Ok guys, this is my first unreserved recommendation! If you come to Auckland, you HAVE to go to Tiritiri Matangi! The ferry is 1h30 each way and return costs the equivalent of £35. The whole island is a bird reserve (again with no pests, vermin etc.) and is just bursting with birds! There are little wooden walkways that wind through the trees and forests, arching over the little streams. Amazingly, there were no mosquitoes! I suppose there’s too many birds eating them.

I saw two different types of parrot and so many birds that I have genuinely lost count. It was really magical – blue skies and topaz waters then thick forests teaming with all these bright birds. And it was just so much fun to walk through it spotting them all! I have to say that I didn’t spot that many – good job my friends were much better at it!

I think words really can’t say how awesome it is … you’ll have to come visit me and try it for yourself! 😉 You can also stay overnight and if you do that you may well see some wild Kiwis (this is now on my Bucket List).

In the afternoon we went snorkelling in the bay and there were fish two foot long with bright blue fins and spots. AND I saw a jelly fish that was the size of my hand! In the shallows, when you opened your eyes under water (and I can tell you right now that prescription goggles are an absolute game changer) you could see that the waves were full of all these tiny weeny jellyfish smaller than my little finger nail, settling on my arms and legs and swimming around me! (they don’t sting by the way). Sadly I don’t have any pictures of the underwater stuff and that is a real shame as there were some amazing things.

So, a lot has happened since last week. I set fire to my fume hood in a big way (that was yesterday so pretty big in my mind at the moment!), went to life drawing, did some volunteering and in general made the most of the change in weather for the better.

Since “The Incident Of The Fire” I’m now a bit less confident that I’m on the right career path! But I suppose that if A-level has told me anything it’s that I can not get put off from chemistry by a little fire (or big fire, as it turns out) and I’m sure that after a relaxing weekend I’ll be raring to go again! To answer the FAQ’s I am enjoying my PhD so far apart from that, my fellow PhD’s have been really supportive and nice (and real demons with the fire extinguishers!) and I am completely unscathed (apart from my pride). I am sure that I will have filled out more than one incident form by the end of my next three years.

The most exciting news since last week is that I have bought a  small tree for my room! Unfortunately for me I misjudge the times with the busses, so came out from the garden centre with a 2h wait for the next one. Luckily though, I had my back pack and the pot just about fitted inside so I was able to get back home with my tree and big bag of compost I bought for the hour and twenty hilly walk. I’m glad I did it as I now have a tree! I am never doing it again.

I went to the Drink n Draw that I mentioned before. For $20 I got free pizza, several glasses of cider and … a nude model! I had thought when I signed up for it that we would be doing landscapes, or maybe a bowl of fruit. Nope! It wasn’t really full of very serious artists which is lucky because part way through he did a lying down pose which reminded me of that bit in Titanic where she goes “Draw me like one of your French girls Jack”, after which I couldn’t stop giggling whenever I looked at the model. Who knows if I’ll be going back? Probably if I need a laugh!

Tomorrow I’m going to do some conservation work on some of the volcanic islands in the bay – tree planting and weeding etc. which I’m quite looking forward to. I’m hoping to see some great birds which I’ll hopefully take pictures of, although apparently it can get very hot with the sun reflecting off the lava fields so we’ll have to see how it goes . Also, I found out that they have wild possums in the parks here! Apparently they only come out at night so at some point this week I’m going to do a night time walk to go possum spotting! Hopefully I’ll have more pictures for next week!

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This is a Sunday-evening edit after coming back from the volunteering on the island.  We landed on the volcanic island of Rangitoto, which is an island reserve where no rats / stoats / mice etc. live, meaning that flightless birds such as the Kiwi still live and thrive in the wild! After all bundling into the back of a small truck we bumped and jolted our way along a dirt track across the island and causeway onto Motu tapu. The planting was hard work but enjoyable and I was really rewarded when one of the regulars beckoned me over to see a real wild Takahe! They’re native, flightless birds to New Zealand and a lot bigger than the photo does justice to. As you can bet I was really excited to see one in the wild in its natural habitat as the conservation work I was doing was all to help restore and protect its habitat which has been destroyed over the years. They were actually thought to be extinct in the early 20th century which somehow makes it even more exciting when you see one in real life now. It’s so awesome when you get to catch a glimpse at what your working to protect!

I was amazed at what these volunteers have managed to do. They started in 1994 planting trees and now a lot of the hills and valleys on the island are covered in forest. Imagine being able to look at a forest and say “Yeah, I made that.”.  I think I am a very small cog in a very big machine!

Hey all!

Ok, so it’s official – I love fencing! That’s now going to be my weekly Wednesday thing. It’s good because it’s not as strenuous exercise as I was fearing (not yet at least!), it’s mostly about foot work at the moment, being able to stretch and bend in the right way and keeping your sword in the right position. I felt fine during the lesson but the next day (and even the day after!) my arm was aching like crazy! I’m sure once it really gets started I’ll be struggling!

I’ve also joined an archery society and will be starting lessons in the next few weeks. All I need is horse riding and then by the time I come back after 3 years I’ll be a medieval bad ass! Well, that’s if I actually get good at any of these things which I kinda doubt!

I’m gonna learn to dive too which should be pretty fun – I’m sure I’ll be kept busy!

My first week and a bit of work is done and I’m enjoying it a lot! The people I’m working with are great – really friendly and helpful. At the moment I’m spending my time trying to make a compound that will be used in some biological tests to test out a hypothesis one of the biologists has about how one of the enzymes I will be targeting works. It’s really handy for me as it means I get to find my way around the lab and do my reading in the first few weeks to prepare myself before really discussing with my supervisor the details of what I want to do for the next three years.

As ever there’s a few differences working in this lab compared to ones I’ve worked in before but the main one (at least for those of you reading that went to Southampton Uni) is that WE DON’T HAVE TO DO COSHH FORMS!!! (Basically, we used to have to fill out forms on the health and safety, what we’d do in the event of a fire or spill etc. for each toxic compound we’d use (which was practically every one)). Here we just have to read that stuff, but not copy it out into our books for each experiment. This might seem like a small thing but it saves HOURS and means I’ll be able to get a lot more done which I’m really happy about. On the down side, ordering chemicals can take ages. I didn’t really think about it before coming here but of course, it has to cross quite a lot of ocean and some of the things are too dangerous to come by plane. Apparently the longest wait has been over a year!

I had an impromptu introduction to Kiwi sweets last night. I was chatting with with my housemates at dinner and they mentioned some sweet that I hadn’t heard of that apparently struck them with horror. So we all walked down to the supermarket to buy their cookies, Squiggles, hokey-pokey, Groovy Gumdrop icecream, weird coconut squares whose names I’ve forgotten, TimTams etc. I gotta say, the Squiggles were pretty good.

Less photos in this post because it’s been raining a fair amount (and I’ve been at work rather than out exploring 😉 ) but hopefully next weeks post will be a bit more colourful.

So! Not only do I have a room, I have also got a bed! Rooms come pretty much universally unfurnished here so for the last week I’ve been buying furniture and putting it up (somehow I seem to have had at least one screw left over for every single item of furniture I’ve put up…). Their bed sizes are different over here (something I didn’t know), so I’ve bought a “King Single” which is longer than a double bed and much wider than a single in the uk. It’s the perfect blend between giving me loads of room, and not making my bedroom seem too small 😉

I haven’t quite finished decorating yet (you know how much I love plants!) and I have a trip planned to the garden centre this weekend to hopefully pick up a cheap indoor tree 😀 Unfortunately, as I lost my drivers license when I lost my wallet I can’t hire a car so I’ll be bringing it back by bus. For those of you that doubt me though, never forget that time in Belgium when I cycled a good forty minutes home uphill with a 4ft palm tree in my bicycle basket! When it comes to buying plants that I don’t really need I can become surprisingly determined and perform athletic feats I would never dream of doing normally!

In the spirit of exploring the local area I went to one of the beaches not far from my new home (30 mins by bus – 5 if I had a darn car!). I hadn’t realised that the beaches would have so much volcanic rock! All the cliffs are bubbled and pitted with holes like a sponge and beneath them the sand shimmers like black glitter. It’s a shame that it really doesn’t show up well on camera just how glittery it is! There were also weird things on the rocks and I can’t decide whether they are fossils or living sea creatures … what do you think?

I’ve had 2 days at work now. The other PhD students in my group seem awesome. We went for drinks after work on Friday and one of them brought the cutest dog ever – half poodle and half springer spaniel! A dumpling shop has also opened on campus selling some of the nicest dumplings ever so my lunches have been great for the last two days! Dumplings and sushi and other Asian food is really cheap over here which is awesome for me! Car insurance is also pretty cheap, but dry shampoo is mega expensive!

I think next week I’m going to start joining societies in earnest! Tomorrow I am going to go to a tree-climbing society meet up! I used to love climbing trees as a kid but then I was always great at going up and terrible at going back down. It’s going to be kind of epic to join a society where they teach you to climb trees properly, and you never know – it might come in handy if I’m ever chased by wolves! Then Wednesday I’m starting fencing (it’s $10 a night which seems pretty awesome) and Thursday there’s one for painting and having beers which seems pretty much right up my street.

I’ll let you guys know how it all went next week!