Here at Mount St. Helens :)

Wow. I almost feel at home! There sure is different weather in Washington then New Zealand :)

I'm here at mount st. Helens. Mount St. Helens was formed from a Convergent boundary, but not the same type as formed the Himalayas in India. It's called a Subduction Convergent Continental-Oceanic boundary. (It sounds complicated, but it's really not!) In more simple terms, when a continental plate and an oceanic plate meet (called a convergent boundary), the oceanic plate goes under. This is called subduction. When the oceanic plate goes underneath, it starts to melt. When it melts, the magma that's created is less dense then the rock above it, so it rises up. When it reaches the earth's surface, it cools and turns into rock. But more magma comes up through that, and it continues to build up and so on. In this case, the Pacific plate and the North-American plate are colliding, and the pacific plate is going underneath forming the volcano Mount St. Helens.

There are two different types of volcano's. One, has really runny lava which just slowly drips out of the top (like Hawaii!), and the other, more thick that explodes. Mount St. Helens is the second kind. It has gas trapped inside the thick lava, and pressure builds up and builds up as the gas tries to get out. Eventually, the whole thing will blow which is what happened in 1980.

Hope you all understand! To the left is a picture to help. Thanks :)