If Only I Had a Pensieve* (Follow the asterisk if you have no idea what that is)

Summarizing can be a terrifying thing for me. Nobody liked that part of English class – the part where your teacher calls on you asking you to summarize an entire novel that you’ve read half of (ok, skimmed). But here goes, I will try to unscramble my mind late on Friday night and give you the low-down of what’s been going on in the past couple of weeks.

As I have reminded you all before, I actually am taking classes here -  I consider myself full-time student and part-time Adventurer. I had two weeks of class, then hiked Mount Fyffe, and have just finished another two weeks of class.



The course I took October 10-14^th was God and Nature with Eric Steincamp from Northwestern University in Oregon. Honestly nothing can top my theology course at Wheaton – Christian Thought with Dr. Johnson. That course was, hands down, the most influential in my life. But this class did re-open a lot of thoughts that I had in Dr. J’s class and it was good to wrestle with them again. Take heaven for instance. Growing up I thought that heaven was a place removed from earth –somewhere I could go to when I died and escaped the evilness of the earth. But I’m starting to re-think this, taking into account some Revelation scriptures. God might (I hesitate to say will) come down to earth and re-create it to the way it was meant to be. (C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle?!) I’m not going to pan all of this out right now, but email me your thoughts on heaven if you like. We had some other great discussions on things like our place in Creation, imago dei, what happens to the earth according to Revelation, and N.T. Wright’s great book Surprised By Joy.

Our professor wanted us to put some of our ideas into practice during that week, so we did some other cool things like…

Visiting our local farm to see where we get our fruits and veggies. Even helped plant some beans and lettuce, and cooked potatoes in a fire.











Helped out the Department of Conservation by planting trees on the Kaikoura Peninsula.





And my group’s project for the end of the week was to prepare a Mindful 100 Mile Meal. I’ve been learning a lot about eating local food, and so it was exciting to come up with a dinner using only local ingredients. We made… blue cod (caught off the shores of Kaikoura) seasoned with lemons from our lemon tree and herbs from our garden, served with a walnut-parsley pesto (all ingredients from garden), and a salad (from our local lettuce lady) with yogurt mint dressing (yogurt made from raw milk), potatoes (from Christchurch) baked with olive oil and herbs, and for dessert – peaches (grown at the convent last fall and canned) with whipped cream topping (also made from raw milk). Sound good? It was freaking delicious.

Gabe cracking walnuts

getting raw milk



one of our herb gardents

Last weekend we watched the Rugby World Cup Semifinals on TV – France beat Wales, and NZ beat Australia. So this Sunday will be the final – NZ vs. France! The whole country is stoked. NZ hasn’t won since 1987 or something like that.

Birthdays are a big deal at the Convent. A couple weeks ago we had a Murder Mystery Dinner, and this week was Kaitlin (also from Wheaton) and John (our groundsman extraordinaire)’s birthdays. We had to come dressed as a literary character. Guessing mine is easy. (Although I swear I do like books other than Harry Potter. It was an easy costume. Hermione, Ron, and Rita Skeeter were also in attendance).

We created lawn games, had delicious pizza for dinner, and even did a little improv. All in all, a very entertaining and fun-filled afternoon.



my backyard



mmmm pizza

Alas, I have finished this week of Environmental Literature II, which required lots of reflections, in class essays, and writing poetry. We read a lot of really good work though – Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm and selections from her novel Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. We read a bit of Thoreau (although I can’t say I’m his biggest fan). And just like C.S. Lewis is the patron saint of Wheaton, so I think Wendell Berry is the patron saint of CCSP.

So folks after four weeks of intensive class, I am off to SPRING BREAK. Yes, Spring. All of my college friends probably just got back from Fall Break (making me nostalgic for HoneyRock times). And you have no idea how much I am missing Fall – the changing leaves, the pumpkins, the apple cider. GAH. Two springs sucks and is bizarre.

Anyways, the 20 of us are scattering across the Southern Island. I think the timing is perfect to get a break from the convent and from being with the same people all the time. So what are my plans? Halle and I are headin’ south, first hiking the Greenstone Track and then exploring Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world. Also where bungee jumping was invented…hint hint.

Thanks for reading! Miss you all!

Love, K

* A Pensieve is a tool used by some of the most respectable and aged of wizards. It consists of an ornate stone creation that is basically a goblet shape x 20 in size. A wizard can extract memories from his cranium using his wand. Memories look like silvery whispers when they come out. These memories can be stored in bottles until circumstances require that they are to be remembered. At this point, the memory can be poured into the Pensieve, and the memory is re-entered by not only the wizard himself, but any friends he or she chooses. I have chosen you. 













Summiting at Sunrise (with help from Balto)

This past weekend my friends and I conquered Mount Fyffe, one of the higher peaks in the mountain range located a few kilometers away from the convent. (For my Adirondack-acquainted audience, Mt. Fyffe is as high as Mount Marci – a mile or so high).  Paige, Sophie, Halle, and Amy and I left mid-afternoon and hiked up the front path – a perpetually steep trail that made us work for every step. We reached the hut by four, very happy to be done with our leg-burning workout. 

A lot of New Zealand tourism comes from “tramping”, their term for hiking. But I just can’t seem to get that word switch down. To me tramping sounds like something I would be ashamed of. 

ANYWAYS. The Department of Conservation has built these huts at various points along trails, and they are quite cozy accommodations – 8 bunk beds and a stove. So the 5 of us settled into the hut, waiting for our other friends to join us…

So, our three guy friends had left earlier that morning, deciding that they wanted to take the back way up the mountain. But… they got terribly lost, ended up hiking for 8 hours straight, including climbing up a rock face and sliding down a screefield, ripping their pants, and “almost dying”. So when they crawled into the hut, they collapsed on their beds in delirium saying “you don’t know what we’ve been through”. It was quite entertaining. They didn’t appreciate their pain in that moment, but believe me, they loved telling the stories when we got back.

We watched the sunset from the hut, gobbled up our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and then tried to get some sleep.

Kaikoura Peninsula

Our hut. (Bathroom/outhouse on the left)

CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?!?!?!?!

 

We woke up at 5 am the next day. Yes, 5 am. And we hiked under the stars, through the SNOW, to see the sunrise from the summit. It took us another hour and a half of strenuous hiking to get up there. And I was, no joke, channeling my inner-Balto to get through that knee-deep snow. But the view and the experience was definitely worth it!

The girls at the summit

Darin, Jonny and Gabe, in all their glory.

Trying to get any warmth from the sun.

The weather was perfect for our Fyffe hike, which we were grateful for because this whole week has been rainy! We finished our final week of sustainable community development class, which has given me a lot to think about as far as future plans. So this is a forcibly inside-weekend... although now I’ll have to bike back to the convent in the rain. This is what I go through to keep in touch with all you fine folks. But it’s worth it. Hope you’re all doing great! Miss you!