some inspiration and the tour

Great quote:

Billy Graham said, “Most of us do not understand nuclear fission, but we accept it. I don’t understand television, but I accept it. I don’t understand radio, but every week my voice goes out around the world, and I accept it. Why is it so easy to accept all these man-made miracles and so difficult to accept the miracles of the Bible?”

Faith is built upon trust. God wants us to trust Him - even when we do not understand what is happening or can explain the circumstances. Even when nothing makes sense and everything seems wrong. It is easy to trust Him when the seas are calm and the skies are clear but the strength of our faith is measured in the midst of a raging storm. A crisis always reveals what is really inside. What life does to us depends on what life finds in us. Faith is a deliberate choice to believe God, to walk through our fear, knowing we can trust Him every step of the way.

And...the video I promised!

43 Howe Street and then some

Ok it's official.  I never thought I would find such a place, but I think that Dunedin actually has more schizophrenic weather than either Grove City or Somerset.  Today we lucked out, it's slightly breezy and sunny and really nice.  The weather predictions are often inaccurate, so we just never know what we're going to get.  I think i mentioned this before, but the people here say to be prepared for 4 seasons every day when you leave your house.  Anyways, I am totally appreciating the sun while it lasts!

Today I want to take you on a tour of my flat.  This is probably something I should have done a while ago but I always had other things to write about so I've been saving it.  I really like where I live; our flat is tidy and well-kept, actually a whole lot nicer than a lot of the other ones I've seen.  It's got 4 bedrooms and a bathroom and a common room and a kitchen.  The flat used to be residential so that is why all of our bedrooms look very different...I think Paula's room was once the living room.  The common room that we have is pretty small but it's cozy and nice when it's cold because we can all sit in there and keep the door closed and the heat stays in.  Out back we have a clothes-line type of contraption for drying laundry.  I will be sad once it's cold and rainy all the time (winter here) and I can't hang my clothes out to dry anymore, I find line-drying very satisfying.  Oh we also have a covered porch in the front of the house (most flats don't have a porch) and it's really nice to sit out there and do homework and amuse ourselves by watching the neighbors across the street (the boys that party all the time on their couch on their roof). Click here to see my flat photos.

43 Howe St. - and the sun was shining!!

[video didn't load in time; i'll try again tomorrow and edit this post to include the tour - sorry!]


Things with our flat are going really well too.  Asma, Paula, Maxine, and I are getting along really well and we have a lot of fun together.  I really appreciate how different each of us are, both culturally and just personality-wise, it makes for some really fun and interesting group dynamics.  Broughers, Kimmels, and Marissa: you'll be proud to know that i have successfully gotten all of my flatmates hooked on Modern Family.  Not like it was difficult...Asma watched one episode shortly after we arrived here and proclaimed, "I love this show!!!".  The tv here is way behind where we are in the US (they are only part way through season 1 currently) but I have all of season 1 on dvd and can get the new episodes from iTunes.

Maxine, Asma, and I in our backyard

Other random thoughts/updates:

1. I joined a zumba class on Monday nights - such a fun time!

2. I attended the Grace Bible Church student bible study this past week (every thursday night) and it was soooo great!  This is one of the things I've been pleasantly surprised about since arriving in Dunedin - I have found it easier here to locate both a church and a bible study to attend than I did at Grove City.  It has been really fantastic to be plugged into a place with solid biblical teaching where I am challenged and strengthened and can have fellowship with other believers.  The bible study is held each week at Grace House (a house that the church owns) - the leaders meet earlier to cook dinner for us and then students come, we all have dinner and hang out, and then we have a mix of large and small group bible study, followed by evangelism training.  This is the cool part: the study is held on Thursday evenings (the night notorious for bigger parties) and around 10 pm the Engage group goes on/near campus and sets up a small barbeque to cook sausages.  The Engage students hand out the sausages for free to random students who are walking by and use that opportunity to share their faith with them.  It's a great way for us to get some experience in sharing the gospel and for other students to hear it.

I was like a little kid having ice cream for the first time

3. I stayed around Dunedin this past weekend because I was again supposed to have a field trip for my marine science course (again cancelled due to weather; this is the third time it's been postponed and it's become a bit excessive now!).  But I had a really great weekend with Paula and Maxine (Asma was hiking on Stewart Island) - baked cookies, watched some movies, went to the farmers' market, shopped till we dropped, stopped by a rugby game, went to a fringe festival dance show, wrote a lot of postcards, and went to church.  Time well spent.
There is a little convenience store called Rob Roy's that sells great ice cream, a place notorious for large scoops and small prices (only $2.40 a cone!).  It's like college student dream shop.  But I recently found another ice cream place which is closer to our flat and that sells cones with the same amount of ice cream as Rob Roy's but for $2.30!!  This was a huge Jenn excitement moment, as any of you who are familiar with my love for ice cream will understand.

Paula and I with our day's work

4. Tonight is my night to make flat dinner and it's going to be ham and cheese bagels - something I will thoroughly enjoy but my flatmates will probably not be quite as enthusiastic about.  I wish I could take them to camp and they could eat them there; I'm sure that the dining hall + 300 campers would totally make the difference in their feasting experience.  But I am also serving cookie sandwiches for dessert, can't go wrong there.

I'll try to get that video post up soon!

bookin' it up mt. cook

So far each time I return from an adventure I post my pictures and think 'hah! this is my best album yet, these pictures can't be topped!'.  And so far i have been proven wrong each time.  First it was Tunnel Beach and then the Catlins and now Mt. Cook National Park.  So I present you with (in my opinion) the best album yet.

Lucille at the base of the Southern Alps

my first sighting of Mt. Cook

This past weekend was nothing short of amazing.  We headed out on Friday afternoon to see Mt. Cook, the tallest peak in the southern alps, and therefore also New Zealand.  It's about a 5 hour drive northwest from Dunedin but that time is nothing when you're driving through this kind of scenery.  We stopped by the Moeraki Boulders in Oamaru on the way.  These are basically some rocks along the beach that are really really round, naturally so.  They were cool but we stopped at high tide so we couldn't easily stand on them or anything.  After that we continued on our way.  We arrived in Mt. Cook National Park about mid evening and the weather couldn't have been much worse.  It was a whole lot colder than Dunedin and ridiculously windy and it was sideways-raining, hard.  Our initial plan was to sleep in my tent but it was really really wet already and so we temporarily scrapped the idea of setting it up and found the campground shelter that has bathrooms and picnic tables and some countertops/sinks for making meals - basically a pavilion with walls.  There were a bunch of other hikers in there to get out of the weather as well.  We made dinner (tacos) and continued to hope that the weather would clear for Saturday when we planned to hike the Mueller Hut Route.  By the time we were ready to sleep (about 9 pm - mom, be proud!) the rain was still sideways and the wind was howling and we were pretty much thinking that there's no way we're going out to set up the tent in that.  So we slept on the floor of the shelter for the night.  The next morning we woke up before the sunrise (goal = to see the sun on Mt. Cook) and I sat up, looked to my right, and BAM - snowy mountain peaks filling the entire window.  The sight was so fantastic and I was still in my sleeping bag, still on the floor of the shelter.  My first thought was that God is so good; our prayers that all of the bad weather would be expended on Friday night and that we could have a clear day on Saturday were answered, and then some.  We packed up and loaded the car with the intention of driving somewhere to see the sun on Mt. Cook, which we had yet to see at all by this point.  We drove for a few minutes and turned off at the sign that read "Tasman Valley".  Keep in mind that we were pretty much guesstimating this entire time as to where Cook actually was.  We pulled off the side of the road beside a big field of rocks (and I mean a BIG field, much longer than it looked) and started walking towards the ridge, thinking that if we went far enough in that direction we could maybe see Cook.  Well, someone's instincts were right and indeed we did see Cook, after walking a considerable distance.  The guys in our group were up ahead and running towards the river that flowed through the valley (little did I know a this point where this river was coming from, but in their running they had figured it out) so we followed, figuring that there must be some reason why they were in a hurry.  And boy, was it worth the rush.  I arrived at the far-off ridge and smack in front of me was a glacial lake and THE Tasman Glacier.  This is the funny part: each one of us had read up on Mt. Cook National Park and we talked in the car on the ride up about how if we had enough time we'd like to figure out where the Tasman Glacier is and go to see it.  And yet it did not occur to any of us that morning when we followed the "Tasman Valley" sign that maybe we might run into the Tasman Glacier...go figure.  Give us a break, it was before 7 am!

Tasman Lake, Mt. Cook in the upper left, Tasman Glacier in the center, far away

After taking loads of pictures of the beauty of the sun shining on Cook, the Tasman Glacier, River, and Valley and just sitting in awe of God's creativity and majesty we finally made our way back to the car.  We stopped by the visitor center to pay our hut fees (for where we'd stay Saturday night) and were back to the campground for breakfast.  A little before mid-day we began our hike up the Sealy Tarns Track, which then leads to the Mueller Hut Route.  The sun was shining and the day could not have been more beautiful for us.  We later found out that this was one of the best days of weather for the area; often visitors can't see Mt. Cook at all, but we could see it plain as day.  Now, I've never climbed a real mountain before and definitely not with a heavy pack, so this was quite the experience.  The route proved to be a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated; the slope was steep the entire way up and the whole second half was loose rock and lots of scree.  Although I wasn't in as good of shape as I'd have liked to be and my pack was really heavy and this was one of the most difficult things I've ever done it was a really good experience - both a mental and a physical challenge, a knock on my pride, and a humbling lesson.  It was a really great mix actually, learning more humility while at the same time standing in awe of God's creation all around me.  I couldn't feel sorry for myself when, every time I'd stop for a break, I'd turn around and get a face full of mountain peaks, glacial valleys, lakes, rivers, and fields.

view behind me as i hiked up the Mueller Hut Route

me hiking up the ridge with Cook in the background

The whole time we were hiking up the mountain we were aiming for a ridge, way off in the distance.  Well, actually it never looked that far off until you searched for the orange signs that mark the route and realized that you couldn't even see the ones near the ridge.  But we did finally make it up there, and oh man, that hike was so worth it and then some.  The picture I've just previously posted on this blog is me standing on top of the highest part of that ridge...I know, right?!  Fun fact: I've always secretly wanted to have a picture of me backpacking on a ridge with a huge mountain in the background - I think this will do!  We took lots of pictures, ate a late lunch, and just basked in the sunshine and beauty of everything around us.  From there it was a half hour trek farther up to the Mueller Hut.  The hut was actually nicer than i expected it to be...it's not heated or anything but it's divided into a few different rooms and sleeps about 30 people.  The kitchen has gas stoves for cooking and a tap/sink outside on a big porch.  We chilled out in the evening (quite literally) and had some dinner and watched the sun set over the mountains.

me and Kailey

One thing that I love about camping/climbing/hiking/being outside in general is the type of connection you can have with others around you.  I've been pondering the reasons for why this is so in a paper for my Adventure Education class and I've come to the conclusion that it has most to do with being away from modern society, namely technology.  I know for me, I can think so much more clearly when I am away from my phone and computer.  While technology in and of itself is not bad I think our overwhelming dependance on it is, and I love that we have opportunities to take a break from all of that.  It was refreshing to get to talk to different people who were also staying in the hut on Saturday night.  Even though we all knew that we most likely wouldn't be seeing each other again it still felt as if the conversations we were having were somehow more meaningful, with more depth.  I think this is mostly reflective of the fact that we were totally engaged with one another, without the distraction of a tv, radio, or cell phone.  Sometimes I wonder what society would be like if everyone took a fast from their technology for a while and made an effort to have more face-to-face interactions.  I think it would be very different.

Kea

On Sunday morning we woke up before sunrise with the intention of hiking the rest of the way up Mt. Ollivier to see the sun rise over Mt. Cook, and we did climb up there at 6:30 am, but it was a no go on the sun...the fog was so thick that we couldn't see any farther than about 20 feet in front of us.  But another fun fact: Mt. Ollivier was the first mountain that Sir Edmund Hillary - the first one to summit Mt. Everest - climbed, way back in 1939.  We sat up there for maybe 45 minutes and then finally faced the fact that the sun was not going to penetrate the fog.  We climbed back down Ollivier and got some breakfast before packing up to head back down to the village.  In the meantime I was hanging around on the porch with a few other people when a kea flew up and landed on the railing beside us (Jodi, the zoom lens was amazing for this!! Super glad i decided to lug it all the way up the mountain).  This was a great moment of excitement because we'd been hoping to see some kea this weekend but hadn't yet up to this point.  Kea are a type of parrot, they look just like what you think of when you hear 'parrot' except for colors, they're mostly brownish/green, with some bright orange underneath their wings.  They are quite funny animals too...they vie for attention and love shiny things.  So, the bunch of us out on the porch provided the attention, and the stainless steel counter-top and big mixing bowl in the sink functioned as shiny.  It wasn't long before several others came along too and there were 3 or 4 kea all hopping around outside the hut.  I think my favorite kea episode was when one decided he wanted to take the mixing bowl with him (think big bowl, maybe 2 foot diameter).  He would look at us, hop down to the level of the counter and then latch his beak onto the side of the bowl, only to drop it, be startled by the clamoring of it falling back into the sink, and then he would look at us and loudly squawk is if it was our fault that the bowl had made so much noise.  He did this same thing over and over again, until either our attention became less intriguing or the appeal of the bowl's shininess started to wear off.  Either way, very entertaining.

A while later we began our descent back down the mountain.  I had been looking forward to going back down, thinking that it wouldn't be nearly as difficult as climbing up.  And i wasn't totally wrong...but I'd say that they are both incredibly tough in different ways.  Descending this steep slope for 3 hours really wears on the leg muscles, and on Monday/Tuesday i felt like i was about 90 years old.  Wow i was sore.  I was just amazed as we passed by a senior citizen couple who had hiked the same track we did and were also on their way down.  If my 21 year-old joints were complaining I can't imagine what they were feeling like!  I really hope I am active like that when I get older.

Mt. Cook and the perpetual cloud

We reached the bottom in a bit less than three hours and were on our way back to Dunedin.  I drove the whole way back, though when I started out I figured out that I would need someone to take over for me.  Turns out that driving long distances isn't so bad when you're traveling through the most beautiful country in the world.  For all who are wondering, Lucille is a trooper and she was fantastic this past weekend, no problems at all!  And Leonard also had a really great time climbing with us - he is one stud of a llama.  Be sure to check out his updated album.  Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers - I've been missing home a lot more lately and it is so comforting to know that I have a network of people who are loving and caring for me.  You're all wonderful!

our dear Leonard

stay tuned...

more to come on my latest weekend adventure!

walk to a new world

As of today I have been in Dunedin one month.  It really doesn't feel like I've been here that long; at the same time I am starting to feel more local and less like New Zealand is a that faraway place, more like I live here now.  There is the grocery store that I walk to twice a week, my favorite ice cream store (of course : ), the homeless guy who always sings outside of the mall, buying the same fruit at the same booths at the market on Saturdays, my chair in the library, our crazy partying neighbors, weekly meals with friends...even though this residence is temporary it's more evident to me that this is where I'm actually living.  Home is still home, that will never change; but I am feeling more like I can belong here.  To quote Marissa from her blog, "There comes a day when you make an important linguistic transition. When 'they' becomes 'we', when 'their problems' become 'our problems'...And you realize that you're a part of this place. That you live here. That it's not just fun or vacation, but that now you have a responsibility to this place as you do to the place you're originally from, and that when you leave you're going to take little pieces of this place with you wherever you go for the rest of your life.'  I think she says it so well and I can really relate to this statement.

On that note, I need to take a moment and brag about one really cool thing from where I live in Dunedin.  The nearest grocery store is only a short walk from our flat and the quickest route is to cut through the Botanical Gardens and the store is just on the other side of the park.  I was seriously astounded the first time I walked to the store because of how beautiful these gardens are, and still on every trip for groceries I just feel fortunate to have the blessing of being able to walk through such a lovely place.  So I've decided to document one of my trips to the grocery store (ironically called New World) because I don't think that words suffice - below is some of my walk to a New World:

 

 

 

(just to prove that i was going to the grocery store!)

tsunami warning

A quick update to let everyone know that currently everything's ok in New Zealand.  I recently saw on the news (about an hour ago) that there has been a very large earthquake in Japan (magnitude 8.9) and a resulting tsunami.  Because of all of this there are extensive tsunami warnings out for Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii (actually i think it's expected that there will be one in Hawaii, just a matter of when), and Central/South America.  I just want to tell everyone not to worry about NZ at this point and assure you that the images you'll see of the tsunami destruction in Japan are not at all what New Zealand will experience as a result of this situation.  The initial warning was issued by the Japanese government and New Zealand has recently issued an official warning, but note that this is just a marine threat.  This means that currents will change and waves will be larger than usual (mostly just north of the north island) but that there aren't any expected land threats.  At this point there are still uncertainties but mostly concerning areas farther north of where I am.  Just wanted to give you a heads up and I'll definitely update if anything changes.  Your thoughts and prayers are always appreciated.

pictures

Here is link #1 and link #2 to the pictures from our peninsula/catlins weekend.  Enjoy!