My Last Month in New Zealand

I can't believe it's really my last month in New Zealand - actually, I'm down to less than two weeks! It may be surprising but I actually can't wait to leave. Some people may fall in love with New Zealand and never be able to leave but I am not one of those people. I found myself wishing many times that I hadn't committed to such a long time here and that I could just go home, but it really has been a great experience and I certainly don't regret it. The culmination of my New Zealand adventure is a 5-week study abroad in Conservation and Biodiversity with the University of Florida and it has been worth the wait. I am now on week 3 out of 5 and I already know I am going to miss the great people I am fortunate to study and travel with.

"The squad" as we like to refer to ourselves

It's hard to summarize all we've done in the past three weeks but you can check out our class blog at http://www.kiwisforthesummer2014.blogspot.co.nz/ if you want to know what we've been up to. We just returned from a 3-day trip up the coast to Waipara where we learned about wineries' efforts to become "greener" by providing patches of native forest for native wildlife within the wineries and to Kaikoura where we saw A LOT of New Zealand Fur Seals (known as Kekeno which means "looks around" in Maori), some species of birds which we hadn't yet seen, and some Dusky dolphins way off in the distance. Needless to say, the views were also spectacular.

One of the fur seal colonies(above), a fur seal "looking around"(below)

 Most of the squad is looking forward to a fun weekend in the adventure capital of New Zealand - Queenstown - and although I would really love to go, I can't afford it so I will be enjoying a relaxing weekend in Christchurch. And in case you were wondering where this random blog post came from, from now on I'm going to try to blog regularly... better late than never! :)

Til next time,
Sam

The Kaikoura Coast