Multiple awesome stuff!

At last, a second blog :P Since the first one, a lot of stuff happened, but I'm only telling the most awesome stuff ;)

In my first week here (21 February), me and a roommate (Tim) were picking up a friend (Natasha) in Rotorua, were she had done some kiwi research. Unfortunately I couldn't join, but I'll definitely be catching kiwis next time in catch week! For the trip to Rotorua, we had to leave early, because it's a four hour drive. During the trip we passed a really famous mountain, I suppose (almost) everyone has heard of it. It was the one and only Mount Doom! We had to travel through desert road, that was a really beautiful road in, like the name says, a really dry place. See the photos :) (it's the smaller mountain on the right side, at first we thought it was the big one). After a long and hot drive we finally arrived in Rotorua. It is a city that has a lot of volcanic activity, with geothermal steam which they use for electricity. Due to the volcanic stuff, there are lots of nice things there, like volcanic mud and geysers! Unfortunately we couldn't see the geysers, but we did see a park full of volcanic wells, lakes and mud pools. After a few hours we went back to Palmerston North, but on our way we stopped at a beautiful site with a sky blue waterfall. We walked through a really nice piece of forest, and enjoyed the great view on top of the hill. After this last nice little trip we went home, were we had pizza :D

The next day I went on a beautiful walk with two girls from the internship company that found me an internship. We did the Manawatu gorge track, which is a really steep 10km walk, but it's really worth it! We climbed a lot of hills of course, and the forest was really nice to see. We saw some typical New Zealand birds like the fantail (see photo), and all kinds of local plants. From time to time there was a beautiful view down below to Palmy and the hills across. At last we reached the cafe at the end of the track, and we bought ourselves some delicious milkshakes.

About a week later (26-28 February) I helped someone from the university (Ellen) with her mosquito research. Wednesday evening we left for Wanganui, the research site was just out of town. First we had some Japanese (nomnom) and after that we went for the farm were we were staying. We hung some mosquito traps and then we had the rest of the evening off. The next day we rose at 6:30am, so we could pickup the traps before they would be covered in dew (the traps had electric fans and lights). The rest of the day was more or less free, we went to discover the forest in the morning. We saw a lot of New Zealand birds, like the tui, saddleback and fantail. In the afternoon Ellen went out again and I went discovering the forest again. It was a really special forest, one of the last patches of  authentic New Zealand forest. It had a rodent proof fence, so no rodents and predators could come in and eat NZ birds. In the evening we hung out mosquito traps again, and picked them up early in the morning. After some quick breakfast and some interesting research we went back to Palmy again.

A week later again (5th March if you'd like to know ;) ) I decided to dye my hair :) First Natasha helped me to bleach it, so it looked like the first hair picture. It was yellowish blonde, quite a nice colour. Unfortunately I thought it made me look really pale xD so I decided to dye it immediately after the bleaching. It became nice dark red, like in the second picture. It looks really nice right now and I'm really happy with it.

Right now it's the 16th, and we're leaving for catch week! We made some kiwis for practicing, so everyone knows how to apply a transmitter to the birds (see picture). It became a really nice and colourful family I think! It's becoming quite late right now, and we have to rise early, so I'll stop right now. 

Hope you enjoyed reading!