Under my thumb..

The internet was not working for most of last night (big surprise) so I didn't post a blog. We took a trip to the Waharau Regional Park 5k up the road to take a walk through the forest and familiarize ourselves with more of New Zealand's native and endemic plant species. The walk was nice and leisurely, and we finished it off by eating lunch in the foothills of the forest next to grazing sheep.

A new field leader has replaced Sally and her name is Wendy. She was late arriving to the program because in the Northern Hemisphere summer she runs a whale watching tour with her husband in England! Pretty cool. It was sad to see Sally leave because she has this very calm and soothing motherly spirit that I really like, but she will be back to visit a few times I guess. Wendy is really cool too; she is a bird expert so I hope to learn a lot more about the birds here from her.

At night I made oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies with my friend Sara, which turned out to be delicious. We had a lot of extra dough which we saved so that we can bake them tomorrow so they'll be fresh for the group that's going hiking. Other than that, I am STILL sick with this cold that I can't seem to shake, so I've decided to take it easy in bed during off-time today and not go running, as much as it pains me to do so (I'm so restless!). Also as you can probably guess, it is still raining. It has rained in some capacity every single day that we have been here excluding the very first day (it was sunny and 60 degrees and beautiful just to welcome us!) and today is just an absolute downpour. Oh well, I kind of expected it since this is typical of North Island early spring, but it really can bring down your spirits.

(Our little frog friend, native to Australia. No wonder they are endangered: he didn't even move as people were crowding around him to take pictures!)