Welcome to Catch of the Day!

This blog is a record my journey from the United States to New Zealand, where I will be working for the next three years on a PhD in Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Auckland. 

My name is Reno, and I'm an American archaeologist. I have done fieldwork in California, Oregon, Washington, the four-corners region of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, and in West Africa at a Dahomenian palace in Abomey, Benin. Once, I excavated a mammoth skeleton from an artichoke farm in Castroville, CA (that was paleontology though, not archaeology). When in the laboratory, my specialty is zooarchaeology - the study of animal bones, teeth, and shell that interacted with humans at some point in the past. These days, I mostly try to tell people's stories from the fish they caught and ate.

Most of the posts on this blog will be bi-weekly summaries of recent hi-jinks, and observations on the differences between life in the US and New Zealand. When I'm out on exciting trips I'll try to provide daily updates, or at least post a daily journal soon afterwards. These posts are primarily intended to provide my friends and family with a means of keeping up with what's happening in my life, and they are also a tool that will hopefully prompt me to record my stories. Avid travel blog readers may be interested in following me on my journey, and travel enthusiasts should be able to find some useful information throughout this blog that will be of interest to anyone who is considering a move to New Zealand.

To ready an account of my journey to New Zealand via Japan, in which I get lost descending from a volcano, start with Day 1 of my Tokyo Journal.

For a summary of all the trials and tribulations that I went through for a year and a half before I even departed for New Zealand, you can read these three posts (scholarship, university, visa).