May 16, 2013
Kia ora! (Hello!)
Jet lag + international date line = my body very confused all night. This was my strange experience overnight. We went to bed around 8:30pm (4:30am in FL time) last night, and I woke up multiple times in the night trying to figure out where I was, what time it was, and if it was time to wake up. I first woke up at 11pm and I thought that I was in the next day already and it was almost time to wake up… it was not. I even looked at the clock in the room and my phone to try to see what the ‘right’ time was. I did the same thing at 4am and 6am. I was just extremely confused but at least it was a decent night’s sleep seeing as how I hadn’t slept decently for a good 48 hours.
Fast forward to later today. We started our day in lecture with three separate lecturers talking about New Zealand culture, landscape, tourism in NZ, its impacts on the triple bottom line, and finally marketing Christchurch to tourists after the earthquakes. I thought an interesting part about this was the Maori culture’s dimension of how they feel New Zealand was created. They started with a sky father (Rangi) and an earth mother (Papa) and their child basically separated them from being joined together and that created the sky and earth. The child (Tane) dressed his mother with forests and streams to make her ornate. The other children became gods of things such as weather, food, and the sea. I probably am not explaining this as well as our professor did, and leaving out many details but I just thought the concept in general was quite interesting.
This afternoon, after lunch, we drove to the Rakaia Gorge and went jet boating. Jet boating is like this big, wide speed boat that goes in the rivers (in NZ specifically) and in between rocks. It was a fun time! Our driver did 360s which was the best part! The scenery was also amazing. The water was so blue (from the glaciers) and the mountains were beautiful. Only a picture can do this sight justice! (I will update these posts later with pictures).
I am still not used to the time change. So once agan, it’s 8:30pm here… and I’m exhausted. Tomorrow is our service project, but I’m not sure what we’re doing. Everything is an adventure on this trip!