NZ/OZ Study Abroad 2008

My name is Joel Weber and I am soon to be starting my fourth and final year as a mechanical engineering major at Georgia Tech. While I am sad to be finishing up, I feel I have thus far had a great experience at Tech. A large part of this comes from my participation in the New Zealand/ Australia study abroad in the spring semester of 2008. I have heard great things about many of Tech’s study abroad programs, but I feel this one is unique. I would be lying if I claimed its main focus was on academics. Sure, classes and projects did pop up from time to time, but the true heart of this trip is the people you travel with and places you explore. We were a group of 34 students from a variety of majors and backgrounds. Twelve weeks of travel allowed us to form friendships across social groups that we never could have at Tech’s campus.

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We started off our trip housed in dorms in the city of Wellington on the north island of New Zealand. Here we attended three hours of classes four days a week and then were off on our own to see everything we could. Wellington is a beautiful, albeit expensive, city that feels safe regardless of where you go at night. Our dorms were surprisingly nice as well. To pus it simply, if you have ever lived in a Tech dorm, these were luxury rooms by comparison. Each week when class ended, we set off in small groups to different parts of the country. I enjoy hiking and being outdoors in general, so New Zealand was heaven for me. I had the opportunity to scale the peaks of Mt. Taranaki, Mt. Ruapehu, and Mt. Ngauruhoe. The latter of these is Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. As you can see in the picture, it is still very much an active volcano and was venting hot steam while I was at the peak.




To truly admire Wellington’s beauty, one has to make the climb to the top of nearby Mt. Victoria. It’s really more of a glorified hill, but as anyone who has been there knows, everything in Wellington is located at the top or bottom of a large hill. A few of us decided to camp out at the top of Mt. Victoria one night to take in the city skyline after the sun had set. I’m still not sure if this is entirely legal, but the city has at most four cops and the view was certainly worth it.
We only managed to make it down there for one extended weekend, but our trip to the south island was my favorite part of the entire twelve weeks. It somehow managed to make the north island seem overcrowded, which is truly a remarkable feat. We started off our trip with a glacier climb using crampons and ice picks. I would highly recommend taking the time to at least take a glacier hike as the surroundings are incredibly beautiful. We had the opportunity to take a helicopter ride (my first) up to the top, and the flight was surreal. Afterwards, we took a walk along the coastline and surprised a fur seal who was none to happy to have had its nap interrupted. Our final destination on the south island was Milford Sound in Fjiordland National Park. Down here, one couldn’t walk more than five minutes without coming across another waterfall created through glacier melting. The hiking was breathtaking and no amount of pictures or videos can come close to doing it justice.




After Wellington came a three week stay in Sydney. It was surprisingly nice to be in a warm, sunny place after enduring the many mood swings of New Zealand’s weather for so long. We stayed in a hotel within walking distance of the Royal Botanical Gardens and Sydney Opera House. However, my true love of Sydney was its proximity to many world renowned beaches. We bought several surf boards from pawn shops and spent nearly everyday after class trying not to drown in the eight foot waves of Bondi and Manly Beach. Bondi even had its own television show that aired weekly with all of the rescues that had to perform daily. Sadly, we never got our five minutes of fame, but it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.




After Sydney we took a grueling bus ride up to Brisbane where we finished out the remaining three weeks of our study abroad. Brisbane, though smaller and less well known than Sydney, is a beautiful city built along a river. It is from here than one has the opportunity to travel north, either to Cairns or Whitsunday Islands, and try out a weekend sailing off the Australian east coast. I chose the latter and had an amazing time. I have never been sailing or scuba diving before, but both were terribly fun, and I hope to get diving certified at Tech in the coming months. Part of our trip took us to Whitehaven, a beach consistently ranked as one of the top ten in the world. Its own small claim to fame is that its sand is so pure and its silicon levels so high, that NASA got special permission to use some of it to make the lens on the Hubble Telescope. It also has baby sharks and stingrays to chase around in the tidal pools as well as armies of thousands of soldier crabs that swarm across the sand whenever the tide changes.




My final weekend was one of relaxation a little south of Brisbane at a place known as Byron Bay. It is at the eastern most tip of the Australian mainland. There was an ongoing blues festival so it was overrun with hippies, but this really only added to the atmosphere and vibe the small town gave off. It was a weekend of long boarding the slow breaking waves and trying to forget the final exams that awaited us upon return. It was honestly kind of sad to see the friends that you had been traveling with for three months go their separate ways at the airport. It’s hard to remember that everyone does in fact go to the same school, and that the friendships that have been made don’t have to end just because the trip has. Regardless of whether or not you are interested in what this particular program has to offer, I would strongly encourage everyone to partake in one of the study abroad opportunities. Georgia Tech is an amazing place, but you have to leave it for a while to truly experience all it has to offer.