Boise Trip

This weekend we took a trip with some of our friends from our New Zealand study abroad up to Boise to visit another friend from the group. We had a busy, fun filled weekend. Friday night we experienced summer sledding on a giant hill (more like a small mountain). Summer sleds are plastic sleds with wheels on the bottom and when you're going downhill they get going pretty fast (especially with two people on them) and the only option for breaking is your feet which can be pretty hard (and painful) when you're going fast. A few members of our group had some pretty good wipe outs. After summer sledding we watched "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" on a giant screen in the park and then ate some delicious scones at Boise's famous Merrit's Cafe.

Saturday we started the day off with a rafting trip down the Payette River. Our guide was super fun and we got more than the usual ride down the river - riding the bull, intentionally flipping our raft while spinning and doing other fun tricks our guide had us try. After rafting we did some bridge jumping and then headed over to this man-built rapid with perpetual wave. It was built for kayakers to practice their skills, but we had a ton of fun riding it with body boards. After a long day on the river with lots of sun, we decided to hit up the Boise music festival. We made it just in time to see the Backstreet Boys in concert (something I would have died to go to in the 5th grade, but on Saturday I was hoping to see some random local band instead). We ended the night with s'mores - a great end to a fantastic trip.

Update on our lives

So I haven't blogged in a while because life has been keeping us pretty busy as I'm sure you can all relate to. As part of the honors program at BYU, I've been working on a thesis since fall of last year. The honors thesis requirement involves conducting original research and writing a thesis on your research. So my research was on businesses' uses of Facebook to reach their audiences and Facebook users' perceptions of businesses' Facebook Pages. I surveyed students at BYU and in New Zealand during our study abroad. Since we got back to BYU in April, I've been analyzing the data and writing up the thesis. I submitted my final thesis the first week of June and defended it on the 21st. Thankfully I passed my defense! So I'll walk in the August graduation ceremony, and my thesis is being published right now. I also might submit it to some professional communication journals and a conference. While working on my thesis, I was also working at my old job at the McKay School of Education's PR office. It was kind of stressful, but I was able to get everything done for the honors graduation requirements, have an income, and have the flexibility to interview for various jobs so it turned out to be a real blessing.

I am now working at The School Improvement Network. We create professional development software for school teachers. PD 360, an online professional development tool, is our flagship product that used in over 3,000 schools across the United States. It's a really great product for teachers, and everyone I work with is passionate about education which is great. I am a client implementation specialist, which is basically like an account manager so I am assigned to the Tennessee region and work with schools to create a professional development plan using our product to achieve their goals. I do a lot of tracking usage and trying to figure out ways to get people to use our product more effectively which involves strategic communications and messaging. This past week was my first week, but I am really enjoying it so far. It's exciting to have a real job where I get paid vacations, holidays and benefits. I feel like a real grownup! Now for a quick update on Darren. He took classes spring term and applied for dental schools for the fall of 2011. He should start interviewing in the fall and we should find out where he's been accepted in December. He is now getting paid for the research he does at BYU and is doing that as work for the summer. His research involves muscle dystrophy, type two diabetes and the protein AMPK. Fall semester is his last semester at BYU so he is almost finished with his undergraduate degree, but has four more years of dental school ahead of him.

We bought a national park pass for the year so in our free time, mostly on the weekends, we've been trying to get to as many national parks as possible and enjoy the outdoors. Most recently we backpacked in Bryce Canyon, which was beautiful. I'll post some pictures from that trip and some hiking we did in Zion National Park the next time I update.

Our New Apartment

So we finally unpacked the last of our many boxes and hung all the pictures in our living room so I decided to take some pictures so the family could all see what our new place looks like. The big empty wall in the living room is reserved for Darren's future tv that he's been saving up for. It's much smaller than our last place, but besides the lack of storage space we've decided that we prefer it to our old apartment. The windows let in more light, we have a nice balcony with a great view of the mountains, no cinder block walls, and a much lower monthly rent (which is the apartment's most appealing factor).

Rock Climbing in Wanaka

For our last outdoor adventure class trip we went rock climbing in Wanaka. There were so many rock climbing sites and Darren and I both did some lead climbing in the outdoors for the first time. It was so much fun! We can't wait to get back to Utah and go rock climbing all summer.

The Remarkables

March 15-17. After a day of recuperation from our 3-day hike on the Kepler Trek, we left for another 3-day hike to the Remarkables near Queenstown, New Zealand. The first day was sunny and gorgeous, and we were all hot and sweating after climbing from an elevation of 400 meters to 900 meters. After setting up camp the first night, Darren and I did a little hike/rock climb to the top of one of the ridges of the mountains. The view was spectacular but our legs were all cut up from these nasty bushes, called spaniards, with long sharp blades. Darren also managed to somehow tear a hole in his shorts - again.

The second day started off cold and by mid morning we had a light rain that increased in intensity as we hiked. We were hiking through long grasses with hidden spaniards on uneven ground with frequent hidden holes that would catch us off guard and made for slow hiking. A couple hours into the hike one of the girls in our group fell in one of the hidden holes and broke her ankle. We stopped for about an hour and sent a couple people from our group back down to the base of the hike so that they could get cell phone reception to call for a rescue team. We set up a tent and left the girl and her roommate to wait for the helicopter, but we were all super worried about them. The last part of our hike that day was up a super steep mountain of broken slate rock and was pretty challenging with our packs in the wind and rain. We set up camp at 1800 meter elevation with no protection from the wind and rain which later turned to hail then snow. The wind broke a couple tent poles and kept us up all night - worst night sleep ever. The most exciting part of the day was when the helicopter arrived to drop off the roommate of the girl who had broken her ankle and we learned that the other girl had made it safely to the hospital.

Luckily the weather had cleared in the morning but our boots were frozen from the rain and freezing temperatures and our tent was covered in frost. Many people's fuel had frozen so we had to share two stoves for boiling water amongst 20 of us. It took about an hour of hiking before our boots and toes thawed out, but the views were again spectacular and worth the aweful hike and weather the day before.

After the hike we were rewarded with fergburgers, which although I do not normally care for burgers, these were delicious. Hands down the best burger I've ever eaten. You can see in the picture that they're huge! Needless to say, Darren was in heaven.

Stewart Island

This video is from our two day trip to Stewart Island. Darren and I entered a drawing and won two ferry tickets to Stewart Island which is off the southern coast of New Zealand. Only four hundred people live on the island and most of the island is national park land. There aren't many roads, but the island is amazing for backpacking so we hiked along the eastern coast of the island and stayed in a backpacking hut that night and then hiked back to town the next morning. The hike was so beautiful and there were very hikers on the trail. The trail hugged the coastline so we had beautiful scenery and remote beaches that are only accessible by hiking trails so we stopped at some of these pristine beaches and had the entire beach to ourselves to relax and find cool shells. The second day of our trip we rented kayaks and kayaked out to Ulva Island which is a smaller island off of Stewart Island. All rodents have been removed from the island so the bird life there flourishes and we were entertained by a continuous choir of various birds during our hiking around the island. One of our favorite birds to watch and listen to was the Tui bird which is the bird in the video above.

Backing up a few weeks...we borrowed a car from one of our host family's friends the last weekend in February and drove up to the Fiordlands with a few other people from our group. We did a lot of driving and cool hikes with beautiful hikes but the primary reason for the trip was to see Milford Sound. We took a cruise through the sound that lasted about 2 1/2 hours and really got to see the fiord and the waterfalls pouring into it. We also lucked out because a pod of dolphins came up to our cruise ship and started jumping out of the water. The weather was beautiful and our cruise guide told us that they were experiencing a drought because it hadn't rained in 6 hours. The average annual rainfall of Milford Sound is 276 inches a year.