This morning I woke up to Onya leaving at about 7. She was checking out to go explore northern New Zealand, so she is gone forever. :( She was very nice, one of the better Germans, but I will get to that later. But I looked out the window and noticed it was starting to get light....so tapping into my previous knowledge gained from sitting on a rock by Mary's lake waiting for the sun to rise for an hour in the freezing cold.....I knew I had time to catch the sun rise. So I jumped out of bed as quietly as possible and unlocked my bags to find pants, shoes, jacket, and my camera and sprinted out to a lovely pier. I got there just in time right before the sun crept over the island in the harbor. It was gorgeous and I took a ton of pictures. It was a bit cold but so lovely sitting and watching the sun come up before most of the rest of the world! I stayed and took a bunch of the pictures of the boats in the harbor and even a bird that landed on the pier and reminded me of the part in Finding Nemo where the birds are on the pier. I took so many photos my camera died so I had to get home to charge it before my tour at 10:30. But I went on the "Stray Bus" tour. It is a free backpackers tour, because that is what I considered right now, a backpacker. But we went to the sky tower, the big tower that is like the seattle space needle. You can jump off of it but I didn't because my travel dude Mel said I should go bungee jumping instead but one kid from our tour group jumped off and it look awesome! But I think Mel was right, the bungee will be better. But the tower is cool, you can also walk around it on a big circular platform. Then we went to a look out point that is a memorial for William Savage, I think he was one of the prime ministers but I took some really gorgeous shots looking over the harbor onto the city and the island in the harbor. I was then late to get onto the bus so the tour guide made me sing the first like of the american national anthem. Good thing it was only the first line though, because I am pretty sure that might be the only part I know, which is super embarrassing, I am not a good USA rep. But our bus was mostly full of German people anyway and some of them didn't understand English super well so it didn't matter much how well I did it, but it was embarassing. One thing I noticed on a bus where I was basically the only America and besides the tour guide (Chucky), the only native English speaker is that I think people were scared to talk to me. They would just kinda of smile and nod when I tried to say stuff but maybe they didn't think their English was good enough or something....or maybe my hair looked really bad, idk....it could have been either one. But I talked to the tour guide a bunch. After the lookout spot we went to a pub to get lunch. They gave everyone free beer! yeah! Mom, I got diet coke :) But the Germans got beer. Then off to the Auckland Harbor Bridge! We climbed the bridge to the bungee jumping spot. Basically we just walked under the road to the middle. We watched a few people jump but I didn't do it because I didn't have enough money on me, plus I think I will save it for Queenstown where the bungee is 3 times as big and I want to go big! But the views were awesome and I met some more Americans and a British dude, I love talked to them because they would actually talk back! and they sounded mostly normal! It convinced my I wasn't just going crazy.
After the tour I came home and then went out and walked around the city and went to Alfred park and just wandered for a bit until I decided to go to the library to try and skype my family. That was pretty successful, although the internet is very slow here, everywhere I have been so far. But I finally caved and went to McDonalds for dinner because they have a cheeseburger special for $3 otherwise, everything I could possibly eat would be $10-15 even at wendy's! I might need to budget a little differently because I did not take into account a much higher cost of living that have here in the whole country. Minimum wage is around NZ$13 or 14 which is like US$11. There are subway's everywhere and Anna went to one and she was mad because they had stuff like Italian herbs and cheese, honey oat, wheat, and white. I just laughed because I thought that was normal but I guess in Finland they only eat very dark breads like rye. I am pretty exhausted from a long day of touring so I am sure it is bed time for me soon, I just had to get this blog going or else I don't think I ever would. Sorry if its boring so far....eventually I will learn what people actually want to read on blogs, mostly for now its kind of a way for me to keep track of what I have been up to. Hopefully my posts won't be so long and wording when I get more settled into the life of a boring student.
Kia Ora! (also means, thanks!)
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