We have arrived!

Kia Ora! Well we made it to New Zealand safe and sound, with only one flight almost missed in Vancouver. All good now though! Well, Air New Zealand is the tits! Yes, our flight on Air NZ was over 12.5 hours long, but this airline is absolutely awesome. Not only is their safety video at the beginning of the flight feature Richard Simmons and is hilarious, but I didn't want to stab my eyes out with the nearest sharp pointy object like on an Air Canada flight!  

We left around 6:45 pm from San Francisco and we were greeted by some extremely friendly and might I say good looking flight attendants.... Ha. Our plane has 300 people on it, so they had their hands full. Supper was actually delicious, unlike most other garbage you get on other airlines  - and to top it off - free wine with supper. So far my impression of New Zealand has been mainly made by the airline... And let's just say, I have a feeling that this relationship got off to a great start! 

We arrived in Auckland around 4:30 am local time - which by the way is 19 hours ahead of SK time. We spent around 22 hours traveling here and it feels good to on solid ground now.

Auckland is absolutely gorgeous, reminds me a lot of BC- except with very very different plants and trees. We got to our hostel BaseX Auckland at 7 am, safe and sound! We spent a lot of the day today touring Queens St and the harbor area. We had to wait a few hours to check into our room at Base X, so we did a lot of walking around. We ate Queen's Ferry Hotel for lunch which is the "oldest pub in Auckland" (as according to their sign). For supper we at at Tony's Steak and Seafood and I enjoyed my first ever quality New Zealand fillet, rare of course! It wasn't no grade AAA Canadian beef, but it was a pretty good alternative! Anyways folks, I have adventuring and what not to attend to. And I also need to sleep for a solid 12 hours to get myself back into normal condition - And it's been a solid 40 hours since I've had a good sleep... So see ya later!  K-Mac

Agvocacy in the land of the kiwis

So, I'm taking off to do some traveling for a few months to see other parts of this remarkable Earth we live on, and although I am spending a small fortune to live my dream of seeing New Zealand and some parts of Australia; I am absolutely not regretting any penny I have spent or will spend. I have the fortunate opportunity of being working for a company that values my hard work, and fortunate to have a job when I return from my adventuring.

As I consider myself an #agvocate - one of the most important things for me to accomplish on my trip is to see how the agriculture industry operates in the land of the kiwis.

I was very interested in seeing some differences in agriculture production between the two countrys, so I did some quick research on the wonderful internet, and found some interesting things. Statistics New Zealand and Stats Can were very good sources.

New Zealand population: 4.4 million
Canada population: 34.1 million
Dairy cattle in New Zealand: 6.2 million
Dairy cattle in Canada: 1.4 million
 - New Zealand exports a large amount of dairy production to Asian countries
Sheep in New Zealand: 31.1 million
Sheep in Canada: 1.07 million


New Zealand also produces some cereals, and I found some stats from the 2011 season;
Wheat: 393,400 tonnes produced on 135,356 acres (106.7 bu/ac average yield)
Barley: 367,700 tonnes produced on 162,279 acres (104.04 bu/ac average yield)

Canada cereal production for 2011 (StatsCan): 
Wheat:  25.3 million tonnes on 21.5 million seeded acres (43.3 bu/ac average yield)
Barley: 7.6 millions tonnes on 6.5 million seeded acres (53.7 bu/ac average yield)

It is very interesting to see the differences in agriculture production between Canada and New Zealand, and it is my goal to learn about more when I arrive.

One of the most interesting things I learned on my search around the interweb, is that there are 702 wineries in NZ - and the majority of wine produced Sauvignon Blanc... Makes me even more excited about getting there!

Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Merlot... I'm salivating already!

Possible wine tasting in T-minus 4 days....

USask is looking forward

As a U Saskatchewan grad, I am always proud to hear about inspiring stories from the campus. On December 19th the University of Saskatchewan announced the new University President who will take the reins after Peter MacKinnon (or PMac as we used to call him..).

You might be saying, "Yea, yea, yea K-Mac - it's just a new person in the bureaucracy of the U of S" But it's not!

The new President is Ilene Busch-Vishniac, the first female university President in our school's impressive 103 year history! Busch-Vishniac comes to Saskatchewan from John Hopkins University, where she was dean of engineering. She has a very impressive career, and as a U of S alum, I am excited to see her move the U of S into the future.

You can read the announcement here, and see the impressive talents Busch-Vishniac brings to the U of S.

Well, here goes nothing!

Hello all out there in the internet world. This is my determined (possibly futile?) attempt to start a blog. My postings are meant to be for my friends and family, but I realize that I may be catering to whomever else would like to to creep on me.

In ten days, I will be beginning a three month journey to New Zealand and Australia.  It may or may not involve adventuring, caving, surfing, heavy boozing, hiking, working, farm-touring, party-rocking, rock climbing, sky diving, bungee jumping and general crushing. The point of this blog is to share stories and pictures of my adventuring. When the trip is over, I may or may not continue the blog. We'll see how motivated K-Mac is. (And yes, I do refer to myself in third person.)

Also - you may follow me on Twitter @katieamac. I use the twitter machine in Canada, for keeping up with ag industry news and sharing my sarcastic musings with the world.

Well, enough with this babble.

K-Mac