So Long, Farewell...

How do you say goodbye to friends who have become a lot more like family? Well, it isn't easy, but it is nice to have Integration Week and Debrief Week to sort it out.

During Integration Week, students pull together everything that they've learned this semester and summarize their thoughts in one final paper. Each night we gathered together as small groups to discuss the prompts for the paper. It's a blessing to be able to spend that time together processing everything and offering up solutions to questions or concerns posed by others. 

Another highlight of Integration Week are the "betterment projects". Students each select a project to leave their New Zealand home better than they found it.

Top: Briana (Westmont) working on her mural of Mt. Fyffe.
Bottom: Becca (Gordon) and Joy (Hope) filling in their raised bed herb garden with compost.

This past semester, our Sustainable Food Coordinator Brian has been growing a pumpkin that our local newspaper has referred to as a "marvel" (http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/kaikoura/8477526/Pumpkin-a-marvel). As the article says, Brian grew the giant pumpkin for fun and to show students what can be accomplished by simply sowing a seed in the garden and giving it some good love and care! It has caused a surprising amount of hype in town, even resulting in a challenge from a local also growing a large pumpkin (http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/viewer.aspx). After the article was written, Brian decided to go ahead and see just how much the pumpkin weighed. To our delight, Brian's pumpkin reigned supreme, weighing in at a whopping 140 kg (308 lbs). Before revealing the mass of the massive fruit (or vegetable, depending on where you stand in that age-old argument), students were able to take submit a guess. We all congratulated Regan (Dordt), who was the closest to the actual weight without going over. As a prize, Brian hopes to send Regan some seeds so that he can grow his own giant pumpkin.

Step aside Donna Karan and Calvin Klein; students from CCSP have discovered the next big thing in fashion: trash. As a fun event, we hosted a trash fashion show. Students and staff were all able to strut their stuff on the runway. From Regan's Dorito bag stubbies to Allie's (Program Administrator) lovely bed sheet evening gown, we were given quite a show!

Strike a pose! Trash Fashion was a blast! Photo Credit: Joy Hartman

After lots of cleaning and packing, we gathered for our last evening together. Our tradition is to both start and end the semester with fish and chips on the beach. The Lord treated us with a gorgeous sunset and the always beautiful views offered by South Bay.

We finished off the semester the same way that we started: fish and chips on the beach. Photo Credit: Joy Hartman

After returning to the Old Convent, we began our final semester event: Celebration. Celebration is a time for everyone to gather together and exchange meaningful gifts. We received words of wisdom, poetry readings, a semester cookbook, and a number of other wonderful gifts. One special gift was given to us all by Daniel our Property Manager. He made a personalized frame for our semester photo to hang up on the wall with all of the other semester photos. It will be hanging on the wall for years to come!

Our semester photo and the personalized frame Daniel has called "A Splash of Color", representing this vibrant group.

At 1 AM, it was time to leave for the airport. The farewells to follow were surely some of the hardest we've ever had to say. Hopefully our paths will cross again someday!

To all of the students of CCSP New Zealand Spring 2013:

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you, wherever he may send you;

May he guide you through the wilderness, protect you in the storm;

May he bring you home rejoicing at the wonders he has shown you;

May he bring you home rejoicing, once again, into our doors.

Fantail, Weka, Pu-Pu-Pukeko

Artwork by Rose Ellen Bohnsack

We have been blessed with another visit from Dr. Joe Sheldon to teach our Terrestrial Ecosystems course. Starting Monday morning, he invited students to come on a journey with him, not so different from Gandalf, to behold Creation and learn the names of some new "friends" like totara and matai. And that's just what we did! We all piled in the vans and headed for the West Coast. Despite heavy amounts of rain, we ventured out onto the trails to learn about NZ fauna and flora. As part of the course, students are responsible for keeping a field journal with daily reflections. Here is a little of what student Nora Kahler (Houghton) had to say about her experience on the wet West Coast:

"Over the course of our West Coast terrestrial ecology trip, the rain has provided a nearly incessant rhythm punctuating our days. Sometimes light and misty, other times heavy and relentless, its persistence as the backdrop to our journey remained constant. When overcast skies poured forth precipitation we were compelled to don our raingear, effectively turning the group into a multi-colored rainbow snaking its way steadily down the trail. I have come to recognize my bundled up, brightly clad, hooded classmates by the color of their rain jackets: Bri in deep purple and Rachel in bright yellow, Kelsey in light green and Colin in bold blue. The list goes on, but it seems that the variegated raingear we wear visually captures the dynamic vibrancy that forms the essence of our group. Trudging through the rain day after day, we may look drenched and bedraggled, but this sorry state passes away as we shed waterproof layers, leaving them for the drying room to work its restorative magic. This afternoon, our perseverance through the rain paid off in a visually striking reward. Upon completion of our research for the day, we walked to the road and encountered a rainbow arching across the sky just ahead. As the day progressed and we hiked further, we found not one, but two additional rainbows. This extravagant display of beauty, made possible by the rain, was a feast for the eyes and nourishment for the soul."

Everyone was able to leave the course with somewhere around 100 new "friends". After spending the week learning to identify plants and a little bit about what makes them unique, we had a field identification exam. I was impressed with the amount of information the students were able to learn in this small amount of time. Even better if you can put the names into a song, hence the title of this post! It's a special gift to be able to walk through the bush and tell a button fern from a shield fern or a kahikatea from a rimu. God gave Adam the responsibility of naming Creation, and we're still doing it today!

Our group out on the trails. Regan (Dordt) is hard at
work with his field guide identifying plants.

We were able to visit some pretty "sweet as" locations during the course. Some highlights were the pancake rocks and blowholes at Punakaiki, the lush forest of the Porari River Track, a glow worm cave, and Fox Glacier. We were also able to visit the West Coast Wildlife Center, where we could see the rarest kiwi the rowi or Okarito brown kiwi. Once they're old enough to defend themselves from nonnative predators like stoats, these kiwis will be released into the wild!

Here's our group at Fox Glacier! Photo by Colin Veerman

The second week of the course is focused on research. Each of the four groups of students were able to choose a topic to pursue over two days of field work. We had one group up in the mountains studying moss, another comparing epiphyte growth between beech forests, one group looking at how the edge effect affects bird populations, and the last comparing macroinvertebrate life between limestone and freestone streams. 

Clockwise from Top Left: Students Kate Hoffman (Messiah), Katie Kortman (Dordt),
Ruthie Sutherland (Westmont), and Colin Veerman (Bethel) working on their field-based research projects.

Again, despite the rain, everyone conducted fabulous work which was then presented to us upon our return to the Old Convent in Kaikoura. It was two weeks worth of challenging material, and I am proud to see how much everyone was able to take away from it, even to the point of applying what they'd learned in the form of research. Well done everyone!