More Fun in New Zealand!

One of the cutest animals that I've seen in New Zealand so far is the penguin! One late night all of us girls were sitting around talking and Kimberley was telling a story. In mid story we heard a really loud noise and we all thought Kim's stomach was growling! We all started laughing and Kim told us that it was the penguins living under the staircase of our house. At first we didn't believe her but the noises kept getting louder and louder! We decided to go find them so we went outside with our torches (flashlights) and crawled under the pitch black staircase. We found the daddy penguin protecting his family (he had a bunch of little baby penguins)--they were so cute! We've been super busy getting the garden planted and we had a huge group here on the weekend so getting up early to make them breakfast and what-not. Since we had to work on the weekend we got an extra day off this week. We went to two different beaches and did some fishing and I tried surfing! It was a great day!

New Zealand

Hello Everyone, I made it to New Zealand safe and sound on October 17th. Dawna, Heidi and I spent our first night in Auckland and then rented a camper van for 10 days and toured the north end of the north island. In those ten days we went to the bay of islands and went on a dolphin cruise, went to 90 mile beach and went sand boarding, and went to the most northern point of NZ (Cape Reinga.) We spent a couple nights in Rotorua and went horse back riding in the outback with english saddles (I was pretty much in pain after 15 minutes.) Apparently English saddles are harder on you but easier on the horse. My fav thing that we did in Rotorua was go white water rafting! It was my first time and I LOVED IT! I'll def have to do more of that in the future! We made it down an 8 foot waterfall without flipping! This is just a very brief outline of some of the stuff that we did. We did a lot of just driving to different beaches that were absolutely BEAUTIFUL! We would drive and drive and camp and do fun stuff pretty much that's what we did. We also made a stop at Capernwray New Zealand in Cambridge which was really fun for me and Dawna because we both went to different capernwrays; and I was thinking about going to that one before I went to Thetis Island.
On Saturday the 27th we dropped off our campervan in Auckland and flew over to Great Barrier Island. This was quite the experience because when we went to get on the plane we're like "wow our plane is small" and then we realized that wasn't our plane and the actual plane we were going on was 10X smaller! We couldn't stop laughing it was so funny! There were eight seats and I was in the very back and my luggage was in the seat beside me. I think our pilate was younger than me and still in training! Our plane landed in a field in the middle of no where and Andrew, Kim and Matt picked us up and took us to Orama. We've been getting settled into our house; Dawna and I share a room, and Heidi and Kim share a room. Andrew and Matt live upstairs and we share a kitchen and bathroom and laundry with them. It's a really cute old house! On Sunday Kim's dad took us Ocean fishing and we caught over 20 mau mau. Kim's dad caught a lobster scuba diving so that night we had a feast. On monday we started working. In the morning we are either cleaning, watering the garden or making breakfast. In the afternoon we have work projects; I'm helping plant the garden this week and dawna and heidi were doing different projects. On Monday night Kim took us up to 3 kings and we did some beginner rock climbing:) We have one activities day a week so today we went on a 5 hour hike so I'm pretty tired I should probably go to bed. I'll try and update more often!

Ya so it's been a while since I've updated my blog. Some of you might be wondering what happened to the rest of my Europe trip?! We arrived home on April 18th. I had such a wonderful time! It took me a while to adjust to being back at home, and not have exiting once in a lifetime things happen everyday! After Prague we went to Munich, Interlaken, back to Munich and then we spent our last night in Frankfurt. Here are a few pictures of our amazing paragliding day in the alps! Thanks to those of you who kept in touch with me on my trip! I loved hearing from you:)If you want to see more pictures or hear more about what we did you should check out sheri and Starr's blogs.

Austria, Paris, Holland, Berlin and Prague!

So two weeks left and I´m back at home! We were in Feldkirche (western Austria) stayi ng with Dawna´s friend Matthias from Capernwray. His family spoiled us so much and we left with more chocolate than I´ve ever seen in my life. After 3 nights there we took a night train to Paris seeing all the major sights; The Eiffel tower, Louvre, Palace of Versaille and of course shopping. From there we went to Holland and stayed with our friend Rebecca from Capernwray. It was like a Capernwray reunion because we also got to see our friend Dan-Bjoren who is going to school in Holland. Rebecca lives in Leiden which is about a 30min train ride away from Amsterdam so we spent a day there. I was really sick the whole time we were in Holland so I missed out on the tour of Holland that Rebecca gave Sheri and Starr; I just stayed at Rebecca´s place and slept. From Holland we went to Berlin and saw our friend Alex again that we met in Portugal; we did a sweet walking tour of Berlin and learned all the history. Berlin is a really nice city because its modern but is has a lot of history. then we hit the Prague- one of the top three most beautiful cities in Europe! Thanks Matthias and Family, and Rebecca for having us stay and touring us around. We had a great time and loved to see your countries.

Europe Pictures!

Rome, Corfu, Athens, Venice, Salzburg

Gutten Tag everyone! We just arrived in Salzburg today, and are staying at the Yoho hostel. I am really excited because we are going on the "Sound Of Music" four hour tour tomorrow. How can you tell I'm a big fan of the movie. Just a quick little update on where we've been: Rome, Corfu, Athens, and Venice. In Rome we got the tour of the colloseum and the Roman Forum. The tours were so interesting even though they cost a bit more it was definately worth it. Rome is the third most expensive city so we were only there for three days but I think it was one of my favorite cities so far. Just walking around there is so beautiful and there are so many spectacular fountains everywhere! Next we headed to Corfu and stayed at the "Pink Palace" hostel. We spent a lot of time on the beach relaxing and one day we rented quads one day and quaded all around the Island...So Fun! Starr got into a bit of a quading accident but praise the Lord she is o.k and she didn't have to pay for the quad scratches. In Athens we got to see the Acropolis and we stayed at "Athens Backpackers" hostel which was the 2nd best hostel we've stayed in. I think I gained a few pounds in Greece because the food was sooo Good! From Athens we took a 32 hour ferry to Venice that was delayed 5 hours so pretty much we killed two days on a boat. It was totally worth it once we got to Venice, I felt like I was in a make believe city. We took a day trip to Murano and saw the glass blowing demonstrations ..really neat, thanks Todd for recommending it! No I didn't get to ride in a Gondale as much as we wanted to we were too poor. On Friday we are going to western Austria to stay with Dawna's friend Matthias so it will be a nice break to be in a home. Love you all ToNs! Thanks for the emails I love hearing from my family and friends!

Italy

HELLO (CIAO) Everyone! It's pretty much been a whirlwind since France. We left on Tuesday to the Cinque Terra because everyone we met told us we had to go there. We are super flexible so off we went and had a great time. There are five different villages in the Cinque Terra and we stayed in Monterosso in a really nice apartment. It's kind of a funny story because we had looked for a place to stay on the internet, and couldn't find anything. When we got there we went to information and they gave us a sheet with some places to stay, which were pretty much impossible to find from their sketchy map. After walking around with our heavy packs forever we were all ready to cry cuz we were so tired and we didn't have any lead on a place to stay. When we decided it was a hopeless situation, the only lady in the village I'm sure that spoke English said hi to us and we asked her if she knew anywhere to stay. Her sister happened to own an apartment nearby but it was a little out of our price range. She said she could give us a special price and she took us to see the place. It was a mansion apartment we were so excited cuz we had our own rooms and a kitchen so we could cook for ourselves and we could do our laundry there for free. The next day we hiked to all the villages and saw the most amazing views and explored each of the villages. On Thursday we left for Florence, stopping in Pisa to see the famous disaster! We sort of caught the wrong train to Florence when we left Pisa so when we finally arrived there information was closed and we didn't have a hostel(I don't know why we do this to ourselves.) When we finally found a hostel it was full and so were all the hotels on the street except for one. Yesterday we went to the Gardino Bardino Di Eoboli and inside we saw the Porcellane museum, the Galleria de costume and another garden called Gardino Bardini. In the evenings we love walking around and seeing the cities at night so we walked to the river and since we are in Italy we had to get Gelato. Today we went to the Uffizi museum after waiting in line for 2 hours. We saw paintings from Leonardo DaVinci, Donnatello, Michaelangelo, and many others. Tonight we are going to a concert and tomorrow we are catching the train to Rome. Not sure how that is going to go because the trains are going on strike tomorrow. We were actually responsible and booked our hostel in Rome and now we don't know of we'll get there! We find this all quite hilarious! Anyways in a nutshell this is what we've been up to, check out Sheri and Starr's blogs cuz I think they wrote about more stuff.