Okay that needs it's own paragraph. A few weeks ago the education team, Me, Hope, Emily, Amanda, Kate, and Kim went on a night hike with Dr. Pete to catch some invertebrates for our directed research project. One of the invertebrates that we caught was a centipede. Not just your average centipede either. It was about 10 cm long. And as we were catching it, Dr. Pete enlightened us to the fact that if you get bitten you could end up in the hospital. In fact, you can count on it. Great. So one day we go to feed it, and Dr. Pete tells us that we need to put mess on the top along with the lid because it can squeeze through the air holes. We do this, mind you, and the next day we go to feed it, there are 6 live bugs (it's food) and no centipede. So it may or may not be wandering around Granny's.
...resuming to the dungeon of Granny's. All the time we were working on our projects it was nice and sunny outside. Figures. But it's over. We have all successfully turned in our directed research projects!
For the rest of Saturday we drove around to support Maree Limpus. She is one of our field leaders here and is such an inspiring woman. She is a runner, and to raise money for Canteen (teens with cancer) she decided to run 100km! For those of you still state side, that's 62 miles! She left Saturday morning at 4:00 a.m.. A few of us decided to wake up with her and see her off. Some people even ran the first 40 minutes with her. She is just incredible. So later in the day, Kim, Kirsten, Kelsey, Ria, Lanette, and I drove out to see her. We gave her water and threw flowers for her. She had already run 70+km and still smiling.
We returned to EcoQuest and made her a poster, started dinner, then drove down to town to see her finish. She finished around 5:00 p.m. with all of us greeting her at the finish line.
Right after she finished it was the start of the Kaiaua Boat race. The kids in the town made boats out of all sorts of materials. Dale, Beck, and Paul built a raft with Keegan and Ash from the town. Ash is Joy's daughter and Keegan is one of the students we taught at the Kaiaua Primary School. There was some stiff competition from the local kids.
Throughout the race the competitors were allowed to throw projectiles to distract the other boats. Projectiles included rotten food, eggs, seaweed, and even some flour bombs and ice cream.
When the race finished. The boys smelt like rotten eggs. They ran around hugging all of us. Next they caught Dale, and threw him into the ocean. Drew was next, then Denny. Crazy few minutes.
After the boat race, there was a party at the Kaiaua Boat Club. We quickly headed back for dinner before the party. At the boat club, Sean Kelly, Maree's partner, and his friend played music. Some classics, and some Irish folk music. It was such a great evening. A few Isaac's hard cider, music, and lots of dancing. The dancing picked up throughout the evening. It was weird too because a few of the students from the school were there dancing with us. We even met some cute guys from the town, but figures it's on December 4th and we leave in 6 days. Figures.
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