Hobbit Bilbo Baggins and Erin Herring '25 both sought adventure: the former in The Hobbit trilogy; the latter through the Siena study abroad program. Their adventures criss-crossed on a spectacularly green hillside in New Zealand.
Fans of the wildly successful Peter Jackson franchise will remember the scene in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when the protagonist bounds from his home and races down a Middle-Earth hillside exclaiming, "I'm going on an adventure." The setting looks too brilliantly manicured to be real, except that it is. Erin traveled around the world, on her own adventure, to be there.
"I had seen parts of every movie, but I didn't know them that well. Now I'm going back to re-watch them, and I can pick out places where I actually stood."
Erin considered spending the fall semester in Europe, but during a conversation with Abi Cavazos, associate director for study abroad, she pivoted to Australia. The course offerings, though, didn't line up with Erin's interests. That's when Abi suggested New Zealand.
"A lot of programs are heavily focused on one area, but there's a really good mix here. I'm taking one class toward my major (environmental studies) and one toward my minor (philosophy), and I'm also satisfying two core requirements. Abi was so helpful throughout the entire process."
The process of landing in New Zealand was smooth; getting there was not. Extreme weather debilitated the Newark airport for days at the end of June. Erin had to re-route through Chicago, then on to San Francisco. Delays caused her to miss her flight from California to Auckland, so she spent two unexpected nights in San Francisco. By the time Erin and Lauren Rosenberg '25 (the Saints decided to travel together) made it to New Zealand, they had missed orientation on the North Island (Auckland is on the north Island; the University of Otago is on the South Island).
"If anything, the travel delays made me more comfortable navigating airports by myself. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Plus, we were less jet lagged when we arrived. We did miss orientation on the North Island, so Lauren and I took the opportunity during a mid-semester break to travel up there and explore ourselves."
On their trip to the North Island, they laid on the beach at the Coromandel Peninsula, checked out sulphur ponds, and visited the home of Bilbo Baggins (above). His adventure included wizards and dragons, but Erin's, in its own way, has been just as eventful.
Because New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere, their "fall" semester started at the end of July and runs through mid-November.