I am now back in the UK after 9 months away from home after completing my placement year in Christchurch, New Zealand. Deciding to move abroad for my placement was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and to have spent that time in New Zealand was incredible. I’ll give a run down of my year away and my best advice for anyone thinking of doing something similar!
To quickly recap, I study sport and exercise science at Bath and I was offered the position of a research assistant at the University of Canterbury (UC). I completed my work placement alongside three other girls from my course, despite not knowing them before they are some of my closest friends now!
My Placement Role
This was one of the first times students from Bath went on placement at UC (as opposed to AUT in Auckland) and so the placement programme was not as well established. This did lead to us sourcing out our own opportunities at work and getting involved in a lot more than what our initial role entailed (which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing).
I had a main research project that I worked on throughout most of my placement. This was related to pregnancy biomechanics and I helped organise some of the massive amounts of data collected and began my own research question. My main supervisor left on maternity leave half way through so it became a little trickier to work on this but hopefully we will continue later in the year and potentially turn it into a journal publication. It was great to be surrounded by lots of academics who are very well respected within their fields. I got involved in starting up a research project in collaboration with Netball NZ involving IMU devices. I helped to draw out the pilot study and performed some data collection. I also assisted out with the NZ 3x3 basketball camps in preparation for a few of their international tournaments. They ended up winning the Asia Cup and just competed at the commonwealth games in Glasgow! This was a really fun opportunity to have been given and learnt all about a new sport! Although we got to spend time in the sport science labs and get to grips with some interesting equipment, a lot of my time was spent at a desk. This is the reality of working in research though but I did hope to have had a bit more hands-on practical work.
My placement was unpaid but luckily there were some paid work opportunities which came from both teaching and marking. Four times a week I would take the anatomy and physiology workshop classes for the first year students. It was a very strange feeling to be the teacher in this situation and took a bit of time to take myself seriously but I actually really came to enjoy it. I also marked a bunch of coursework over Easter which did become slightly brain numbing towards the end but paid well! Our supervisors were very keen to try to provide us with as much paid work as possible which was really good.
We were very much encouraged to make the most of our time being in New Zealand and we got a good chunk of holiday to explore the country. One of my adventures also involved travelling to Samoa (one of the South Pacific islands!). It was an amazing time away staying in traditional fales (beach huts) right next to the ocean.
Travel!
If I had to give someone one piece of advice, it would be to buy a car as soon as you arrive! You would be extremely limited if you relied on public transport or renting camper vans. There really isn’t too much of a transport network, I think I saw about three trains the entire time I was in NZ. It's very expensive to rent camper vans and although it’s a plus to be able to free camp, you are much better off investing in a car from the beginning. We bought a car the first week we arrived for about $5500 NZD and sold it back to the dealership at the end of the year for $2700. When dividing that between four people it really didn’t come to much. Obviously, you have to factor in petrol prices but our mom-mobile car as we called it managed to survive around 15,000km on the road with all our exciting trips so it was a great investment. Christchurch is also a big city and although there is a pretty decent bus network, a car made everything much easier for us.
My Best Moments From Our Roadies
- My favourite hike (or tramp as they say) was the Cape Brett Track in the North Island. I walked to the end of a peninsula where there was nothing but a lighthouse and our hut for the night. This also involved a VERY rocky boat taxi back to civilisation the following morning to avoid repeating the 16km and 1500m elevation walk back across dramatic cliff edges.
- Camping nearby Wharariki Beach! This is the northernmost tip of the South Island (some say it is the beak of a kiwi bird if you look on a map). As I like to call it, it is the windows screensaver beach (aka the iconic photograph used on windows 10 computers!!). Which photo is better?
- Rob Roy Glacier Hike in Wānaka: Some of the best views I’ve seen and the weather was perfect! We sat and ate our sandwiches with a glacier right in front of us (witnessing some minor landslides at the same time).
- Skydiving over Queenstown!! Surprisingly hard to get the green light due to needing very specific weather conditions, so after non-stop booking changes across different South Island locations we finally got to experience one of the coolest moments ever!! It is a must if you are in New Zealand.
Ōtautahi | Christchurch
I loved being based in Christchurch (or chch as they say), it’s the biggest city on the South Island. It’s definitely very up and coming now with a lot of reconstruction since the earthquake back in 2011. I attended the opening of the One NZ Stadium in April to watch the Crusaders play in the rugby Super Round (& just happened to sit behind an All Blacks rugby legend Piri Weepu... casual).
There's a big student population with a pretty good nightlife. Our top favourite pub/bar being The Church (we learnt to ignore the blasphemy there). Christchurch is on the coast, I was about a 25 minute drive from the beach. Sumner beach was our favourite, one of the first times going down there as a group we caught the one of the best sunsets we saw throughout our whole time in New Zealand. To live somewhere where the beach is on one side of the city and mountains on the other was amazing.
The Weather: New Zealand is not Australia!
The weather is not too dissimilar to the UK at times, and it gets very cold in the winter time (June - August). Luckily I had just left before it got too bad but I did experience some chilly mornings. Having said this, the sun is way stronger out there so when it’s hot, it’s hot.
Final Words Of Advice
Make the absolute most of your time! Whether this is involving yourself in projects and research going on around you at work or taking advantage of any time off and weekends to explore the country.
To help overcome the time difference, organise specific days and times to call family and friends to help manage the 13 hour time difference.
The best advice is to just put yourself out there, make as many friends as you can and go to as many places as possible! It is an absolutely incredible country and I couldn't recommend this experience enough!
Thank you for reading my blogs!
Grace
Respond
