Written by Joanne Huang and Emily Sells

This week was an exciting week for everyone!  Sunday marked the first night that all of us would be staying at our new respective homes. On Sunday afternoon, our host families picked us up at the Quaker settlement. Everyone was excited and quite frankly ready to end the close quarter living on the settlement.

The following day held as much excitement as we had our classes at the Tupoho Whanau Trust. On a typical class day (Mondays and Wednesdays), we are learning about the New Zealand’s environmental issues with Peter Frost and later in the morning, the interesting and quite unique geology of New Zealand. During that same day, some students made their way down to the pub between classes to catch a glimpse of the Superbowl. In the afternoon we have a Cultures class which involved making a pūtangitangi (Maori wind instrument) from clay with Wi Taepa.

The crew at Dawson Falls.

This was also our first week doing internships (on Tuesdays and Thursdays). Our internships are all over Whanganui ranging from working at a bird sanctuary to teaching Maori songs to kids in school. Our school work and internships kept us very busy all week. Thursday was Waitangi day which marks the signing of the treaty between the English and Maori, we had a free day on which some landed at the uptown festival and spending time with our host families.

Friday we left for an overnight trip to Mount Taranaki with Colin and Lyneke. On our way there we made a quick stop at the largest Dairy Processing factory in the world.  Here we learned how many tons of milk, butter, powdered milk, and other dairy products that are produced each year by Frontera, a leading multinational dairy company and the world's largest exporter of dairy products. During the middle of our drive it started to rain which would continue for the rest of the day and most of the night.

Using a hand-held microscope to look at the invertebrates.

Upon arrival at Mount Taranaki we all enjoyed our packed lunches and a quick background of the vegetation of Taranaki.  Due to its isolation and abundant amount of rain all year round Mount Taranaki offers a very different variety of alpine plants and trees that are very different from Mount Ruapehu. We hiked in the rain to the nearby Dawson falls as we learned about more about the fauna with Colin and Lyneke. We later caught a number of stream invertebrates that were present in the icy cold stream. After our long and wet hike we got back to the hut and examined the invertebrates under a magnifier that displayed the magnified invertebrate on a computer screen.

Being cooped up at the Konini Lodge because of the rain led to spend quite some time doing a number of activities. Some were playing cards, making friendship bracelets, reading, napping, and later that night games of “mafia” and “how’s yours” was played. The following day we left Taranaki still unable to see the mountain/volcano because of all the rain clouds.

Enjoying their time at Konini Lodge.

On our way back we made an afternoon stop at the Tawhiti Museum in Hawera. We were lucky to  attend the 'Traders & Whalers', an interactive boat ride that attempts to reconstruct the history of trading of goods between the Maori and European settlers, and later, the wars. The other part of the Museum exhibited a number of dioramas and life size exhibits of settlements of Europeans and how it affected the life of the Maori people. Other exhibits included farm utes, tools.

We ended the week with a cookout at the Quaker settlement where everyone met homestay families.

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