This week I was enrolled in the Geosciences New Zealand Annual Conference which was held here at Auckland University. This was a really interesting exercise in testing my content knowledge. A couple of the talks I went to were quite difficult to follow as the vocabulary and content were aimed at seasoned professionals. But still, I sat and listened and grasped onto the bits that I could. I enjoyed observing the questioning that happened after each talk, as for me this is more relevant to me. I still marvel at the ease of which questions are asked and answered and the responses when someone doesn't know the answer. This has really solidified for me the need to teach our students the need for respectful critiquing.

I attended two poster sessions to learn what they were all about. I enjoyed listening to each author tell me about their projects and watch them explain their findings to someone who doesn't have the content knowledge or background to understand big terminology.

In week 20, Kathy and I took some of the rock samples from Mangatete, Atiamuri and Tikitere to the Rock cutting room. I was amazed at how easy it was to cut the rocks! Also equally amazed and what was inside the rocks! As this was the whole point of the exercise - to see what was inside and therefore understand more fully how the microbes have grown. With a few of the rocks my host Kathy kept saying 'ooo, I wonder what that is', and indicated that it would be good for someone to look into it. I am a bit gutted that my time here is coming to an end and therefore I won't find out!

Lastly, an engineering student, Honours student and myself made some temperature probes for school groups. These probes are seriously cool, I want one for myself! We were taught how to strip wire and connect up the positive and negative sections into the plug end of the 'gun' part of the probe. This meant that we could attach 8 meter long temperature wire onto the 'gun'. The point of this is so that students can throw the wire into a hot pool from a safe distance to test and read the springs temperature.

This is part of Kathy's desire for school outreach and our Curious Minds grant application.