{"id":4597,"date":"2016-05-12T09:29:48","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T13:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=4597"},"modified":"2019-07-22T14:11:23","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T14:11:23","slug":"im-never-leaving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2016\/05\/12\/im-never-leaving\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m Never Leaving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend I traveled to Mount Cook where I hiked the Hooker Valley Track and visited Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapo. It was one of the best weekends of my life. I have never been so in love with New Zealand as I am now. When I woke up on Saturday, I woke up to a blue (like Rollins blue) fog coming down from the mountains and headed to the track. Hour by hour as I hiked the Hooker Valley track, the fog burned off as the sun came through the clouds and it gradually became warmer. Once I got to the end of the beautiful track I sat by a small body of water formed from run-off from the glaciers and caught my breath.<\/p>\n<p>All of a sudden a woman who didn\u2019t speak English began screaming out and pointing at the sky; I looked up and that\u2019s when<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Mt-Cook-Hooker-Valley-Track-300x225.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-16555 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Mt-Cook-Hooker-Valley-Track-300x225-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>\u00a0I saw it. The fog has burned off just enough to let a peak of the snow-covered Mount Cook show through. I was in awe. Here I was admiring the lake and decent-sized mountains, w<br \/>\nhich I thought peaked just above the fog . . . little did I realize how massive these mountains were! I must have looked up at Mount Cook that day for hours, until I became too tired and had to hike back.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Hooker-Valley-Track-300x225.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16556 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Hooker-Valley-Track-300x225-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-49-300x225.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16557 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-49-300x225-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-50-300x225.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16558 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-50-300x225-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-51-e1463059563242-225x300.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16559 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-51-e1463059563242-225x300-225x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-52-e1463059579808-225x300.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16560 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-52-e1463059579808-225x300-225x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-53-e1463059598468-225x300.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16561 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-53-e1463059598468-225x300-225x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-54-e1463059614203-225x300.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16562 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-54-e1463059614203-225x300-225x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-55-e1463059407925-225x300.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-16563 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/image-55-e1463059407925-225x300-225x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend I traveled to Mount Cook where I hiked the Hooker Valley Track and visited Lake Pukaki and Lake Tekapo. It was one of the best weekends of my life. I have never been so in love with New Zealand as I am now. When I woke up on Saturday, I woke up&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-otago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4597"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16564,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4597\/revisions\/16564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}