New Zealand Catch up!

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I am finally starting my travel blog! I know it took a long time, but it has been a rather busy time for me since I have arrived in the country.

I'll start from the beginning, I left Bellingham, Washington early in the morning on the 14th of Feb. 2008. I made my trek from there down to LA where I flew out on the Australearn group flight, which was fun. The group flight was a good thing to do, I got to meet a lot of different people headed over to NZ, and going to different Universities. After an 8 hour lay over we finally boarded the flight late, and not only did we board late we sat on the plane for a little over and hour till the plane finally took off. I was nervous about occupying myself for the 13 odd hour flight, but after I turned on my first movie I slept for a good 7 hours! It was quite nice. Anyways we finally arrive in the Auckland airport and of course there was a massive line in customs, but the customs agents were rather nice and wished me a good stay. We gather our baggage and we make our way out to the parking lot where we see the glorious MAGIC buses, these we be the transportation to the many wonderful things we did during orientation.

We finally departed the airport and the buses started our journey to Rotorua. We had an awesome bus driver, we called him "Chops" and him and Viloa (our other leader lady) had each one of us come up to the front of the bus and say our name, where we were from and the craziest thing we have ever done. Sorry mom and dad but yes I did expose my tattoo on the bus, tastefully though, and I got many comments on it! Anyways, we finally make it to Rotorua, and as we pulled into the KiwiPaka (the hostel we stayed at) we all couldn't have been more anxious to get out and see NZ finally. I think that night they made us go to a silly orientation session telling us stuff about NZ and whatever. But that night I crashed early because I was tired. The next day we woke up too early and had a session and then went to a sheep show and we also went Zorbing. The sheep show was cool/interesting. The Kiwi man hosting it we couldn't understand a dang thing he was saying, but he sheered a sheep and we saw dogs run around on top of sheep (random I know!). Then we threw on our bathing suits and headed over to Zorbing. Imagine a big blown up ball with another ball on the inside suspended. Then throw 3 college girls and water on the inside. Push it down a hill, and watch as the three of us knock each other over and try to hold onto our clothing. It was probably the most fun I have had in a while.

The next day we woke up early and headed to Waitomo, it was like and hour and a half drive but when we finally made it there it was awesome. Waitomo is famous for their thousands of caves. We had three options, black water tubing(tubing underwater in a cave), some crazy wetsuit involved spelunking one and a dry option that didn't sound interesting. Of course everyone wanted to do the crazy sounding one with the wetsuit but I got stuck with the dry option that no one wanted, but it was actually awesome. This was straight up caving people! We put on jump suits and road a rickety van up into some randomly owned farm in the hills of new zealand, got out hiked a bit and then repelled like 200 feet down. I was the first one in and on the first repel there was a guide waiting at the bottom, only to set me up for the next repel. Yes, I was being sent into a deep dark cave to sit down there by myself waiting for the next person. I basically had a mini panic attack, but it subsided. This cave was amazing, I felt like a real explorer with a head lamp and everything! We reached this one point in the cave where we all turned out our headlamps and experienced absolute complete darkness, where your eyes will absolutely not adjust! It was crazy. Our guides were really awesome by the way, they were cracking jokes at us the whole time and playing pranks on us. We reached a point where there was a zipline through all of these stalagtites and stalagmites! They hooked me up, made everyone turn their headlamps off and sent me on my way. It was crazy flying through the air, not being able to adjust your eyes and when and if your going to stop! wow.

Orientation was cool, I met some amazing people and had such a blast in the good ol' Kiwi Paka!

It was finally time to head to our Universities. All of the AUT kids hoped on our bus and Chops started our adventure to Auckland. We stopped in Hamilton on the way, where we ate lunch by a lake of some sort. There were crazy automated, but dirty bathrooms in that park, everything you pressed a button for, the door, the toilet, and even the toilet paper. There was even crazy classical music playing, but with all of that the bathrooms looked like a homeless person lived in them. Weird. Anyways, Hamilton is where the University of Waikato is, so it was neat to briefly glance at the town some of our friends from orientation would be going to school. We were all anxious to get to Auckland. We finally arrive at our dorms. The building is massive 14 floors! We finally get our keys, and everyone else has at least one other Australearn kid in their room, and they were the first people living in their apartments. Not me, I was by myself and there were all ready people habiting my place. When I first walked into my place I rounded the corner and my living room has two full walls of windows looking over the city and the ocean....completely breathtaking. I stood there in awe. Two of my flat mates were in the hall, Emma and Tani! I was nervous at first but we hit it off. They said they heard another American girl was living in the flat which is crazy because it turned out to be my best friend ANNA! I live in 9f! 9th floor and the F apartments are the only one with the view that we have. It couldn't be better! My living situation is awesome. We all have our own rooms that are a decent size and there are two showers and toilets even!

So basically that is my update for now. I will post more soon....Time for bed 8am class tomorrow...on the North shore :-(

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