Week 1

Kia Ora! I can't believe we have only been here a week and have done as many things that we have! The plane ride was not nearly as bad as I expected it to be, I actually enjoyed the unlimited tetris games and really entertaining movies and it was definitely worth the 20 hours to come to such a beautiful, interesting country. We calculated our trip out to be about 8,500 miles away from home... wow. We started our voyage off in Auckland pretty interesting when we arrived at the first crater to find that poor J-Dog was being threatened with a cavity search due to the extacy found on his phone, uh oh! Rangitoto was really cool, it was amazing to see what the volcano had done and to be able to stand on the lava and look over the bay to Auckland. I slept in the room of 12 girls in the hostile, which was a good ice breaker. The first night in Auckland was fun getting to know every one, cheers for the tequila shots with Art and Doug! Then we went to see the Kauri tree and tried to fool Cookie by taking a pic of the post card but I guess there is no getting past Cooks. I really enjoyed the Waingitoto Treaty House, Will is amazing, and how lucky are we that we got him as our tour guide?! Then Opo the Gay Golphin, that was quite interesting. Finally we arrived in Pahia, which has been my favorite stop thus far. Saltys was a blast doing the blind date game, congrats Jamie!! ! ! ! Then Saturday we venture off to the northern tip with the light house. Seeing the Maoris dance was really interesting and the scenery was beyond gorgeous, then to the beach! That was a nice little lunch break. Sand Surfing was sooo fun, even though I wiped out and I think I still have sand in my mouth. The 90 mile beach was interesting, I couldn't believe we were driving in a coach bus on sand with the Tasman Sea to our right. The next day we did the Bay of Islands Dolphin Cruise, I am still convinced the whole in the rock is man made! Russel for lunch, I already looked up Realty, out of my price range to say the least, but hey we can dream. Then finally our arrival in Hamilton at the University of Waikato. Black Water Rafting was amazing, by far the coolest thing I have ever done! Rurakuri was beautiful and very interesting to learn all about stratification. The rabbit shearing was very weird to say the least. Well cheers to our first week, can't wait for all that we have to come!