Fast forward to the present (OZ and NZ entries are still being written) and an entry from Steve: When we decided to live for a year in Guatemala, we expected to spend most of our time in jeans and walking shoes so we packed accordingly. I didn’t even throw in a long sleeve shirt… Sonja hadn’t imagined needing nylons and our kids, well, let’s just say that clean jeans was the top-end option for them. Little did we know that we’d get an invitation to attend a gala benefit at Guatemala City’s national theater. Verdi’s Falstaff, his last opera, wou [View Full Entry]

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Although we have been told that Christmas is a distant cousin to the much more exciting Semana Santa (Holy Week), we have really enjoyed the Christmas season here in Antigua. The first signs that Christmas was coming (because we were not encountering the normal Seattle signs of miserable cold and rain) was the sudden presence of LOTS of pointsettias in many of the local stores, coffee shops, and restaurants. We also saw a lot of the classic Christmas decorations, such as trees (plastic, of course), blinking lights, and Santas. One day Steve walked by a building and saw a Santa on [View Full Entry]

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Since that very first time I saw the Best Road Sign Ever (found in my blog entry at Monterrico, Guatemala), I have had an eye out for interesting and unusual road signs (of the yellow diamond variety). Herewith the best road signs of Australia and New Zealand. For this Seattle gal, they qualify as unusual: [View Full Entry]

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Finally wrapping up the New Zealand portion of our year abroad in Guatemala... After bidding Karen, Dave, Noah and Ana farewell in the golden light of the sun setting over Hahei, we hightailed it out to Thames to overnight in a crappy little hotel so that we would be well positioned to 'do' Aukland in a day. Our plan was to play tourist for the day, sleep in some cheap airport hotel, and head on home early the next morning. And that's pretty much what we did. We made this final day easy by just driving around to a couple of [View Full Entry]

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Hi all, a quick entry before my 4 minutes of internet time run out at this kiosk. Can't wait for great Guatemalan high tech access again! We're at the airport hotel, spending the night before we journey on to LA, then to Dallas, then finally to Guatemala city and home in Antigua. We've had a GREAT time here in Australia and New Zealand and I can't wait to catch you all up on our travels. Stay tuned! Sonja [View Full Entry]

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After spending 3 fun days in Rotorua (I HIGHLY recommend the Rotorua Museum of Art and History), our 2 families decided to explore a bit further north, taking the road up past Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty and up into the Coromandel Pennisula along the Pacific Coast Highway (which must be the OTHER Pacific Coast Highway because everybody knows that the original PCH goes down US-101 from Washington to California.) Turns out this is a pretty winding road, and, for the first time since I was a kid (and my dad was on a bender to make it from Oregon [View Full Entry]

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We have a friend living here in Antigua who is from New Zealand, and when we talked with her before departing for NZ she said that we simply must try out the Zorb, a notable activity in Rotorua. What is Zorb? Hold on to your trousers...I"ll get there real soon. We headed out towards Zorb-land, which is about 20-30 minutes outside of Rotorua by car. En route we stopped by the Agrodome, which is a working sheep and cattle farm specializing in showing tourists what a working sheep and cattle farm looks like. We walked from the parking lot to the [View Full Entry]

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(catching up on my New Zealand trip blog entries) After saying goodbye to Karen, Dave, Ana and Noah, we caught an Interislander ferry from Picton (South Island) to Wellington (North Island). We were able to return our humongous motorhome to the rental agency and get to the airport with juuuuuust enough time for me to stop by the Wellington airport's ICEBREAKER shop! (They were having sale! I couldn't just walk right on by, could I??) Our destination that day was Rotorua, a fun, touristy town on the northern part of the Island, known for its natural hot springs and geothermal fe [View Full Entry]

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(Once again, speeding my way through the NZ trip portion) The next morning we woke up (in Fox Glacier Village) and raced out to Lake Matheson because they have this really famous lake which, if you view it early enough in the morning, gives you a mirror view of Mt. Cook. Steve had taken a morning run to the lake and really wanted us to see it, so off we went to Lake Matheson. By the time we got there it wasn't quite a mirror any more, but I did see some lovely views there. As we were heading out, a [View Full Entry]

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Okay, let's speed things up a bit and continue our journey northward on the west end of South Island. After leaving Queenstown, we headed north to Wanaka,where we stopped at the totally cheezy and totally fun Puzzling World (great for all ages!) and managed to get a photo of Karen and I looking...short! Clearly an optical illusion... Further northward to the coast, where (shedding our outer layer of Icebreaker), we took in the warmth and beauty of the blue waters and rugged coastline along the way. We made a great decision to head down a road to a holiday park (eg [View Full Entry]

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