The calm before the storm

It was a pretty school heavy week as it was the last week of classes and my final assignments were due. All my classes were semester reviews and test reviews. My Maori class even had a party for the last day it felt like high school all over again, but I didn't mind one bit. After a few speed bumps on my last day of classes I finally officially finished the semester at Massey University Oct 21st. After classes finished we got one week off for a study break and 2 1/2 weeks of finals. I had 4 final scheduled over those 2 1/2 weeks. But my first 2 finals weren't until Nov 2nd and I was feeling too worried about them so I decided to use the weekend and beginning of the study week to travel, take part in some local culture, and spend some time with friends. Friday after my last class I baked some banana bread to bring and headed out to a YSA dance at the church. It was a costume/sunday best and since I hadn't really had time to come up with any fun costume I stuck to a simple skirt. A bunch of my friends really went all out though and looked amazing, I'll add some photos, my favourite was my friend Jen and her Avatar costume. The dance had a slow start as only the Palmerston North YSA were there to begin but then things took off when a few van loads of YSA from Hastings showed up. They had driven 2 hours to come to the dance and it was a blast. Islanders are great dancers and lots of fun, I've never had so much fun dancing with strangers. I even lost my shoe at one point as I accidently kicked it across the room and everyone stopped and got a good laugh as I was a little embarrassed but then just laughed too. Overall it was a great night.
 Saturday was supposed to be the day to finished writing my very last report due the following friday but things kept coming up and I didn't get much done. That evening my flatmate, Tamil, had decided to have one last barbque and party before the drinking and noise ban took effect for the halls, so we roasted up some chicken, burgers, and vegges. It was a good eat. Afterwards we moved the party into our flat and hung out and played some last very epic games of spoons. After spoons we had a good time just hanging out and talking (and drinking). Since I wasn't drinking I decided it was time to break out my high class grape juice I had bought from the winery in Nelson. Brayden, Ema, and I hung out pretty late and just talked, it was hard to not just sit and reminisce about all the good times we have had, not like they were over yet, it is just like a common feeling of our adventure coming to an end. During the party Benedict and Graeme convinced me to come with them and meet up with all of our other friends to go to Wellington to watch the final for the Rugby World Cup in NZ's capital Wellington the next day.....hence the calm before the storm. These little parties were just the beginning of some epic weeks.

Toni, Jen and Anita

Anita, Holly, and Nadida

Jen, Pikachu, Nadida, Holly, and Sam

Jen as avatar and some of the Hastings boys

Brayden, Zach, Jen, Ema, and Graeme

You can even get sick in magical wonderlands but zwiebelkuchen makes up for it!

It was a rough start of this week. I got sick with a cold Monday and just couldn’t get rid of it. I drank heaps of water and ate all my kiwifruits. I just basically sat in my room for 2 days because I didn’t want to spread germs. I even missed Canadian thanksgiving, I was going to celebrate with Ema and Brayden, the resident Canadians, but it happens and it is never convenient. Being sick sure makes you appreciate being healthy and also appreciate soft tissues because toilet paper just hurts after a day of blowing your nose. I missed a couple classes but nothing too big. Thursday I went to the gym to try and get my blood pumping to work the sickness out of me and afterwards Ema and I decided to do our own little barbque by frying hamburgers. She brought avocado put on hers and so I put a little on mine. A lot of my friends eat avocado a lot here and I used to hate it, but now I think it is really growing on me, they are so cheap here and always so good. Finally by Friday I was feeling ok. Yuko invited me over for dinner with the missionaries. It is always so fun to sit down and have a proper meal with good company. Afterwards I hung around and helped her plan for our Atawhai pizza party the following Saturday. So I finally was doing good from being sick and Ema started to get sick! I felt bad but I really tried to avoid people to not get them sick but she was only kind of sick for a couple days. Later Friday evening, Franzi had decided another german food night was in order. So it was time for zwiebelkuchen! And well if you speak German, it is pretty much like it is called, a cake of onion, just kind of like a glorified pizza crust with loads of onions baked in. It made for a fun evening with bad breathe for everyone! But I love the diversity of our evenings. It never gets old hanging out with 4 Germans, a Scot, a Pole, a French woman, 2 Canadians, 3 Americans, and occasionally a couple kiwis. They are all such awesome people and even though we really are from so many different places we have a blast and all get a long super well. After onion cake we just hung out and I made it a pretty early night (about 1 am haha) because I was still recovering from being sick. But it just makes me smile that we have such an awesome community here and all my friends are just a few houses away so I can just mosey home whenever or run home really fast if I forgot something. I can even just show up at any of their houses whenever I want and say hi or stay awhile. No need to really call or text when you can just walk over and talk to someone face to face. We do anything and everything together. You can always go cook dinner with someone or bake cookies or go into town or down to campus. We really just have a close group that look out for each other and always keen to do stuff, I love it. Throwing a party can be totally spur of the moment and as long as people are in town you are sure to have at least 10 people hopping and ready to have a good time. It is cool. Anyway, on Saturday we had our pizza party in the common room. Yuko order loads of pizzas and snacks and treats. We all hung out and had a good time. It was a lot of really good food and there was even ice cream for dessert after. Near the end there was still some leftover food so Warren had invited the missionaries to come over and get Pizza. I had left for a bit but when I came back some of my friends were leaving and were like” Jen, watch out there are some Jehovah’s Witness’ in there if you don’t want to talk to them”. I looked in the window and was like “no those are Jehovah’s Witness’, those are Mormons. Those are cool guys, a couple of them are even from Utah. They are my friends and just Mormon missionaries.” I just sort of explained who they were and I think they still thought it was little weird that Warren invited them to our party, but maybe they will realize they are normal people and not some freaks trying to shove religion down their throats. It was a fun evening anyay and we finished it off of course by watching some more rugby. The tournament is coming to end! It will be the All Blacks vs. France in the final!

Another fun thing we have also started a new tradition of Sunday morning pancakes. Every Sunday we get together and make pancakes it is kind of like waffles at home but instead of with my family back home it is with my “Atawhai family” I have here. It makes for a good start to my Sundays.  

Franzi cooking onions....lots and lot of onions!

Excited for onion cake!

zwiebelkuchen!

Himatagni Beach and more

This week was a bit more school filled but that still doesn’t mean I did a lot. I had 1 report due on Friday and another one that was supposed to be due on Friday but in typical new Zealand fashion, my teacher put off the due date a week. Most teachers here are so relaxed, especially about due dates. But I got most of it done anyway. It was part of a project for my Maori class and our teacher said we could work together so of course the 5 of us from Atawhai village made it a team effort and it only took us a few hours to each do a bit of research and then share everything we found with everyone. During the week I also got some good training sessions in with Ema, but she decided to stop doing the sprint training because she doesn’t have time and doesn’t actually need real results for her study, it was just really more for fun, but we still just do our usual gym routine and it is great. On Wednesday though I decided to change it up a bit, one of the guys from church is a professional fighter and he teaches a muay thai kick boxing class on Wednesdays in town, so I decided to go to that. Instead of kick boxing it should probably call it a kicking Jen’s butt class, ha ha just kidding, but it was a pretty solid work out. I was pretty tired at the end but I was impressed because I was able to do a lot more then I would have a few months ago before training with Ema because it is a lot more strength stuff then just my typical endurance type running, so it was fun. Afterwards I had to run down to our volleyball game and afterwards Ema and I were going to work out because she hadn’t yet that day but then some Polynesian girls we had met the weekend before at rugby were playing basketball and invited us to play with them. So we grabbed a couple more guys and played some 3 v 3. I haven’t played ball in forever so it was really fun and really random because we barely even knew these people but they are just so friendly, I love Polynesians. Ema has played a lot of basketball and on account of my height, we won but it wasn’t a real serious game anyway.

Thursday, there was a ceremony for international students that will be graduating or leaving massey and so it was mostly all the graduate students that were graduating that semester and then like 4 of us exchange students. We don’t think we were actually supposed to be there but we had been invited and got a certificate for a “certificate of proficiency” basically I think we all just checked some box on our application that we weren’t supposed to, ha ha, but it was fun to pretend to graduate and they even gave a us a little gift.

So the weekend got a bit more interesting. Saturday a few of my friends all decided to go to the Himatangi beach even though it had rained all morning, but we wanted to have a bonfire and I really wanted to make s'mores, so I found some wanna be marshmellows at the grocery store that were kind of pathetic in size but they worked and so we went to the beach for the afternoon and had a picnic and a fire and I finally got a s'more! But we had to use funky chocolate covered wheat crackers to make them so it really wasn't quite the same but it was close. Fun fact: turns out fires are illegal on the beach so we got in trouble by the fire brigrade ha ha but it was ok, they just said hey don't do it again. Oops. But it was a good day, we played soccer and frisbee on the beach even while wearing our coats because it was cold.

Sunday Brayden and Graeme had their marathon . They both did really good, I was super impressed, especially with only training about 3 weeks. I had wanted to go and if not run it, at least cheer them on but I had general conference so Ema made some fun signs and gave them some moral support. General conference was pretty good, we saw it 1 week after everyone in Utah because of the time change and just watched the 2 sunday sessions on a projector in the chapel. Afterwards I went over to a fellow ysa’s house and we made some giant pizzas with like a million toppings and watched a movie so it was a really good chill sunday. Afterwards I came home and watched the RWC semifinal, Australia vs. All Blacks. I literally have never seen more blood in any sporting event in my life ha ha and they don't care, they just keep playing. Those guys are monsters. Granted this game was probably the 2 biggests rivals in any sport in the entire world so it was extra intense, but of course the All Blacks won and now will be in the final whoot! Good thing too, because I am not sure I would want to be living here in the All Blacks lost.

Fake graduation

Ema at the beach

Bonfire!

Brayden and Ema made the paper!

Haka!

Smore!

After Training one day

Temple Week Finally!

So, it has been awhile but hopefully I can still remember all my grand adventures from the almost 6 last weeks because it hasn’t been boring 6 weeks, never is here. So I last told you about my trip to rugby world cup game that was an awesome once in a lifetime experience. The following week was a bit hectic. I had to get some studying done and go to a few different lectures so that I could take off Thursday and Friday and go to the temple in Hamilton. It was our ward temple week and most people went the entire week but  I couldn’t miss that much school. So I went to some different lab times so I could miss my labs at the end of the week. It is a 5-7 hour drive to them temple, depending on who is driving. Fortunately on the way it only took  5 but on the way back it took 7 L. But ready for a crazy story? Ok so on Thursday I had to leave  4 am to go to the temple and rode with this really nice dad and his niece. It wasn't a bad drive at all and we got there way early, before 10 am but we missed the morning baptism session and they only do certain times a day because they don't have enough people so I just basically had to sit around and wait for the 2:30 session but was ok because it was a really nice day and my room reservation was never made at the temple motel so I had to get that all sorted out. The ward here is super unorganized. I wasn't even sure if I was going to have a ride home but it was fine. Ok so here is where it gets crazy. So to kill time me and tireena (I have no idea what this girls name is but it is something like that ha ha but I was with her all day and she is 19 and getting married next month but she really is pretty fun if not a little crazy) went to go walk around the temple grounds and look for that elusive monkey tree for Kathryn. But then we also decided to go to the visitors centre. And well who should open the door to welcome us to the visitor centre but a cute as ever sister missionary named Jenn Frost ha ha yep. You should have seen her face! Wow she gave me the biggest hug and was just like so confused and so excited at the same time. She had the biggest grin on her face the whole time I was there it was great. I told her how I was in NZ for school and my ward was up in Hamilton for temple week. She loved it! We were talking about it and just the size of her mission and the  fact that she was scheduled to be working the visitors centre and in that area at that time it was just like the most perfect timing, I couldn't have planned it better! But she is doing so so great! I could tell she absolutely loves what she is doing and loves this country. She still has awhile to go but I think she must just be a fantastic missionary. Her companion seemed so sweet too. She gave me a tour of the visitors centre and told me some fun facts about this history of the church here, which is really pretty cool. The whole time she was just stoked. It was so fun to see her for my sake as well, even for me it is crazy to see part of home here in New Zealand. It was pretty exciting. Crazy huh?

So then I went and did some baptism at 2:30 then the temple is not really in the city so without a car there wasn't a lot for me to do but the weather was nice so I just hung outside for a bit. Jenn Frost had left already and all the older people were in the temple doing other stuff so I was just by myself for the rest the afternoon but it was sunny so I just hung outside. Finally I got my room worked out and would be sharing from a lady form the stake. Her name was Rose Mary and she was super nice, but I didn't see much of her. We stayed in dorm like motel rooms where there was a big common kitchen...felt like a hostel all over again. I tried to take a nap because it had been a long day but couldn’t sleep. So I cooked my dinner and was just kind of eating alone because I was the only person under the age of 50 there and didn't know anyone. But then this elderly dude came and sat by me. He said he felt bad that I was alone but it really wasn't a big deal but he was sweet for sitting with me. He told me stories of his life while I ate, it was great. I guess he is originally from Australia and was baptized in Brisbane and he came to the US once and went to conference in SLC. While he was there everyone would as where he was from and he would tell them NZ and most people didn't know where it was! I think that is crazy but this was awhile back. He told me another story and I don't remember what it was about exactly but this is how it started "back when I was living in the Australian outback..." it was as that point I had to try so hard to stop from laughing. I mean I just realized how awesome is it that I can just sit and eat dinner and have it be totally normal that I listening to a guy telling about when he lived in the Australian outback. My life is so great ha ha. 

So after dinner I wanted to take photos of the temple at night I was I out walking and ran into the only other person from the stake 25 or under. It was this dude that used to be in my ward until the split so I kind of knew him. So we went and took photos and just hung out. He told me about his life a bit, it is insane. He is really from a polynesian island, Niue. He worked really hard in the plantations and fished and saved all his money to come to NZ by himself when he was 15 but couldn't speak any english or read but went to school anyway and learned english and how to read. Then when he was 17 he needed money so he had to join the army, and that is allowed when you are 17. So then he was in army and when he was 22 he found the church and joined it and he quit the army and started doing an apprenticeship to be a carpenter because he wants to be builder (sound like someone else  I know). He improved his english by reading church books and scriptures and now he going on a mission in November. This dude was super intense and really stoked about church stuff. It blew my mind, that like when I was 15 the hardest thing I had was basketball and when I was 17....AP tests? big school projects? ha ha nothing compared to moving to a new country with nothing. He is a pretty extreme case but not so unique. A lot of people here have similar stories. It is so crazy, how you can have no idea about someone until you talk to them for a little awhile and find out how they lived in the australian outback, like that older fellow, or this guy, Viladmir, that comes from a country that it took me 2 days to figure out just how to pronounce the name of it, Niue (said like new-way).

Then Friday was pretty low key compared to Thursday. Just woke up to catch the 8 am baptism session and then they cancelled the only other session for the day at 10 am and just made the 8 am one extra long. There were only 3 girls and 1 guy doing baptisms. So after that I had the whole day to kill by myself as everyone else did other ordinances. Jen Frost wasn't going to be at the centre until 4 so I just wandered around the temple grounds and just walked around and laid in the sun and read and stuff. Good thing it was such a nice day. I tried to walk into town but it was super far away and part of the way there was a highway so I turned around and came back. I just ended up going to the centre and watching one of the joseph smith movies but then Viladmir finished his sessions at about one and so I met up with him because I was getting pretty bored. So we just hung out for a bit. We were talking about the US and he had assumed most of the people in the US were all members of the church, ha ha I had to correct a few misconceptions. I think he was disappointed when I said that New York had less than 1% of the population were members. It is crazy here how everyone just assumes that Utah is this perfect zion place and even the US sometimes too. I've disappointed lots of people when I tell them that is not the case but it is still a pretty great place. Anyway so we finally got all the older people together and their stuff loaded in the van I was riding back in that was supposed to leave just after 4 but did leave until 5:30. It was  12:30 when I finally got home. I have never been so excited to get to my bed, I was so tired.

Saturday I finally got a little sleep but then got up early to go to the farmers market because I was out of  food and came back and went to the gym with ema and did another killer leg workout that I certainly felt for a few days. Then to add to that we went and played touch rugby for 2 hours at the park with a bunch of people and so top it all off I decided to walk to town to the festival they were having there to celebrate the rugby games being played here in Palmy. I was  SO tired my legs were about to fall off and we still had to walk 45 minutes home, so I was with 3 other people and we walked around the square downtown and bumped into a dude at the library who one them knew and he was headed back to Massey so we basically begged him for a ride and squished all in his car. It was like a gift from heaven, my legs wouldn't have made it home. So last night I just relaxed and watched a super intense rugby match. Then today got up  and a bunch of us decided to do a pancake breakfast, so that was a lot of fun. Late, I did find out I got the high in the class on one assignment so that was good news. I might just pass a few classes yet! even with my serious lack of studying. No worries though, the only class I worry about the final for is the Maori class and that one won't even transfer to the U but I'll still try because I would not be so ok with failing a class. But should really start studying so I can travel during my week long study break before finals. 

School, Rugby, Food, and Life

So in the last few weeks I have been concentrating on getting all the details of my spring break up on the blog. Those two weeks were sort of a highlight of my life so I felt like the detail was necessary so could look back on each day and be able to remember all the amazing things I saw and did. Since then I have been up to some more adventures too. I’ll spare you the minute details of the weeks, as I sit and write this I probably can’t remember most of them anyway.  So there is really probably one word that could describe most of the excitement for the past few weeks, rugby. The rugby world cup here is in full swing and it is everywhere! There is all black fever all around. Basically every weekend night you will either find me and my friends in the common room watching the games or when we are feeling more social, going into to town to watch them. But it has been blast! It is amazing how far I have come in understanding the game. I remember when I went to see the All Blacks back around when I first moved here, I knew most of the major rules but didn’t understand much of the strategy. Now I am really getting the hang of it. It also helped that last week I went with a one of the local guys here and a bunch of his friends and they taught a few of us international kids how to play touch rugby. Touch is slightly different, but actually being on the field and playing the game helped me understand it enormously. So needless to say, I am really starting to enjoy the sport and beginning to wonder why the US is so obsessed with football, but I’m going to get into that. Although on a quick side note, I did hear that the U crushed a certain team a couple weeks ago. I’m not real in the know about what is happening at the U but a few different people were sure to fill me in on the massive slaughter referred to as the “Holy War”. Nice work Utah.

So I guess I’ll try and fill you in on the past few weeks. When I first got back, it was study time! I had my very first exam (and only mid-semester exam) the Wednesday after I got back for Structural Kinesiology. I studied as much as I could for the 2 days prior but was slightly discouraged when I realized the used book I bought was missing a lot important pages! I checked out and older edition from the library to get the info but it is a bit frustrating and it is a very good reference book so I may end up buying another one if I keep with the exercise stuff.  Oh well, it happens. But the test was online and open book as long as you could finish it in an hour. So with all my reference material tabbed, highlighted, and organized I was able to find all the answers in no time. Although I did miss a few, but it was frustrating because there were some typos and things that didn’t make sense because it was obviously a computer generated test, so I’m having the teacher look mine over and maybe I’ll get a few more points.

The end of that week we did some volleyball and soccer, we won another soccer game whoot whoot! The indoor social league here is really a lot of fun. The on Thursday the majority of my friends that had all gone around the North Island together we getting together to share pictures and make pizza. They invited me over and so we made a whole bunch of variety of pizzas with toppings from all over as we all contributed. It was super tasted and most people love my Mexican chilli beans on the pizza.  Then over the weekend we....watched rugby. But actually on Saturday during the day, Yuko had told me about the cherry blossom festival happening at the neighbouring college, International Pacific College. So I convinced Marian and Josh to walk over to the festival with me. It was fantastic! It was a Japanese festival but had performances, food, and crafts from all the pacific countries. We saw some really great drumming and martial arts demonstrations. I bought some ridiculous stuff and got my name done in calligraphy. It made for a ready nice day.

 The next week was even more chill. I had one assignment due, that as pretty each but I had to write a short essay for it. I did a bunch of research on muscle damage and wrote and ok essay and turned it in, but then it was one of those things were the day after I turned it in, I went to another class where we talked about muscle damage and I realized I missed some major points. I didn’t really know much about the details before but just in the last half of this week I have learned a lot about it, unfortunately it was a few days too late.

This week Franzi (german friends) and I started our “multi-spring sport” training with Ema for her case study. So we are her subjects and she is training us for a month her master program. So Monday we needed to do some baseline testing and it was pouring rain! But with training it is important to be specific to the sport so since we are being classified as recreational soccer players, all the testing and training is done outside. So we did like a vertical leap test, sprints, shuttle springs, and ran as far as we could in 12 minutes. It was quite the workout considering I haven’t really done anything that legitimately needed me to push myself in awhile but I am trying to take this training seriously for Ema’s study but then also because I want to get faster and stronger and having a trainer really helps. So I am pretty stoked about it. We did our first official session of the Friday after and the day was just the opposite. It was the most beautiful day I have had here yet. The sun was out bright and once our training session was over we didn’t want to go inside. We did a variety of dynamic stretches, sprints, and starts. Maybe Ema will do what no soccer coach has been able to do and make me a sprinter, but I’ve learned it is all about muscle adaption, and I have adapted my muscles for distance running. Geez, why can’t I just have my body do everything always when I want to ha ha, guess I’ll be doing some readapting.

After our training and sometime in the gym, it was back to the flat for me to get ready to go to the USA vs. AUS rugby world cup game! I was so excited all week, waiting for Friday to come to go see the USA play. I have my little US flat and I bought blue hair coloring. So before I left Graeme helped me spray my hair blue and then I had cut out little white stars and tapped them to bobby pins to put in my hair. Unfortunately I have a lot of hair and the one spray can wasn’t enough so I had streaky blue hair but it was ok. I rode down to Wellington with my neighbours, Anja and Shobeck. Shobeck lives here and Anja is here for a few years from Germany so they were way cool in letting me ride with them, but I was sitting with some America friends because that is who I got my tickets with. So we got to Wellington a bit early and walked around the fanzone and tried kicking a rugby ball through a hole and some other stuff. It was a fun atmosphere. There were Aussies in yellow everywhere and then everyone else yelling at them. Because when you’re in NZ, basically if the Aussies are playing you always just cheer for the other team no matter who it is. So we had a lot of support for the US. After some hectic running around I finally met up with my American peeps and did some face paint and they had made me a shirt, so we were all matching. We finally made it to the stadium and got settled just as the game got started. It was so fun because about 70% of the stadium was cheering for the US ad we got some roaring cheers going and a super mean wave going all throughout the stadium. It sort of made up for how bad the Aussie’s dominated our boys. Man they were pretty much running circles around us and won 67-5. They even missed a bunch on conversions, but we at least got one try so everyone was super stoked about that.  It was fun to watch and cheer as load as we could. Afterwards we went do to the field to try and get some autographs, it took us awhile to make it through the crowd so we missed most of the players, but I shook one of the Aussies hands and then this American dude came over and he just started talking to me. I was so stoked. He complimented my shirt and was just super sweet in like telling us how excited he was to see Americans here supporting them in New Zealand. He autographed my ticket and even though he has one of the worst mullets and moustaches I have ever seen he made up for in because he seemed super genuine and cared that we came to see him play. His name was Louis Stanfill and he was one of the flankers on the back line. But it was a real fun night and I’m glad I got to experience it, even though I feel like most people back in the states really don’t even know the RWC is going on, I think it is pretty cool now.

Spontaneous Potluck

USA vs AUS Rugby

Wellington Stadium

Homemade Muesli, so GOOD!

Louis from the USA Rugby Team, cool dude!

Plants around campus

More plants around campus!

Spring Training in the rain, me and Franzi

IPC drummers

Stump throne

IPC campus beautiful!

Around Massey Campus

Ok so of course I’ve got to throw down a little on my most recent food creations. I’ve sort of developed a reputation from my friends that I like to blog about my food so I mind as well embrace it. Zaki started teaching me the ropes on how to make good curries. He gave me a good basic outline now I just need to go buy some ingredients. But then I finally got all the ingredients to make homemade toasted muesli. This one is a keep as far as recipes go. Basically it is oats, nuts, almonds, sun flower seeds, pumpkin seeds, coconut and dried fruits all mixed together with a honey sauce of honey, brown sugar, and oil. Then you toast it and let it dry into clusters and enjoy!  Then I had bought a mix to made homemade yogurt because it is cheaper than the real stuff but I didn’t realize you have to have a special appliance to make this particular kind so I tried to mimic what the appliance does using a clean out spaghetti jar, our largest pot, and a bunch of towels and my neck pillow for a little added insulation while the yogurt cultures did there thing. Ya it didn’t really work like at all, so I will try again soon. Last night for dinner a few of us had been talking about doing some sort of potluck but it never got fully put together so Ema and I were just like hey let’s just make some dinner and ask a few neighbours if they want to join. We didn’t expect much so Ema and I just made a stir fry but then Brayden swung over and told us to come over because he and his flatmate had just made a bunch of food and then we got Julianne too and all went over to Brayden’s . We ended up having our rice and vege stir fry with sweet and sour sauce, a vegetarian curry, a chicken dish with green peppers and sauce, and a few other things to made a large feast! We had toasted bread and tortillas to eat it all with and it was so good. We were all bursting by the time we headed over to the common room to watch the rugby. The game was great as the All Blacks really dominated France in what was supposed to be a close game. Then afterwards we watched LOTR, the fellowship of the ring, and wow that movie is long. So in combination with staying up late watching the movie and daylight savings happening it was a bit of a late morning for me. 

Picton to Wellington to Palmy

It was an early 5:45 wake up call to get ready to catch our ferry. We quickly packed our bags and grabbed some breakfast and headed to the ferry port, fortunately only 1 block away. It was kind of fun driving on to the ferry boat with a car. The morning was stomry and raining so we didn’t spend as much time out on the decks as we did on the way there. I only went out to get a few pictures of the south island as we left the Marlborough sounds.  We made some friends on the boat, 3 guys here for the world cup. They were big rubgy players and we hung out a played cards with them for most of the 3 hour ferry ride. There wasn’t much to see or do in the middle of the Tasman sea on a Ferry...I like a cruise boat a little better. Finally we arrived in Wellington. Our next adventure was to find the isite in Wellington. Holy cow, that is the most confusing city to navigate in the world. We didn’t have  a great maps so we mostly just ended up driving around in circle trying to find the isite to tell us where to park and how to get too our tour stop pick up. After we finally did that, we walked a lot the ever bustling Cuba street. There are tons of stores and shops and we grabbed some food and relaxed until our LOTR tour.

We met the tour van driver at the isite and picked up 3 more people. It was a large van equipped with a TV and sound system so he could show us movie clips of the places we were going. First we went to Victoria forest, just outside Wellington. There they shot the very first day of filming with the hobbits in the forests around the shire. Our tour guide would show us clips then we would do the same poses with props in the very same places! It was a lot of fun. We did a few scenes from when Frodo and Sam meet up with Mary and Pippin, and also when they are camping, and the cliff that was used in weather top and in the 3^rd movie when Aragon looks over the armies gathering before the big battle. For all the pictures I was Mary, Marian was Frodo, Josh was Pippin, and Alyssa was Sam.  Alyssa, Josh, and Marian also made the silhouette for the black rider dead king guy where he is looking for the ring in the shire. I thought the pictures turned out really good. We then went to the studios where they did all the inside stuff and made the sets and are making the sets for the hobbits. They don’t really let you in at all but we went to the shop they have a lot of props and things on display from the movie.  It is all done just outside Wellington in Miramar by this company called Weta. It was fun to see. I definitely appreciate all the work that went into filming the movie or any movie really.

Finally after 14 long days it was time to come home to Palmy. I was so ready too. It was a great trip and we had a lot of fun but it can be a little exhausting travelling every single days. We all got a long great but being with the same 3 other people every minute of everyday requires some patience. But I would say we all did very well and worked together to make it a great trip. We shared a lot of fantastic experiences and I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. It was so unreal and a dream come true that I was really able to travel all around the south island of New Zealand.  We did a lot of things in a short amount of time and at times it was a little overwhelming that a lot to take in, I tried to appreciate all of its beauty and all of our activities. There is still a bit of a daunting task ahead of me to go through the nearly one thousand pictures I took. But each picture holds a memory but I’ll do my best to cut it down. I really appreciate my travel mates, Josh, Marian, and Alyssa for helping make my dreams come true. Even though we were all from very different places we all got along great and loved this trip. After a few days of recuperating I think I’ll really miss on long drives together in the car every day and our late nights in the hostel. But for now it is back to school and time to get back settled again in Palmy. 

"HOLLYWOOD" Sign

Josh, Marian, and Alyssa being the dark rider

Weathertop look down 

Last day with our car named Leroy

The path the black rider comes down

Hobbits took a tumble down the hill

As seen in the extended version, I am Frodo and Alyssa is Pippin

While the tree truck is missing this is where the Hobbits hid

My precious

Sunset of our adventure