pre-departure

I'm still in Olympia... gray, gray Olympia.  This next week will involve lots of scrambling to finish applications and make sure all my ducks are in a row before I fly out the evening of the 21st.  I meet Mr. Simon Pendleton in Los Angeles and we head out on the same flight to NEW ZEALAND.  whoo!  

The plan as of right now is to make it to Auckland, spend a day or so there with friends of relatives, and  make our way up to Northland where there's a macadamia nut farm waiting for us.  There we'll spend about a week doing odd jobs for them through WWOOF (willing workers on organic farms) before heading south.  Ideally we'll land at another farm in about another week after exploring the North Island.  After a week at the second farm (most likely either a dairy or an olive farm--cool!) we'll take yet another week to explore the South Island and reach Dunedin, where we spend the semester (with several other Whitman people, particularly geology majors) at the University of Otago.

exciting!