Hopping electric fences and falling off cliffs... I mean, geology field camp

I was notified by some of the fellows in Denmark that my blog was not, in fact, up to date. So here we go again! (I will try to do better in the future, sorry!)

My last blog post was over a week ago and a lot has happened in that time. As I'm sure all of you have heard, wherever you are in the world, there was an earthquake in Christchurch last Tuesday. I am completely fine, and didn't feel a thing. Some people were able to feel the initial quake, while others felt the aftershock the following day. It happened right before we left for our field mapping course in Maerewhenua approximately two hours north of Dunedin. Because of this I was unable to notify anyone aside from my parents that I was okay, so my apologies if I scared anyone! It is a sad time in New Zealand and Christchurch is still in a state of emergency. Think about donating to the New Zealand Red Cross or check your schools/towns to see if there are any fundraisers for relief!

Field Camp!!

The geology trip was interesting. We arrived at camp on Tuesday night and were there until Sunday afternoon. We weren't "roughing-it" as much as I had hoped/thought. The girls and some of the guys were put up in cabins, we all had access to showers, bathrooms and electricity. There was a TV to update us on the disaster in Christchurch, but we spent the majority of our free time mapping. It was incredibly difficult to get back in the mid-set of school work. We would be out in the field from 8:30-5:30 every day. Come back, have dinner at 6:30 and be working on our maps from 7 until we felt sufficiently done. That meant that on our last night we were up until 12:30 am working - OOF!

Holding up some limestone!

One thing I learned on this trip was that I am not an experienced mapper. It's a lot more difficult than I had imagined and pretty much entails hiking around, looking for rocks and every time you see one, writing it down on the map. Then you had to sort of assume where other rock layers would be based on your measurements. This was exceptionally difficult as the majority of the land was covered by farms. However, we used our skills in geomorphology (study of landforms) and other geo classes to come up with these conclusions, and even though I was told my Basalt! was completely wrong - I was sort of getting the hang of it by the end.

First day of sun!

Another thing I learned is that getting electrocuted is NOT FUN. We had two modes of transportation to get around the field area. The FLY-9, our trusty red mini-van equipped with one radio station, and our feet. During our hikes and walks we'd come across fences and fences of barbed wire and electricity. What did we do? We hopped them. Over the course of the week we probably hopped at least 60 fences. No one got barb-ed, but the majority of the group got zapped. I took an exceptionally painful zap to my rear while trying to navigate my way through a tripple-electric-double-barbed fence. My heart has never stopped beating so fast and I literally couldn't move for a minute or so. Emma was yelling at me to keep going, and I was like, I actually cannot move right now. Don't worry Mom I'm perfectly fine now! It was just a bit scary!

NARNIA!!!

We also got to go to Elephant Rocks... WHERE NARNIA WAS FILMED! Tim, Emma, Robin and I were quite the tourists, running around taking pictures of ourselves with the rocks. After a 40 minute photo-shoot we returned to our professors and they asked us about how many measurements we had just gotten from the rocks. We had to admit to them that we had done nothing aside from take pictures of ourselves for our families and friends at home - oops! 

SLU Geologists in Action!

Overall it was a beneficial trip. We got to see some beautiful views of New Zealand and find out more about the local geology. The mapping was a bit difficult, the lunch meat questionable, and the weather was not always on our side, but over all it was a positive experience. We head off to Borland in the Fiordlands in a few weeks, which is more mountainous and will be quite chilly! We are excited, but dreading the work that comes along with it. We've got to keep reminding ourselves that we're here for school as well I guess!