So far in NZ

New Zealand has been awesome so far! Mason and I have already planned out the two trips we are going to take over the weekends that I am here: road tripping south to Wellington borrowing Lance’s car and then also heading to the very north of the north island!

First day I was here I really wasn’t jetlagged because I slept a lot on the plane on the way over here so I was able to unpack and then Mason and I went to Albert Park, and had a pretty lazy day. In the evening, we walked with a few people over to Mount Eden for sunset. Which, by the way, has a HUGE crater on the top! It was such a nice day, but then of course right before we started to head down it began to sprinkle. Ohh well! Came back, made dinner. Spectacular. I did however wake up at 4am, but was able to get back to sleep- thank goodness!

Yesterday I had the opportunity to explore Auckland since Mason had class for the greater proportion of the day. I made it to three parks, Myers, Victoria and Albert. I also went to an art gallery where the work of a New Zealand artist, Rita Angus was on display. She did a lot of portraits, but there was some abstract pieces as well as landscapes that I really liked. After picking up a few souvenirs, I wandered down to the waterfront where I was planning to take a ferry to one of the islands nearby, but instead spent my time walking down Prince’s Wharf, and then going to the National Maritime Museum- which was really cool! Inside there was even an Olympic 8 which I of course got pictures of J! Then I walked down along the waterfront to where the grocery store was and picked up some food and made it back in time to catch Mason before going to the gym where we climbed a bit and did some abs! The way they set routes down here is so different! They have a pretty extensive coding system, ie: NNF, no natural features, MS, match start, NNFF, natural features for feet only, NNFH only natural features for hands, SS, sitting start. Moral of the story, you’d see a route and it was annoying to figure out what the heck you were supposed to do, soooo we pretty much just played add-on! Then came back, made dinner, and stayed around the student apartments with flat mates, friends and such.

Today I’m off to explore the domain and see the War Memorial Museum, go to One Tree Hill, and then make it back in order to make dinner, go out and grab drinks! Packing somewhere in between since we are driving down to Wellington tomorrow morning!