There ARE Penguins in New Zealand

Hola mi familia y amigos,

So, guess what I did this weekend?! I went and successfully completed my main goal of coming here; I went and saw the PENGUINS!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhh!!!!!!! Seriously, soooooooooo awesome. Awesome.

And, I took my first trip completely by myself. I knew absolutely no one in the city I was going to, had absolutely no idea where I was going when I got there, and had absolutely no idea what I was going to do when I got there (except see the penguins of course). And it was a blast! I didn't have an agenda, didn't have to worry about where other people wanted to go, and was able to just go wherever I wanted to. Super cool.

I left Thursday 19th after classes and flew from Wellington to Christchurch and spent the night there. Friday morning I took a bus from Christchurch to Dunedin and wandered around the city for the rest of the day. Dunedin is a very old city with a lot of Scottish heritage, so there are a lot of old, cool looking buildings.

The "First Church", not sure if that means it was the first church in Dunedin, or something else. Whatever, I thought it looked neat.

On Saturday, I took a tour of the Otago Peninsula (where the penguins live). The tour I took was relatively small; it was more of a conservation/research/education foundation that gives tours to educate people on how to help protect the animals and their habitat. We drove around the Otago Peninsula, saw a Royal Albatross colony, a colony of fur seals, and the beach where the yellow-eyed penguins make their nests. The yellow-eyed penguins are endangered and are a very unusual penguin and instead of me blabbing on about them, you can read all about them here.  :)

A light house, just for you mom

Well isn't he cute

So, there was a lone penguin lost among the fur seals. The guide said he'd never seen this before. The seals walked up to the penguin to check him out, but then they just turned around and left him alone, which is a good thing, because if I would have seen a penguin get eaten, I would have passed out and wouldn't have been able to finish any of my classes for the rest of the year.

The beach where the penguins live!

There he is!

The penguins coming back from the ocean for the night.

Hooray!

Penguins and the sheep chillin' together

The Dunedin Railway Station; it's supposedly the most photographed building in New Zealand

Then, on Sunday, I got back on a bus and headed back for Christchurch, stayed the night there again, and flew back to Wellington on Monday morning. An overall successful vacation!

A cool fountain thingy in Christchurch; also, notice the gondola in the background

It's a flower bed, and a clock, and it's genius

The Marlborough Sounds from a plane, rather than ferry, as shown earlier

(And once again, it's automatically underlining itself, whatever)

PEACE!

A Month Already...

Hello hello friends, family, and....others, I guess!  :)

I have officially been in New Zealand for a month now, and I honestly can't believe it. Some days it feels like I've been here forever and others it's like I got here yesterday. And then I realize I'm now down to only 3 and 1/2 more months here, and it's going to go by way to fast!

Classes are ok; it's only the third week of classes now so it's a little to early to tell. Out of 3 courses total, I'm only taking one science class that will actually count towards my major, so it's definitely a lighter load than what I've gotten used to over the last 3 years. During the week there are times when I don't know what to do with myself because I've never had this much time on my hands before. We only get, like, 5 channels on the TV, and New Zealand television shows are TERRIBLE, so that crosses out TV to pass the time, we don't have any video games, and I've already read the book that I brought with, plus one of Hanah's...I don't know what to do! I think I'm going to go down to the public library this week and see if I can get a library card so I can read or something to keep myself occupied...haha!

This last weekend 3 girls (all AustraLearners that I met at our orientation in Rotorua) and I went to the town of Paraparaumu which is about a 45 minute train ride north of Wellington right on the ocean. We left Friday after our classes, stayed the night in a hostel, and came back around 6 pm on Saturday. It was a nice little trip to get out of the city for a while. When we got there on Friday around 6-ish, the sun was on it's down, so we took advantage of that opportunity to take A LOT of pictures....they all just turned out soooooooo cool!

In the background of these pictures is Kapiti Island, which has a bird sanctuary on it where apparently, since the birds are raised without predators, they aren't afraid of people so they'll just walk right up to you

Cartwheel-ing

Jumping

'Hooray, I'm just so excited to be here...!'

Ooooooo....

Ahhh....

Also, I'm a huge dork and wrote this in the sand, so they insisted on taking my picture with it

The hostel we stayed at; The Barnacle

On Saturday afternoon we were walking along the beach again and came across this little creature, and as you can see, he was alive and kickin' but quite a long way from home. We decided to leave him be and let nature be nature and kept walking. About a minute later I turned around and looked back, and a seagull had already gotten him....oops...!

(Also, I don't know why this part of the text is underlined, but I can't figure out how to 

un-underline it, and I'm too lazy to look any further, so you're just going to have to deal with it)

Ok, so that's it for now; have to get up bright and early for class. Keep enjoying the Minnesota snow, and remember PEACE.

Windy Welly

Hello friends!

SO, here we go:

I've been in Wellington for a little over a week now, and boy, do I like this city! Everyone here is so friendly. A few days ago we were downtown trying to meet up with some other people but we weren't sure where the restaurant they were at was located so we asked someone on the street if they knew, and 4 people ended up stopping to help point us in the right direction.

After the pretty plane ride I got all moved into my apartment. The place I'm living in is kind of like a townhouse, where the top floor is all one apartment, and the second floor is an entirely separate apartment, but it's all in the same house. I live with 3 other people; Hanah, who is from New Zealand, and the other 2 are Brian and Tom, who are both from the U.S. Oh my goodness, I live with boys, how scandalous...! Also, every house on the street that I live on are students, which is pretty cool. So far I don't mind living here, especially when comparing it to the dorms, which was my other option. However, I have found the ONE thing in this city that I may have a slight dislike towards...all the hills! New Zealand is quite a mountainous/hilly country, and Wellington is no exception to this. I live on the top of one of these hills, which isn't bad going to campus, but it sucks when having to walk back from downtown, especially after buying groceries. I have made the following rule for myself: anything that fits in the basket at the grocery store I can buy, anything that doesn't fit has to be bought on a different day, because I won't be able to carry it all up the hill. Even in the "shortcuts" that I have found, I still have to stop about 3 times to catch my breath! Hopefully I'll get used to them soon....hopefully....

That Thursday and Friday were spent in school orientation sessions and enrolling in classes for the semester, and wandering around the city, trying to get a sense of where everything is. 

Saturday was the Cuba Street Carnival (Cuba St is a street downtown) which is apparently the biggest carnival in New Zealand, or something like that. There was music, food, craft stands, entertainment, and a parade in the evening.

Monday we went to the Wellington Botanical Gardens, which are just up the road from where I live. Hooray nature!

I especially enjoyed this flower bed; I liked how the rows alternated between red and white. I think it looks cool...!

Then we went and explored down by the harbor (or harbour, if you're a kiwi) and I snapped this wonderful photograph

Thursday afternoon was spent on top of Mt. Victoria, which I believe is the highest point in Wellington, but I'm not sure. From up there you can see the entire city, which was pretty awesome! Also, I guess some of the Lord of the Rings scenes were filmed up there, but we didn't know where to look...

Then, on Friday (which would have been yesterday), 4 of us girls went to the South Island for the day and went on a wine tour of the Marlborough area. Apparently, if you buy a bottle of wine from New Zealand, it probably came from the Marlborough region. We only visited 4 wineries, but the list of the ones we could go to probably contained around 35 to 40 different wineries. So, now I at least know a little bit about wine, other than the fact that it can come in white or red...!

To get over to the South Island, we took a ferry that leaves from the harbor in Wellington, travels through the Cook Strait, and ends in the town of Picton on the South Island. It takes about 3 1/2 hours to get there. A large part of the ferry ride isn't through the open water of the Strait, but through the Marlborough Sounds of the South Island. And once again, gosh darn it, it was pretty. That seems to be the theme so far on this little adventure I am on...!

These are when standing on shore in Picton, looking back towards the Sounds

The ferry that we took over

This was at one of the wineries we were at; I thought it looked cool so I decided to try to be artsy...i don't know if I succeeded...

After our tours, we hopped back on another ferry in Picton and made our way back to the North Island.

So, now classes actually start on Monday, so the vacation I've been on for the last 2 weeks is about to come to an end, back to learning....

That's it for now peeps; and as you all know, PEACE!

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

I'm Alive!

Kia Ora! (That's Maori for hello, good-bye, thank-you, basically anything you want it to mean)

SO, I still don't have internet at my flat which is why it seems like I've fallen off the side of the world, but it will hopefully be set up within the next few days.

Here is a very brief synopsis of my last week (pictures and details to follow, when I'm on my own computer):
The flight from LA to Auckland was delayed 2 hours, both of those hours were spent on the plane, so instead of 13 hours on the plane, we got to spend 15...hooray!!

I didn't have a Valentine's Day.

Sunday through Wednesday morning was spent in the city of Rotorua, which smells like fart because there are hot spring geysers everywhere. Activities there included Zorbing (which is rolling down a hill in a giant inflatable hamster wheel, awesome, I know), learning the Kamate haka, which is what the All Blacks do before one of their games, rappeling down into the Waitomo Caves and seeing the glow worms (which actually really aren't worms at all), and going to a bar for my first ever LEGAL beer! HOORAY!

On Wednesday afternoon we hopped on another flight from Rotorua to Wellington on a teeny little airplane, but the view from the window was Amazing. The pictures i took don't do it justice. This country is absolutely beautiful. Now i'm moved in, just enrolled for classes, and am staring out the window at the bay....and it's pouring out. So, Liz, tell Virginia I wore her raincoat today!

Ok, PEACE OUT people. Pictures to follow!