Touristy day

Today was the day that we looked and acted like tourists. We had an all day trip around some towns nearish to Auckland in a cool charter bus with people from Australia, England, India and such...

First we went to the Waitomo glow worm caves that were featured on Planet Earth. It was pretty neat, the glow worms look like what the night sky would look like if it had about 5 times more stars.

Next, we went to the AGRODOME! haha, I thought of GUTS! and agrocrag...there were sheep and other animals there which was cool.

Then, we went on over to Rotorua and saw some Maori people perform for us. There were annoying people there talking during their performance which kinda pissed me off.

After Rotorua, we went back to Auckland a different way and we drove through Matamata!!! As soon as the driver told us we were going here, I got excited because the nerd that I am knew that was where they filmed some of Lord of the Rings...it was pretty cool.

All around a pretty tiring day, hopefully we won't do such touristy things tomorrow, but I'm glad I got to see and do these cool things today.

Day 1 Part 2-izzle

So after our relaxing time in the hotel, we headed down to the pier. It took us about 15 minutes of searching, but we found it...the ice bar! It's called Minus 5 Degrees (but it was actually -7 when we were in there). It was pretty cool actually!! It was a small room and everything, even the glasses, were made of ice. I got to buy my first legal alcoholic drink (yay!) and even though we went at 3 pm when no one else was there (which was quite lame), I had fun!

After that adventure, we headed over to the ferry station and bought tickets to Waiheke island. It was absolutely beautiful over there. We walked up and down a loooot of hills and got to see wineries and vinyards and such. Behind one winery was a cool Kinetic Statue Garden or something...anyway, every single one of the sculptures moved when the wind blew, it was very pretty. After that we went to this really cool, really long beach with sailboats offshore and my mom played in the ocean! Yay!

That's pretty much it...we're freakin exhausted and it's only 8:30 pm. We're gonna get dinner then head to bed cause it's gonna be a loooong day tomorrow!

Also, I feel like I'm posting too much so I'm gonna try to keep it down to one post a day....

Auckland

We finally made it to Auckland!!! After a super fun 13 hour flight that involved watching lots of episodes of Flight of the Conchords and Super Bad, we made it to New Zealand around 8 am on Tuesday.

When we finally got to our hotel (around 9:30 am), we couldn't check in so we just wandered around Auckland. Turns out our hotel is right next to the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, so we checked that out...it was pretty tight.

After that we went to this park that we saw from the Sky Tower and walked around and laid down in the grass. It was very pretty and nice.

The weather is really good too. After resting in the grassy knoll, we went back to the hotel to see if we could check in and we could! Our room is nice and the shower I had was amaaaaazing. I don't know what we're doing later, but right now it's 1 pm and we're just resting. Stupid Melbourne lady still hasn't emailed me my confirmation of enrollment so I still can't apply for a student visa...UGH. Oh well, guess I'll just have to wait!

...pictures to come later, I'm too lazy to do them now...

So I lied...

My next post is not from New Zealand. It's from the LAX international terminal. Exciting times. I'm sitting in burger king waiting for my 6 hour layover to be over, then it's off to New Zealand!!

I still haven't gotten my visa yet... :( I'm kinda pissed at this Melbourne lady, but hopefully she'll e-mail me my electronic confirmation of enrollment so I can go ahead and apply for a visa...Hopefully this will happen before I leave New Zealand, or I may be stuck there!!! But I wouldn't be too sad about that prolly...

The flights from Austin to DFW and DFW to LA have been good. After we got off the plane in DFW, my mom said, "gee, it sure is cold for L.A.!" .......... She's old and senile.... haha! I also got to sit in the Exit row on the last flight which was awesome because I got sooo much leg room for my super long legs. hehehe!

Anyway, this will actually be my last post until New Zealand. We leave here around 9 pm or so and I think we get into Aukland at 7 am or something....should be a fuuuuun flight!

Numero uno

I am testing this crazy stuff out! I leave in 3 days! I need to pack...

Next post will be from New Zealand...hells ya!