Photos (like I promised)

We got internet set up today! HOORAY!

Ok, here we go:

After landing in Auckland on Sunday morning, we (and by we, I mean all the people from the US that were going to New Zealand through AustraLearn, and everyone was either going to Wellington or back to Auckland) were loaded onto

 a bus and had about a 3.5 hour drive to Rotorua where we stayed until Wednesday. This was our first impression of the New Zealand countryside, and gosh darn it, was it pretty.

Monday afternoon we got to go Zorbing, which like I said, involves rolling down a hill in a giant hamster ball. I didn't bring my camera along so I didn't get any pictures, but here is the website so you can get an appreciation of how ridiculous (and fun) it is www.zorb.co.nz/menu.html

Later that afternoon, we learned the haka that the All Blacks perform before all their matches. For those of you that don't know, the All Blacks is New Zealand's rugby team, and rugby is a pretty big deal here. If you are a male and you don't play rugby, you're really not a man. Here is a video of them actually performing it, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMCAV6YdOY) we obviously didn't get that into it. It originally was a war dance, that obviously, was performed before they went out to a battle.

The next day (Tuesday), we left early in the morning for the Waitomo Caves, home of the glow worms; which actually aren't even worms, they are a fly maggot...but glow maggot doesn't roll off the tongue quite right. Anyway, they glow because they can't poo because they don't have a bum hole, so they burn their poo with a chemical reaction, which produces the blue glow. We split into 3 groups depending on how we wanted to see the caves, and I definitely think my group got the best of the deal. We army-crawled through small holes, rappelled down waterfalls, and climbed up walls to get back out, and it was by far one of the coolest things I've ever done. At one point we got to a large cavern with glow worms EVERYWHERE, turned off the lights on our helmets, and just sat there for about 15 minutes; it looked like we were looking up at stars.

That evening we went to the Tamaki Maori Village for a traditional Hangi, which is where the food is cooked in an underground oven for about 4 hours, and boy oh boy, was it delicious.

On Wednesday, those of us that were going to Wellington boarded another plane in Rotorua (those going to Auckland just took a bus back). The plane was super small, and we probably made up about 90% of the passengers on the flight. We even had to walk out onto the terminal in order to board. This was probably one of the best ways to see New Zealand; sooooooooooo pretty. Seriously, gorgeous. 

Ok, that's all for now. PEACE