EPICNESSSSSSSSSS

July 12, 2011

Soo I realized I haven’t actually posted in a while! Sorry about that! Things have been pretty busy here for me so I will start with the fact that a couple weeks ago ….

I SAW JANE GOODALL!!!!!!!!!!!!! The most famous primatologist alive!!!!!!!! She was here giving a lecture at the University of Otago, and I had tickets to see her lecture in the second auditorium, since the first was sold out only to VIP guests … grr … BUT! While there were like, 7 different lecture halls it was being streamed in (many were high school students and younger) but the one I was in was pretty much all the academics at the University who REALLY wanted to see her and aren’t a VIP guest (apparently one of the VIP guests was Lucy Lawless …. Yea … Xena was here to see a lecture and have dinner with Jane Goodall …talk about random!) we got a special treat! She came into our lecture hall at the end of her talk and gave us the Q and A session! It was pretty awesome, especially since she responded to the welcome Maori chant with a chimpanzee greeting call :D



Then it was some more work work work, and I got a flatmate finally (the house is no longer to myself) but who is really nice and interesting. She’s a lawyer from Argentina who pretty much hated her job and took off to NZ for the past year to work. Her mom went to the University of Chicago though and so her brother and sister were born there, and her mom is a PhD and professor of geography (though focuses more on ethnogeography) – so at least my one flatmate is awesome!

My advisor and half the lab during this time have been at a conference in Samoa, and just got back). Before they took off though, I went to the Staff club (a room on the top floor of one of the University buildings turned into a bar/lounge for staff members) with some of the girls from the lab, and I got to meet some of the archaeologists here – and see the division! It’s crazy! In classes, I have been taught that in other countries, archaeologists are not considered anthropologists and that they are separate fields, while in the States, archaeology is considered a part of anthropology and everything is holistic. I actually got to not only meet archaeologists, who are in a completely separate department from mine and on the other side of town here, but I also somehow ended up hearing and somewhat involved in an argument between archaeology vs. bioanthropology! Apparently the archaeologists get pissed at bioanthropologists on digs since they think that the bioanth people think that they can excavate better than the archaeologists, even though that’s the job of the archaeologist – and the bioanthropologists don’t think this, but they do think they can excavate human remains better and that is what they are there for on digs and the archaeologists need to learn from them and stop interfering since they mess it up – commonly I hear in my lab when bags are horribly mislabeled and messed up from collections “silly archaeologists” and they are the go to to blame for poor recovery of human remains :x Both sides have good points, but everything works so much better when it’s holistic! I never knew that the divide was this real, the dig team I’m on with Dr. Stutz is so international, with his wife from Sweden and the third P.I. a German from University College London who now works in Qatar and Copenhagen, even though Liv Stutz’s training would technically be in archaeology, her specialty is human burials and burial practices, so it is all combined, and Aaron Stutz is focused more on archaeology as well, but he is a physical anthropologist – so it’s all weird to me to see this! But very cool, and the biggest culture shock I’ve had, since it’s career culture shock, and anthropology is such an international field, that I never expected to find this!

While my advisor was in Samoa, I took one of the weekends and went to see Milford Sound with one of my friends here – and we hitchhiked there and back! Milford is on the other side of the country (about 5-6 hours away) on the other coast, and taking a bus would have been really REALLY expensive (we took a bus from Te Anau, where we were staying, into the sound, and it cost 45$ one way, for the shortest leg of the trip which was only 1.5 hours …) but don’t worry, I didn’t die and I researched it first! Hitchhiking in New Zealand is very common practice apparently, and the girl I was with had hitchhiked across the entire country by herself a few months ago, and some of the girls in my lab have done it solo as well (so with a partner it was even more ok) and we met some really cool people that way! The first woman who drove us stopped by this beach called Gemstone Beach, which has had sapphires and rubies wash up on it even! The rocks there were gorgeous and the place looked like it came straight out of a painting, it was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen! And one of the couples who drove us on the way back were coming from a vintage American car rally, so they were driving a car from the 50’s or 60’s made by General Motors (my great-grandfather at this time was head of their styling division under Harvey Earl, so there’s a good chance that he designed the car we were in!). We also met this one guy who came to NZ on holiday from England 10 years ago … he never went back haha! While it was nerve racking at first realizing I was actually hitchhiking, once we were picked up by the first woman (Renee), all that fear subsided, the people in this country, which I had already noticed, are EXTREMELY friendly and being driven around by locals, they told us a lot about the area which we would never have heard about otherwise – it was very similar to my experience hiring Bedouin in Petra with horses instead of a tour guide, it was way cheaper and they knew everything there was and more than the tour guides and were super friendly! It was definitely the experience of a lifetime … especially because I will NEVER hitchhike at home!! :D Also, we were camping outside in a tent in below freezing weather … and considering I hate the cold, that is also something I will probably never do again, though I had a blast (and was only 2 nights thankfully)!

Since I got back, some of the people in the lab have gone to other islands for excavations and other lab work, I’ve managed to finish the data collection part of my project, been invited to an “epic sexy Christmas dance party” and yes, it was all out Christmas decorated in July, and last night I got to go to the clinic to take radiographs of some of the bones I’m looking at to check for lesions, so I’ll be learning how to use X-rays for learning more about remains!

So once again, sorry that this post is more like 5 posts put together! Enjoy the pictures below, they basically speak for themselves :D


Dunedin Midwinter Festival - Celebrating the Longest Night of the Year


Dunedin Midwinter Festival


Henry, a 200+ year old Tuatara (these reptiles went extinct along with the dinosaurs everywhere except in NZ!) - at a museum our first ride to Milford dropped us off at while she had to run some errands in that particular town



Gemstone Beach - when we were there (and it didn't get captured in the picture), there was a lot of mist in the distance that the sun made golden since it was setting that made the place look eeriely unreal


Location used in filming Lord of the Rings



On the way to Milford Sound


Mirror Lakes


Mirror Lakes


Stream - water was extremely blue from coming down from the glacier


Glacier




On the way to Milford


Wild Kea Bird (type of parrot)


On the way to Milford


Milford Sound


Mitre Peak - Milford Sound


Waterfall at Milford Sound


Milford Sound