Tomorrow marks one month until I land back in the US. This thought absolutely blows my mind.

My apologies for skipping a blog the past week; school has been very busy!! I was overwhelmed with the last tests, projects, and presentations for the semester. I am glad they are all over but nervously await finals preparations and finals exams. Here, they are worth 60-80% of my grade….I have never had that before.

Anyways, after one stressful week, my friends and I went camping near Bay of Islands in the northern part of NZ. It was nice getting out of Auckland again, one of our first times since semester break. When we pulled up to our campsite I was just in awe. It was quiet, just another camper or two parked right next to the bay. The sun was setting and the waves were thrashing and I just cannot describe how happy it made me. I soaked my feet in the chilly water right after putting up the tents (no easy task given the 20+ mph winds but that didn’t phase us), and then explored the beach. The next morning, we went tramping around the campsite; it was so serene and isolated. I had no idea that we were surrounded by so much forest at our beachy campsite. That’s one thing I love about NZ; you can have beaches, forests, and mountains all at once.

On our way back to Auckland, we stopped at Ocean’s Beach and played some ultimate frisbee after swimming in the ocean.  It was great and extremely tiring! This was one of the first times the water has been “warm” enough to swim in since arriving…it was actually ice cold and we were the only people without body suits but it was so worth it.

This past Friday, we took a ferry across the harbor to a neighboring town. This was just a little thing we decided to do and that’s what made it even more amazing. Seeing Auckland’s skyline as the sunset and once it got dark just made me feel so warm inside. I really have grown to love this city. My friends and I got some coffee in this cute town and just had a chill night enjoying each other’s company.

As I hit this one-month mark, it is so incredibly hard not to get prematurely sentimental and reflective and think about the future. I’m sure many of you will/are going through this as well! There’s so many “lasts” it seems that I want to ignore. This is the last week of lectures. I already feel like I’m going to miss my classmates. I am meeting up with my engineering group again (not to work on our project thank goodness) but instead to just be social. Needless to say, I am baking a lot this week for my friends, groups, and classmates.

Things ending makes studying even more difficult, that’s for sure! This weekend my friends and I are heading to the northern most point of NZ, Cape Reinga, before we crack down and study. The final plans are to do a 4-day trip including Lake Tauopo, the Tongariro Crossing, and Mt. Taranaki. Then it will be time to go.

Ech, that was weird to put in print.

Location: Auckland, NZ