Long Time No Blog

I must apologize, for it has been almost a month since my last post!  I have nothing to say for myself except that I have been busy having fun (which I feel is a valid excuse).

At the close of my last entry I mentioned that I was moving to a new flat.  I am now settled comfortably at 19 Montgomery Ave. in a much larger and brighter room, with a lovely, functional kitchen and airy common room.

My new roommates are named Julia and Katie and are both infinitely better than the girl I was previously stuck with: Ashlyn.  For comic relief here are several interesting points about Ashlyn...

• A cheerleader from Arkansas with the obligatory fake tan and bleached hair
• The proud owner of two books: the bible and a travel guide to New Zealand
• Wore hot pink, rhinestone-studded, velour Juicy Couture track sets

In favorable contrast: Julia is a graduate student from Germany who is studying chemistry and Katie is a fellow liberal-arts undergrad who goes to Bates College in Maine.

A few days after I moved it was time for 'course approval.'  This basically means going around to each of your professors and getting them to sign a piece of paper saying that you can enroll in that 'paper.'

(Picture is looking out of the Geology Department towards the Clocktower) 

This was a boring exercise, but I was fortunate to have good company.  Louis and his flatmate Christine,  joined me and together we navigated through both the rain and the campus, successfully obtaining signatures and eventually ending up with our student ID's.  Christine (picture) is from Pennsylvania but goes to the University of Vermont at Burlington where she majors in environmental science and has a concentration in geology.  As you can probably tell from the second half of that sentence: we get along really well and have been hanging out quite a bit (we also have two classes together).  In fact, this weekend we are headed to the Hokitika Wild Foods Festival (more on that later) and are hopeful that over Fall Break we can go tramping together on the North Island.

The day after course approval, Louis, Christine and I hiked to the top of Mt. Cargill (the second time for me) and the following day we did the Pineapple Track.  Since the Pineapple Track didn't look very far away on the map we decided to walk to the trail head, rather than take the bus.  Unfortunately, our map was not really designed to be used anywhere other than right on campus and the mapmakers seem to have magnified the university at the expense of accurately portraying off-campus distances.  Consequently, what looked like only a few short blocks on the map turned out to be a 5km hike just to get to the trail head (one way).  This would have been fine except for the fact that we got lost on the way and the hike itself was not exactly a flat 5k.  Fortunately, it was worth it: the view from the top gave us an excellent sense of Dunedin's geography.  15k? No worries mate!

However, classes had to start sooner or later (it's already mid semester at Mac!) and for us they began a little earlier than for everyone else.  The week before school officially started (March 1st), Christine, Louis and I took a field trip for our "Field Studies and New Zealand Geology" class.

On Tuesday we set off for Maerewhenua (near Oamaru-since you all know where that is) where we were to spend four days mapping the regional geology.  Each morning we awoke around 7am, made sandwiches for ourselves (peanut butter and jelly for Christine and myself, Marmite and margarine for Louis) and spent until 7pm in the field mapping outcrops and unit contacts.  Every evening we would have dinner (uughhh) and then spend from 8:30 until 11:30 drawing our maps.  

If that sounds like a lot of work, that's because it was!  Unlike geology trips at Macalester which typically involve copious amounts of alcohol and lots of dangerous antics with rock hammers (you didn't read that Mum) this trip was lame!  We may have been divided up into several FIELD PARTIES! but there was no FIELD PARTYING! and certainly no Maerewhenua (haha)!  Not only was the evening entertainment lacking, but because we had trouble finding Christine's bag we ended up sleepng in a Vietnam-era tent (instead of a cabin) which was very cold at night, very hot during the day and made me feel like Allen Alda was about to burst through the flap at any moment.  

The end goal of the project was to write a 3,000 word essay explaining the geology of the area, make a geologic map of the area, draw two cross sections through the region and create two stratigraphic columns showing unit thicknesses and major features.  We have no idea how it's going to be graded but you know: 

Don't even worry about it, it is what it is...

If you are having trouble falling asleep, you may be interested in reading my abstract (at the bottom).  

So classes started in earnest last week and while it's still too early to tell which ones are going to be good I'll give you a quick rundown.

1) Field studies and NZ geology-80 kids-Lacks direction

2) Maori Culture Studies-260 kids-The head lecturer is prone to tipping over mid-sentence, this is very entertaining and I like her a lot

3) Paleoceanography-This is a graduate class which is actually a course and a third (24 points instead of 18) and is comprised of one 'module' entitled Paleoceanography (me and one other kid) and one 'module' entitled Isotope Geochemistry (8 people).

Well, that should catch us up!  This weekend we're off to Hokitika to see the New Zealand Wild Foods Festival.  We're driving past the Moeraki Boulders, through Arthur's Pass, Christine is curious about trying some grubs, Louis has promised to eat sheep balls and I'm turning 21 so you know the pictures are going to be great....

Love,

A

The rocks of the Maerewhenua region can be subdivided into several major lithologic units: a Mesozoic basement of schist, overlain by Tertiary clastic sequences, interbedded with sills of basalt, overlain by carbonate sequences and capped with layers of alluvium and poorly developed, loess-rich soils.  Using geological maps, stratigraphic columns, cross sections, laws of superposition and inferences based on observation, each of these units can be traced back to a geologic event in the history of the region.  These petrogenic events include accretion, rifting, volcanism and basin subsistence.