Winter Break 2024 Participant
One afternoon, we removed invasive species from a community walk path. It was so important for us to give back, and it was an awesome way to help out.
Winter Break 2024 Participant
My favorite part of this program was getting to engage with local people and hear their stories and learn about what work they are doing. One of my favorites was the lecture from the CEO of Destination Queenstown. He shared with us his ambitious goals to hit carbon zero in Queenstown by 2023. It was really interesting to hear about how he planned on hitting this goal and the new technology that they are implementing such as hydrogen power and electric motorboats. Also their plans to help make the tourism industry better for the local population. Many of the locals make their living off of the tourism industry in Queenstown, however the large number of people that come to visit can be overwhelming and damaging, and so Destination Queenstown is trying to help solve these issues by making tourism more sustainable for both the environment and for the locals. One example was building an electric or hydrogen powered overhead cable car from the airport to the center of Queenstown, that way the locals would be benefiting from reduced traffic from shuttles bringing people to and from the airport and the environment would benefit due to less carbon emissions from vehicles on the roads. Going with this, learned about regenerative tourism where tourists give something back to the local community and leave things better than they found it. We actually got to engage in this with WAI Wanaka where we helped them with their project of growing native vegetation on the lake front by weeding out the invasive plants and watering and placing mulch around the native plants they are trying to grow. It felt really great to help out and to give something back to the community while we were there visiting. Overall, it was so amazing getting to meet and connect with all these people and see the work that they are doing to not only improve New Zealand as a country, but to improve the environment for the plants and animals that are living there as well.
Winter Break 2024 Participant
One thing I learned is that just going exploring and getting to know your surroundings is the best thing you can do, as well as to be careful but not worry so much about getting a little lost or turned around. One of the best things my group did was start walking around and trying to orient ourselves with where we are, as well as practice taking the metro to familiar locations so that when we have free days we would be comfortable taking it longer distances. Doing this at the beginning of our trip helped things to go a lot smoother since we took the time to walk around and even though we risked getting a little lost, by a couple days in we we able to have a good general idea of where we are and what's around us. This really helped when we had to find certain buildings for classes or certain meeting spots for getting back together as a group. It was also a really beneficial thing to do since by the time our free day came, we made plans to take an hour bus ride to the beach and since we had experience going on the bus for shorter distances, we knew how to properly navigate which busses to take to get to the beach which likely saved us a lot of trouble.
