New Zealand Part 2

More from Nick Crawford, living the good life:

Well, this will be my second and last update for the blog from the southern hemisphere. I’m fortunate because I was able to do some snow skiing back in August, but now am taking advantage of long warm days while the rest of the team is training in the dark. Also, the school semester is shifted down here - I finished up exams a few weeks ago and have a long break from school and more time to train through December. For training I was able to copy the team schedule through September and October pretty well. There aren’t any rollerski races in this country (only probably 10 pairs of rollerskis in the entire country), so I made up a few time trial courses and raced them with a fellow exchange student/skier I know. The last few weeks I’ve been doing some amazing traveling and hiking in the tall mountains known as the Southern Alps. Still quite a bit of snow above 3000 ft but no skiing on this trip. From here I have 2 more weeks of travel and then it's back to New England and maybe some snow skiing by then. I would highly recommend a trip here to NZ if you ever get a chance - the semester abroad experience has worked out great for me.

I’m sporting our awesome Bowdoin hat in front of Mt Cook (the highest mtn in NZ) and a big glacier.

Walking one of the many beaches here. This one was actually on a trip to a smaller island called Stewart Island.