Over the summer, I spent seven weeks doing an internship, paired with an online writing course, in New Zealand with a group of other University of California undergraduates. My major is environmental science and management, following the soils and biogeochemistry tract, and I hoped to gain experience incorporating soil science and sustainable management. As a student journalist at UC Davis Magazine, I wanted to share my experience spending a summer interning abroad.

Getting there

I touched down in Auckland at 8 a.m., and our first morning in the city had a southern hemisphere winter chill, reminiscent of my home climate in San Francisco. Straight out of the airport, we hopped onto a chartered bus to start orientation and a brief cultural immersion. We learned the haka, a ceremonial dance of the native Maori people, ate meat pie in the Auckland Museum, and were frequently reminded to walk on the left side of the road. After about a week of traveling around Auckland, it was time to begin my six-week internship at the Auckland University of Technology. 

Fieldwork

The first day I came into the office, we immediately started by filling out the health and safety forms for fieldwork. I was going to be working in AUT’s Living Labs project, an experiment aimed at studying the growth of trees native to Aotearoa, or New Zealand, with two other UC Davis undergraduates. Native trees in New Zealand, a delicate island ecosystem, are always vulnerable to invasive species and human impact, inspiring efforts like Living Labs, which works toward understanding and optimizing conservation and restoration throughout the country. 

We started the next day, hopping into the ute and setting out to the first site, Te Pourewa, land that AUT works on with permission from Maori landowners. The land was completely overgrown with vegetation, and we suited up with heavy-duty boots and wet weather gear to protect against the frequent rain, strong winds, and thorny bushes. 

For the Living Labs experiment, the tasks were divided into tree identification and tagging, and the monitoring of native seedling growth. We learned the ins and outs of naming trees from Lynda, a former nurse turned ecologist, and their unique physical characteristics, like the red, raised roots of Mapou, and the long, serrated leaves of Rewarewa. Lynda led us through thickets of branches and up muddy slopes to place metal tags on select trees, documenting them with ID codes in an extensive spreadsheet system. Crouching, we carefully sifted through leaf litter and debris in each plot to measure the growth of rare new seedlings, celebrating each discovery. 

Alongside the Living Labs experiment, we contributed to LIFEPLAN, a large biodiversity study. AUT represents New Zealand, with 53 other participating countries in LIFEPLAN, a global biodiversity sampling program based in Sweden. The sampling process consisted of logging the video recording and physical sampling data collected at Te Pourewa onto the dedicated LIFEPLAN app, uploading the sounds and activity of local wildlife, aspects of weather, and pest identification.  

After three physically taxing weeks in the field, eating lunch in the rain, and slipping down slopes, I was happy to be granted access to the engineering lab, where I could process a collection of soil cores. As an aspiring soil scientist, this was right up my alley. I was given my own locker for lab gear, and I learned to use the furnace, oven, and grinders from Tom, a resourceful AUT undergraduate, to analyze soil cores taken at each plot, a perfect balance to my time outdoors. 

Travel

Outside of my internship, I extensively utilized the public transportation system, traveling throughout Auckland on ferries, trains, and buses to explore museums, forest preserves, and beaches. I found nature in Auckland to be extensive and accessible, and I did many solo hikes through pristine, well-managed reserves, encountering plants and wildlife endemic to the island. Those were some of my most treasured experiences from the trip. Being able to completely immerse myself in nature, within the internship and on my own, was personally life-changing, and I felt a dissolution of the barrier between myself and the natural world. Beyond Auckland, I was able to fly to Wellington and Queenstown, staying in surprisingly clean hostels with my new friends and even scoring a free boat tour through Milford Sound, a famous fjord in the South Island. 

I think living abroad can be disorienting and confusing, but with time, I could see myself thriving in a foreign place. Overall, this experience has made me confident in my own competency and ability to navigate a previously unknown environment, interact professionally with a new culture, and understand another way of life.