Goodbye Australia, Hello New Zealand!

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Australia was amazing and it was time for the next chapter of this trip: New Zealand! We scheduled the second half of our break to be in Queenstown, NZ on the South Island because it is the touristy adventure city of the country. People go to Queenstown for skydiving, bungee jumping, and just about anything that gets your adrenaline pumping.

We flew into Auckland, a major city on the North Island, because Queenstown has a really small airport. Since there was a limited combination of flights from Sydney to Queenstown, our best option was to spend the night in Auckland and then fly to Queenstown in the morning. Our flight landed around midnight and the next one left at 7 so we were stuck in the airport for the night. We were also stressing really hard because registration for classes next semester fell at 1 am with the time difference. We had to get off the plane and through customs in less than an hour and I thought for sure that we wouldn’t make it. Our luck kicked in again and we made it out minutes before 1 am so that we could sign up for all of our classes!

The night in the airport was pretty rough but I managed to squeeze in a few hours of sleep. We woke up early to store one of our suitcases in the airport. We’re flying out of Auckland at the end of the NZ field trip so we lightened the load by leaving one back behind. Just our luck again, the woman calculated the price incorrectly for storing our bags and we ended up saving almost $100!

The plane ride was short so we didn’t spend too much time up in the clouds. When we started to descend in Queenstown, the view took my breath away. We flew through snowy mountain peaks that were so perfect they could have been fake. The entire bus ride to the hostel had the same backdrop and I understood why people come here from all over the world.

Our hostel was walking distance from everything in town and had free wifi too! We really lucked out with our hostels this break because later on I heard about other kids in our school group that stayed in sketchy places. We walked around the town and went to the shops that conveniently targeted tourists. We made dinner with food from the supermarket and crashed early because we missed out on sleep in the airport.

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Photos

Night in the Airport
Leah, Melissa and Alexa crashed on the floor while Bird and I found some chairs to lay across. Not the most comfortable night

View from plane
Wow! This was the view before landing in Queenstown

Queenstown
Check out that backdrop

View from hostel
Our hostel was so cute. This was the pretty view from the common room window!