A Sunday of Adventures....

We headed into Wellington two Sundays ago and went to the Zoo with Fiona and Sam. It was, well, a zoo. Nothing special really, aside from the Kiwi we saw. Couldn't take a picture of it though because of the lighting, they like to stay in dark places and thus we couldn't disturb them! We did meet a very friendly Giraffe as you can see below. It's coming up to sniff Kel.

Here are a few cute otters. I just like the picture of them together, there isn't really anything special about them!

Now this guy.... what a wierd looking bear!! It's a Malayan Sun Bear

And just a monkey for show!

After the zoo, Kel and I stayed in Welly while Fi and Sam headed to a Netball game. We hung around the city for a while until this 'dinner' we heard about -- I posted about it a couple weekends ago, before we had actually gone. It caught our attention on a flyer because it said it was an all-you-can-eat vegeterian dinner for FOUR DOLLARS! Definitely sold us on that and we didn't pay much attention to the Yoga session that was also written on the sheet.





So we arrive at the place around 5:00pm and get lead into a room to sit on the floor and watch singers perform. Keep in mind here when we got the flyer, we received it from people like this:

So we're sitting in a big room with dim lights and 5 people on a stage singing a song. And the song has 3 words and repeats the entire time. They did this for the first 15 minutes straight.

Ok, Kel and I thought. We're open minded. This is fine. Then... the song continued. Another 15 minutes went by and the finally stopped the song!

Oh good! We can eat that delicious, vegetarian meal now, we thought. But no, we were wrong. A performance started and gave us the history of 'Hare Krishna'. I had no idea what this was... nor that I was getting an education on it this evening, but kel and I sat through it and learned a bit. This theatrical performance lasted around 45 minutes, and was somewhat enjoyable.

Yes. We will eat now!

Wrong. Again. The 'leader' of Hare Krishna was here to talk to us. And talked, and talked, and talked. We learned about the history, the start of this following, who was doing it, where this guy had traveled to tell people about it and much much more. Then, it was done.

And then, they started the song again. 3 words, repeated, for 30 minutes. NOOOOOO!

It was almost 3 hours after we got there that we finally got to eat. And oh, was it worth it!! We sat down to a nicely dressed table with a cold drink waiting for us, and this wasn't just any drink, it was a lemonade with infused tea and lavendar in it!! Delicous!! Then the meal came and was amazing. There were a variety of veggie items- lasagna, salad, pasta, sauteed veggies and other things I can't even remember!! We stuffed our faces. When, just as the performance kept going, so did the meal. Out came dessert! It was homemade ice cream. And, they had a vegan option for Kelly!! Perfect. This capped off our experience with Hare Krishna's, and we headed home.

Kel on the other hand may, or may not have returned.... that's for her to disclose.

*Side note, nothing at all against Hare Krishna's from me. I think they were lovely, friendly, open people. Just the whole singing for 30 minutes straight and having it be the same words repeated took me out of it! But to each their own.

Hawkes Bay

Over the weekend Kel and I ventured up to Hawkes Bay again. We got a brief visit of the area during our first road trip. It's a beautiful little area made up of Napier and Hastings (two towns). Napier is the more elegant of the two while Hastings is the hard working industrial side. Napier is known for its Art Deco buildings because of a huge earthquake in the 1930s that demolished the city, and then was rebuilt in that time era. We stayed the weekend in Napier and had planned to get into town, rent some bikes and go tour the vineyards again... but the weather held us back.

We made it into town at 8:30am on Saturday morning and headed over to Starbucks to start our day out in Seattle style, considering the pouring rain that would keep us inside all day. We spent about two hours there just drinking our coffee and talking.... Kel and I have been together nearly none stop for the past month and a half, yet we still can sit in a cafe and talk for hours!! It's amazing really. After Starbucks we walked around the town and tried to do some shopping, though neither of us actually bought anything! (I'm trying to figure out souveniors to take home but can't really come up with anything... if anyone wants something from New Zealand, please don't hesistate to ask!)

Luckily, I had recieved the email address of a girl, Hillary, down here from Seattle also doing her Student Teaching in Hastings. I emailed her earlier in the week to let her know that we were heading up for the weekend. She would be in town and actually spending the weekend in Napier with her direct supervisor, Leigh, who is also my indirect supervisor. In the afternoon on Saturday we met both of them for more coffee at another cafe. We chatted for a while and it was nice to get to hear someone elses opinion on the benefits and disadvantages of student teaching abroad. Also, it was nice to have three Americans and one Kiwi in the situation so we all had a few good laughs about the differences! We departed ways after our coffee and decided to meet up later that night for dinner and drinks.

Leigh came down to our hostel in the city center and picked up Kel and I. We went out and got a take away noodle dish and headed back up to Leigh's house.... which was beautiful!!! The house is gorgeous and sits on a bluff overlooking the Bay and the two cities below it. It was really nice! She has two children and a great husband that we got to meet as well. After dinner at her place, Leigh took us down to a few of the bars nearby. We got a couple of drinks and there was a big Rugby match on (Wellington versus Christchurch) so the atmosphere at the bars was very serious and into the game since those are two big rival cities. The best example of the rivalary would be UW vs. WSU or something along those lines.

We called it a night pretty early and headed back to our hostel, then got up in the morning to meet up with Leigh and Hillary again and go to The Filter Room, which is a brewery/cider house a bit outside of the town. We headed that way and tasted a few different beers and ciders, then met up with our ride to take us back to Wellington.

It was a fun, yet relaxing weekend which was a nice change of pace. Now its back to the school week for me and Kel has one more week in New Zealand!! Oh, which I don't think I posted about.... She was supposed to leave on May 5th, but decided to cancel her flight and stay for another month. So she's here until June 3rd now.

This week, school picks up for me and I'm pretty much taking on the classes full time now. Then this weekend is the 'Queens Birthday' so we have no school on Monday. This worked out well, and Kelly and I have decided to stay in Wellington for her last weekend. On Sunday we are going to see the musical CATS that is in town, and stay in the city in a posh hotel instead of a hostel!! How nice! I'm very much looking forward to that!

Hope all is well back home and the weather is turning into a lovely summer. It's winter down here and seems to be a lot like Seattle with the cold and rain, so it is bearable.... though it isn't the dead of winter which I hear gets extremely cold!! I'll keep you posted.....

Another weekend in Welly....

On Saturday, Kel and I took the 'cable car' up to this botanical garden that overlooked Wellington. It was a perfect day to go out and do this. Not a cloud in the sky and just the right rempature. We wandered around the gardens for a few hours and Kel took some pretty pictures of things : )

The city is behind us, and that is Wellington Harbour

Two great pictures of the botanical gardens we walked through.

And on Friday night we went out to a restaurant called 'Flying Burrito Brothers'. We've been missing our Mexican meals, so this was exactly what we needed!! We got there and had about a 45 minute wait, but had heard good things and had a 50% off coupon, so decided to wait it out. We saddled up to the bar and got a pitcher of margaritas to help the time pass! Here is a picture from the bartendar, who gave us some amazing hats to wear for the photo:

Today is Sunday and we're back at Fi and Sam's place. We're planning to head back into the City tonight because on Friday night we met a group of singing/dancing Buddhist that gave us a flyer to a Yoga/Vegeterian event so we'll be heading out soon to go check that out!! Should be a good time!

Rugby Match!

Kel and I went to our first Rugby match this past weekend! It was the hometown team of the Hurricanes versus the Force. (Hurricanes won 21-10) Kel and I hadn't seen much rugby yet, so we didn't understand everything but we started to pick up bits and pieces. It was REALLY fun though! The stadium is about half the size of Qwest field, so its a bit more low key. It was a terrible stormy night, but luckily we were about three rows under the overhang to not get soaking wet. We went to the game with Zach, his roommate Francus (from France) and Sam, the guy we live with.

The game consists of two halves, forty minutes each and about a 10 minute half time. I can't tell you much more than that though!! It isn't straight foward offense and defense, like American Football so it was tough for the crowd to get as into it as us Hawks fans do when we're on defense! Kel and I were very happy to find that the beers at the stadium were only $4... but they were about half the size of a beer you'd get at a Seahawks game. We had a lot of fun though and didn't really think about the 20 minute walk to the bars after the match and getting rained on while we were in the stadium... so once we started to leave and the storm we were watching in front of us the whole night was now straight above us made for a quick paced walked into the nearest bar!!

We headed to a hostel where some of our friends were staying that we had met on the South Island the week before. We stayed there for a few hours, considering the hostel usually has the cheapest drinks in town. Then Zach took us to a bar called 'Good Luck' which was great!! It was an underground bar and they were having a DJ battle that night. It was a very fun, relaxed atmosphere, with some dancing involved which Kel and I have been into since we've been down here. It seems that here (and maybe it's just the bars we've been to so far) tend to play more fun dance music, then the bump and grind kind of music we get a lot at home. So kel and I hit the dance floor and jumped around singing along all night!! I think our favorite song from that night was "Jump for my love" -- it was in Love Actually -- which we knew all of the words to and one of the English guys we were with commented on that as he proceeded to leave the dance floor....

Overall, it was a great weekend!! Rugby, beers and dancing, can't get much better than that! Happy Mothers Day, even though its Monday for me... but I hope the kids are spoiling you!! Mom, I'll make you breakfast in bed when I get home : )

You can see a bit of the down pour.
Kel and I with our Tui Beers
Close up of some of the players.

Glacier Adventure

Kel and I continued our trip down the West coast of the South Island and got to Franz Joseph Glacier. Little info about the Glacier: It sits about 240km above sea level, and is located within a rainforest. Yes, a rainforest!

The day before we got there we signed up for a full day hike up the Glacier, and the morning we woke up to go on it was POURING rain. Once we got to the hiking center, they gave us the option of cancelling the trip or downgrading to a half day since the conditions would be so bad. We decided to do the half day hike instead while a few of our friends opted out of it completely.

We left the center wearing their very nice gortext rain gear and headed out on what turned into a 2 hour hike up through the rainforest to the front of the glacier. This picture below, we hiked along the right side of it through the brush. And the center grey area has some streams and one large river running down the middle.


We crossed a few streams and went up into a brand new trail that had been cut out the day before for us. This trail made it a bit sketchy walking up since it was fresh dirt (mud really because of the rain). I felt a little uneasy about going up this route, considering the conditions were getting worse and we'd just have to hike back down through this area on our way back. Kel and I carried on and got through the muddy rainforest area. We stepped out of the bush to an open stone field with a huge river running down the middle from all of the glacier water. We were about 50m from the glacier and were told to put our "crampons" (Bear can correct me on that one) on. They are the spikes that go on the bottom of our shoes to help us walk on the ice.


As soon as we had completed this we gathered in toward our leader excited to move on and up the glacier! Then, our guide told us the bad news - we were unable to climb up the glacier because the stream we had crossed an hour ago had turned into a RIVER! We thought he was joking since we saw two other groups ahead of us and still on the glacier, but he said they hadn't received word yet and would be turning around shortly. Being the cheap traveller that I am, I asked him if we would get a refund (not realizing the intensity of the situation-- but he said we would!) Kel and I were bummed out about not getting on the glacier, so we wondered over to a 2x2 foot block of ice that had been chipped off and reached out for that so we could at least say we touched the Franz Joseph Glacier!

As we turned away from the glacier, the conditions were just as bad, if not worse. It started to thunder and lighting, which added to the intensity! We were nearing the trail from the river side, and noticed the 'stream' we needed to cross. It was well up to my knees and rushing extremely fast! A few guides had come up from the starting location to make sure everyone would get out safely. The staggered themselves across the river and we each had to cross one at a time while being pulled arm by arm through the guides. It was very intense and scary!!


We made it safely across the first river and started up through the trail again. The guides told us that our original path had been washed out so we needed to take the back up plan. This consisted of lots of ropes and ladders that had been in place to climb over large rocks and down sides of cliffs. The best part of it all, well, best and worst, was crossing under a few water falls! It was scary at the time but looking back at it was fantastic!! We were already soaking wet from the rain, so it almost felt like a ride at Universal Studios... just that it was real life and if we slipped at any time we fall off the side of a cliff.


After about another hour of hiking like this we finally made it back to the parking lot to get the bus!! I felt bad about the getting our refund question, but once everyone was safe, I didn't feel like too much of a jerk! And we did get 50% back! :)

The pictures are at the bottom… I can’t figure out how to upload these in the order I want, but you’ll get the idea from looking at them.

Hope everyone is doing well back at home! I miss you all!

This is the 'stream' we had to cross. The people in the red are the guides that staggered themselves through it to help us.
Here is a picture of Kel and I reenacting our feelings of the adventure!

This one is of us BEFORE things got bad

An example of the waterfalls we had to go under. This picture was actually taken when we were heading out, so these waterfalls got a lot bigger and when we had to head back we were up there - about 100m above from where this picture was taken and had to cross under the water.

We made it back safely!! And you can see we are soaking wet...

Just a picture of the whole glacier

Zorbing!

Kel and I went Zorbing while on our Road Trip of the North Island. It was all that people said it would be! The most fun I think I could have had in a 15 second time period while being in a huge bubble and water splashing around!!

We went with Zach's friend Stu, so the three of us were inside the ball. There is actually quite a bit of space in there, we all could stand up, though the water at the bottom made it slippery! The guy covers the little hole that we came through then tells us to start walking toward the crest of the hill, as soon as we got over the hump we all slipped and the ball started to roll down the hill pretty fast! I could not stop laughing, and the only way that i can try to describe what was going on is that we were inside a washing machine. If anyone every comes to New Zealand it is for sure a MUST DO! I'll put pictures up as soon as possible... the computers on this side of the world are a little slow...