Thanks guys for your prayers about the ticket thing. I have gotten it resolved just today, with help from the travel agency back home that booked my tickets to begin with. It ended up costing me a bit of money as I had to change my ticket to a higher class in order to find a seat, but I now hold a ticket from Auckland to LA on January 18, 2011. So that's sorted.
In other news, the last two days I have been working for Adventure Specialties Trust, helping them with a school group in a beautiful area west of Auckland called the Waitakere Ranges. Specifically, we were in the Karamatura Vally, which is near a cute little town right on the beach called Huia. If you're interested, Waitakere is pronounced Why-TAHK-er-ee and Huia is HOO-ee-ah. Now you're up to speed. Huia is really beautiful - you drive down a very twisty road for about 25 minute to get there, and once you do arrive you come up over the crest of a hill and you can see the ocean bay spread out before you and steep mountains rising right up from the ocean. Although it's really pretty, it's hard to get a good photo, but I did the best I could.
It takes me about an hour to drive from my house in Manakau up the Northwestern motorway to Waitakere. The last 15km or so of my trip is over exceedingly windy and hilly, narrow roads. There are good views to be had in a couple of spots, and once you come over the last hill and head down into the town of Huia, you can look to the left and spot a beautiful scene: a cove of the Tasman Sea with a beach at the end, and rounded towering hills poking up across the way. Very nice. I will try and get a photo of it soon.
Our school program consists of four stations, through which groups of about 15 kids rotate with their parent volunteers and teachers. The kids do team building games, abseiling (this is a British term for rappelling), a bush walk and an orienteering course. On day one I led the orienteering. The kids get a simple map and have to follow it and the clues provided to find words hidden at each point. Once they've found all of the words, they unscramble them to make a sentence. At one of the locations they must travel across a stream on a Tyrolean Traverse to read the clue tied to a tree on the other side. So I would explain how to read a map (in brief) and then send them off and head over to the Traverse to hook kids up to it and send them over. In the end, with all the words collected, the sentence read: Courage is not the absence of fear but having a go in spite of it. Apparently it was one of their school's mottos once upon a time or something.
On day 2 I worked at the abseiling site, setting up an anchor in the morning and then instructing the kids and parent helpers in getting harnesses on and how to abseil. Then I hooked kids up and belayed them down as a safety while they abseiled themselves. The two days were good fun, a bit chaotic (as working with groups tends to be) and rather tiring, but I enjoyed them, and I was making a bit of cash, which was great. It is fun to learn new skills, too. Plus it's great to be outside and enjoying the lovely surroundings. The program continues until Thursday this week, but I'm not working again until next week, when I will do Monday thru. Thursday. In the photos you can see the abseiling site and some shots of kids sliding down a big hill sitting on Niakau Palm fronds on the bush walk.
Back to today, I drove into Auckland and had a meeting with Brian from Youthtown, which is another adventure/youth organization. It's similar to the Boys & Girls club, I'd say, in that they're about developing potential and good things in the next generation. They do a lot of outdoorsy things and watery things, like kayaking, sailing, waterskiing, tubing (although they call it sea biscuiting - I had to ask about that one), skiing, snowboarding, bush skills, etc. I am hoping to possibly get a few days of work with them, too, and Brian and I set up a two day trial where I will join a group and help out with snorkeling and sailing and other watersports. Sounds like great fun even if the trial doesn't work out! Brian also explained something to me that I experienced already with camp a few weeks ago: apparently there is this attitude in New Zealand when it comes to adventure/outdoor/experiential stuff that says, "She'll be alright," (only it's said with a Kiwi accent.) Anyway, this is a sort of casual, you'll be fine, go for it, attitude that can sometimes clash with my American sensibilities of safety and risk management and all of that. I guess there is an attitude here of kids being really hands on and involved without so much worry about the dangers. Which doesn't mean they are unsafe, I suppose, although it can seem it at times. It's just different to how I am used to approaching things.
Tomorrow I meet with the kiwifruit packing plant people (the kppp) and see what they might have for me in terms of work. I am hoping I can get something part time regularly with them and thus be able to fit in times to work with Youthtown and Adspecs as they come up.
Ha! "Sea Biscuiting"! That's great!
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