (one of their grown children's rooms). There will be another volunteer living in the house while I'm there: a German student named Simon. Simon and I have been trying to figure out if we could rent a car and toodle around the countryside together to cut costs, but we're both busy and our emails have been sparse, although genial.

I'll be spending Christmas and new years with them, and then striking out on my own to travel around South Island. I'll post again, later, about some of the things I want to do during that portion of my trip. for now,  take a gander at my travel registry: Corrie's Trip to New Zealand . There you will find pictures and descriptions of various activities/places I'm excited to explore. I was prompted to set up the registry by my father, who thought it would be cool to be able to not just give me birthday money for the trip, but to sort of "buy" a part of my trip for my birthday, Christmas or Graduation. I had a lot of fun pulling the pictures together for it. Feel free to help fund the trip if you are able, but if not, know that I will make all those activities happen anyway.

Thanks so much for reading! I'll be posting throughout the semester, as my plans fall into place! Check back soon! (I'll be posting new posts on Facebook, too.)

Love
Corrie


(End Note: If you hunt through this blog, you will notice that I posted previously about a year ago, during the summer. I initially set up this blog for a project with the kids I teach during the summer. I had them blog every week so that they were writing constantly and getting more and more used to processing their thoughts via writing rather than just talking. Getting into the spirit, I started a blog as well, and we all followed each other. It was a fun summer project.)