Earthquakes Are Not Cool

                After having been here for about 2 months now I’ve experienced over 10 earthquakes.  Actually more than that, but I’m only counting the ones I notice.  New Zealand is coincidentally directly on top of the Alpine fault (between the Pacific and Australian plates).  So basically it’s perfectly suited for earthquakes.  We even have a website dedicated to Christchurch earthquakes that gives us the magnitude and depth of each quake minutes after it happens.  Just the other day we had one of the biggest since I’ve been here, a 5.2, which apparently isn’t a big deal.  This didn’t stop my eyes from going all deer in the headlights and thinking I should get ready to evacuate.  It’s pretty scary, but apparently something I’ll get used to.  We had one during a meeting the other week and everyone just sort of paused for a minute then kept going as if nothing had happened.

                Other than earthquakes Christchurch is pretty cool.  It’s a very spread out city, so it’s a bit of a pain to get around, but everything you need is close enough and the people are great.  My favorite thing about the city is the free concerts.  Just about every weekend there’s a bar with a free band.  The downside is beer is ridiculously expensive here so you end up spending the same amount anyway.

                Sorry, I don’t have any quake related pictures, so here’s a picture of a kitten giving a fist bump:

Tumbledown Bay/Lake Tekapo

So I’ve been really bad about keeping up with this.  I always do something then think, oh, I should blog about this.  Then I don’t.  Instead I’ll just cram it all into one.

I went fishing for my own fish a few weeks ago at Tumbledown Bay.  Due to poor planning on my part we only brought two sets of waders for three people.  This didn’t turn out to be a big deal since you only need two people anyway.  My advisor (the one without waders) came up with a brilliant plan to trap from the edge of the stream which resulted with him in the stream.  After recovering from laughing my ass off, my other assistant (the one with waders) found himself in a part of the stream much deeper than he’d anticipated and his waders subsequently full of water.  I was the only one left dry at the end of our trip.  Nonetheless both of them drove me to a beach nearby where I got to see a few sea lions hanging out.  Pretty effing cute.  I didn’t want to scare them, so I didn’t get any good pictures, but here’s a picture of the bay from above (kinda pretty):

We also did some very kiwi stuff on the way back.  I tried a feijoa smoothie (better than it sounds), a meat pie (apparently a big staple food found at just about every bakery/coffee shop), and got stopped by a herd of sheep taking up the road (the best part):

Last weekend I was able to jump on a last minute trip to Lake Tekapo.  It’s a really cute town in the central South island with an observatory on top of one of the mountains.  So many great pictures…here’s the lake:

The famous dog statue:

One of my favorite parts, lots of rock sculptures:

And a picture from one of the telescopes at the observatory (it’s the moon):

I’ve also finished most of my proposal, moved, and booked a trip back home to learn a new assay (and go to a wedding).  It’s been a crazy few months, but I’m starting to feel more settled, and am ready to make some scientific breakthroughs (or just regular science…either way).