Meet the Pets

7 beautiful ducks…and Davey. We are trying to get them to like us by going down by them and feeding them each day. 

 With 7 students and 7 ducks we each get our own. That one on the left being weird…that's mine.

Her name is Gertrude. She is the odd one. And she has the funny feather on her head that just won't lay down the right way. I love it though, because she's the easiest one to tell apart from the other 6! Isn't she beautiful!?!

Serious Adventures!

Amy, Erica, and I lived out of a van for the past 12 days.

 This was my and Amy's bed in the back of the van.

And this was Erica's bed. See that cardboard box? It's way more than a cardboard box…it is also known as "The Life Source" and happened to be holding all the food we possessed. 

Our meals included: bread, peanut butter, wheatbix bites, bananas, and apples mostly.

While PB&J in a banana is yummy…it is also quite messy and therefore we cannot highly recommend it.

And our other staple was 60c ice cream cones from McDonalds!

In this picture we are on the very tippy top of New Zealand at Cape Reinga. Behind us you see the Tasman Sea on the left and the Pacific Ocean on the right!

Me in the Tasman Sea on 90 Mile Beach!

Up on Mt. Ruapehu. The tallest one on the North Island. We saw snow and wandered where parts of The Lord of the Rings was filmed.

We even passed by Hell's Gate!

This was one of our bathroom stops - and the coolest bathroom we stopped in, so we took a picture!

 Mt. Doom from the Lord of the Rings

I'm in this picture…but I'm hard to find…don't worry, I was careful out there!

We tried to ride the biggest bike I've ever seen!

Went on several tramps and even swung on vines!

We made new friends…Rod and Leith were amazing people that took us in!

"Taupo Dave" was another very nice guy we met who took us in and fed us!

 

I can't remember all their names, but these were some of the hitchhikers we picked up…they were from Germany.

A cool spot in the Hamilton Gardens

 

Bilbo Baggins' door!

Samwise Gamgee's Door! 

What fun we had!

And after only washing my hair twice in 30 days of break I got it chopped off!

I'm thinking a crazy hair change for each term…1st term was dreads. 2nd term is short hair. So all of you be thinking…I'll take advice when it comes to my 3rd term hair style!

We go back to school tomorrow, but I'm sure the adventures will continue. I'll try to keep you all posted on here! Much love!

On the Road Again!

Since Christmas Eve I have been living in Auckland and enjoying the company of some of the nicest Kiwis around. They've housed me, fed me, driven me around, shown me the sights, and become great friends! Now me, Erica, and Amy are heading out to see other things in the North Island and were planning to just hitchhike from now until the 19th and get as far as we could and see as much as we can, but instead Carmel (one of the ladies here) asked around and found us people who were willing to share their van with us! So we are the temporary (2 week) owners of this beautiful van!

 

Not only did they so graciously give us a vehicle to ride in, but also a place to call home! We put the back seats up and put a mattress down on the floor, so two people will be sleeping there, and one gets the bench seat. It's comfy-cozy and you have to curl up to fit, but it's a dry place to sleep for free! Which we are so thankful for because the cheapest places to stay are backpackers and they usually cost at least $20 a night each. Pretty cheap, but not when you stay every night and have food and adventures to pay for as well!

So we are so excited and cannot wait to see what we will see…which is so much more now that we can choose where to go and don't have to rely on rides from strangers! (And I'm sure all you overprotective friends and relatives are probably happy too.) 

Impossible? ...No such thing!

Did you set any goals for 2013? I haven't yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something. I have already set plenty of goals for myself for this school year, so I didn't think it was too important to have new ones. And with the lifestyle I'm living I seem to do things that I only think of afterward to put on a list to cross off. Let me tell you about today…

Today I walked across an entire nation. That's right! I did it on foot! Okay, okay, New Zealand is pretty skinny but it was still quite the adventure! I wasn't sure we were going to survive (slight exaggeration included here, but not much)!

The adventure began at the Auckland Zoo (which is one of the best I've been to) where Amanda and I found a bus and climbed on. We told the nice man driver that we were trying to get to the Viaduct and so he told us how much to pay and then dropped us close to there. 

 From the Viaduct we shopped all down Queen Street which has all the touristy stuff so we could give Christmas presents to our families when we see them. Then with all our bundles we set out to cross the country. From one coast to the other. This was a challenge we were ready to tackle…sorta. 

We started in good spirits. Amanda was happy to see some beautiful Palm Trees and even posed for a picture with them and all her bundles. But at this point we weren't actually on track…see our map didn't have the first 3 street names…I had copied it from one on a computer, and did as best as I could, but the one on the computer didn't have all the street names either. So we started out lost and asked a stranger for help, but his advice didn't make sense, so we ignored it and kept going. 

When we got to a park we thought it was a good excuse to stop and have a snack and a drink. I am constantly pushing for drink breaks, because I don't like carrying the water bottle and the more we drink the lighter it gets!

This was a really exciting point where the curve in the road seemed to match the one I had drawn on our map…a very rare moment. Because just around the corner the road name changed on the road, but not on our map…round two of being lost.

At this point our map was useless. We were very confused and could not seem to find any of the streets that we had on our map. We tried to use the sun and land marks we had seen this past week, but we are both quite directionally challenged, so we just sat and fussed for a minute and then kept on walking. 

I had chosen to wear my jandels (flip flops) which was not the best option and got a blister on the bottom of my foot, so I took them off and was walking barefoot...

And then a mean old bee stung my foot and it hurt so bad I was fussing up a storm and Amanda was laughing at me. That stung my left foot and I got a thorn or piece of glass or something in my right foot and I was limping like an old lady! But we persevered! 

We asked for the 3rd or 4th time for more directions and figured out that we were way off track. We were supposed to follow the roads drawn on the map and we were somewhere close to where my finger was…but we decided to "bushwhack" through the city instead of back tracking. 

We finally came to street on our map! 

And there were pretty flowers there so we posed with them…they had bees buzzing around them so I was a bit nervous, but I braved it and didn't get a second sting. 

Our first view of the opposite coast! We were almost there! yay! yay! yay! 

Amanda at the "finish line" 

Me and my map made it to the finish! woooo-hooo!

Making it to the end called for a celebration of snacks! Thanks to Grandma Velting for sending these gummies out to me! After our crazy walk in the heat, this pack had turned into one giant gummy, but it tasted delicious!

And to finish off the adventure we were sitting at the park waiting for Jo to come pick us up and a man was playing with his dog and he hit a tennis ball WITH HIS RACKET and it hit me in the hip as I sat not even facing him on the grass! Then his dog came bounding towards me and I thought it might run me over! ahhh…so many crazy moments in this day! Too too funny! Such a great 1st day of the year. Hope yours is spectacular as well!