If you are a student and a keen tramper you might be interested in the Ara Tramping Club.
The Ara Tramping Club go on day and overnight trips to various spots around Canterbury. Membership is open to interested students and a knowledge of the outdoors and tramping is not necessary to become a member.
The Tramping Club is holding an information evening tonight (Tuesday 23rd August) at 5.30 pm. They will be meeting in the Student Lounge in the old Student Union building. If you are interested in learning more go along and introduce yourself.
Today, 8th of August marks International Cat Day! While not super relevant to study, cats and/or pets can be huge parts of our lives and provide joy and comfort to many.
Rose’s cat, Redpaw – apparently ‘the best cat ever’
International Cat Day began in 2002, exactly 20 years ago, which is not that long ago when you think of how long domesticated cats have been around! The ancient Egyptians had domesticated cats from around 2000 BC believing them to bring good luck and worshiping them as Gods.
Jump forward a few thousand years to medieval Europe and cats have gone from Gods to being associated with evil. As a result, cats were often treated cruelly and burned alive due to their association with witchcraft.
Although associated with evil, cats continued to be part of everyday life and eventually were even seen as useful. Cats were used in World War I for important jobs such as sniffing out poisonous gas on the battlefield or controlling rats on battleships.
It’s funny to think of cats at sea, but this became a common thing. One famous ship cat was Mrs Chippy, who accompanied Ernest Shackleton on his Endurance expedition to Antarctica. Now that’s a cool cat!
So why celebrate cats today? Well not only are they cute and often have interesting, if not hilarious personalities, but there are also so many benefits to owning one. Cats lowers stress, improve your heart health, reduce loneliness, improve your immune system and provide hours of entertainment just to name a few.
So next time study gets you down, find yourself a cat! Or visit the Catnap café! Coffee and cats, what could be better!
Time to reflect on our brilliant Mid-Winter Christmas! We all had a ball dressing up, having christmas decorations everywhere, and having even more reason to drink hot chocolate in the horrid weather.
We started off with a few donations of food for our food collection under our tree, and because of your generosity, ended up with a multitude!
Thank you so much from the bottom of our manawa (hearts), for all of your amazing donations of food for our mid-winter christmas. We couldn’t have done this without you.
All of these are being donated to the City Mission, and we all cannot thank you enough for your thoughtfulness and participation. 🙂
It was a blast, and we hope you had a great time aswell – Who knows, next year we may even go bigger!
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