Beginning of April...day light savings is over...mid-term examinations... mid-semester break... Easter...
All these things are happening so quickly I feel like it's hard to keep up. I received a letter the other day from a great friend in Mount Pleasant that made my day! I can't believe I have been away for so long already. This is the experience I've been planning since freshman year and it's halfway over. Hard to imagine that it's also the last semester of my undergraduate degree. After this is over, I need to move out and move on. The real world is a scary thing, but I know I'm ready for it. My time here is amazing, yet it reassures me that I'm going down the right path in life. I want to take a second to thank everyone who has gotten me to where I am now. If you know me personally, I can be a "handful of emotions". But thank you, seriously :)
Enough with my emotional hiccup and onto more exciting things New Zealand is throwing at me. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be in Dunedin this week, which is exciting. I have a ticket to attend the ball! I'm just kidding... you know I don't attend balls. But, they are putting on a "free day" which is right up my alley! I'm not quite sure what will happen but I will keep you posted.
I'm still doing well in school. I just finished a mid-term exam tonight, which was at a strange time (6:30-8pm). Apparently, it is not uncommon for an exam to be held late at night or even on Saturday. It was a basic scan-tron multiple choice test. For all you CMU anatomy student's, it was just like Dr. Salt's tests (a/b/c+d/a,c, not d/ all the above). So, good thing I was prepared! I have actually been enjoying the amount of research reviews I've been doing. Since the professors don't require textbooks, they assign research articles. Most of them are relevant and interesting to my career, a very different approach than the US.
Next week I will begin my mid-semester break trip, that I am very excited about! Eight of us are planning a fun-filled 10 day trip. Wednesday we will be taking a bus to Christchurch and flying to Wellington. From Wellington, we will take the ferry back down to the South Island and stay on a farm for a night. I'm really hoping to get some "hands on experience" with some sheep. We are going to hike Abel Tasman, another Great Walk, and also sea-kayak in the north. From there, we are going to travel down the west coast, which is known for the remarkably untouched landscapes, stopping where ever we want for a few days. We will end in Queenstown where our program will provide us with "free" accommodation (I'm sure my program fees cover this), including all you can eat buffet, a cruise through Milford Sound, and a luging experience. That's the gist of the mid-semester break and I can't wait to tell you all about it.
I know I've mentioned before that the Cadbury Factory is located in Dunedin. With Easter right around the corner, I am in shock with the abundance of chocolate treats. We only see a handful of chocolate eggs and bunnies back home, but here... there is SO MUCH MORE. I have been craving chocolate more than I ever have before and I think it is because I'm exposed to it at all times and I think it tastes t
hat much better. You can tell I'm having a craving right now.
I'm in the middle of organizing all of my photos thus far, so I hope to post some by this weekend.
Thanks for reading my photo-lacking post! ... Okay just one of Tunnel Beach in Dunedin
CHEERS!
CA
CA
