Tuesday =)

Lots to talk about even though there isn’t much going on! I’m SUPER excited about when my mom and Sharon come because I worked on our itinerary today. If all goes well, we’ll be diving/snorkeling/kayaking, going on a Jet boat in the Auckland harbor, ziplining through the alpine forest in queenstown, going caving in Waitomo, riding horses either on a volcano or a beach, maybe both, visit some hot springs in Rotorua, seeing a cultural performance, seeing Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel… it’s going to be the trip of a lifetime!

Past that, I can’t wait to be home! To hug my family and friends, pet my dog, sleep in my own bed… eat pancakes and “streaky bacon” on the weekends rather than crappy toast or cereal every single day! Bacon in this country is usually more like ham than the crispy delicious kind. I also can’t wait for home cooked food, walking on a dirt road, swimming in the pool by the boat… I think I’m over living in the city!

These next few weeks will be busy- two tests this week (I know I keep bringing them up but they’re pretty stressful!). Then this weekend I’m either going to go with Flora, Emily, and Njeri to northland possibly diving while they snorkel, or to see Cape Reinga (the northernmost lighthouse in New Zealand, and the only way to get to it is via 90 Mile Beach, which is a huge flat, hard packed sand beach, where cars travel on it when the tide goes out), etc. I’ve already been to a bunch of places they’re planning on going, so I’m not sure yet about that. Plus I’ve got a geography final exam next week which I should really focus on. I do have 7 days with no other plans though in which to study. If I don’t go on that trip, Jo and I are going to rent a car and go quad biking and possibly something else for a day, just to get out of Auckland. We never used our free coupons, so that’d be an awesome day trip!

Some other things- I’ve got heaps of tea in my room, some that my mom sent me in a care package a while ago that I’ve been slowly drinking, and a couple of little boxes of tea that I bought here, because they have delicious flavors like strawberry mango, chamomile & spiced apple, and cranberry, raspberry, and elderberry. Thus, I’ve decided to start having “tea parties,” where my friends come over with a glass of hot water and I supply the tea and the honey and we take a break and just chat. It’s such a nice idea. I LOVE tea now. New Zealand is also huge on hot drinks. Any activity in the cold, you can pretty much expect hot cup-o-soup, milo (essentially hot chocolate powder but you have to add both milk and sugar to make it taste good), instant coffee, and tea. I think that might be a British thing, but I’m really enjoying it. Nothing warms me up like a hot drink because I’m so used to it.

Also, New Zealand is into fast food, you know, like KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King and all that, but they’re also into gourmet fast food. They’ve got lots of gourmet burger chains like Wisconsin Burger, Velvet Burger, and Burgerfuel. They all have huge hamburgers with delicious cheeses like feta, brie, sharp cheddar, and toppings like mango and avocado, cranberry sauce, garlic aoli, etc. WAY better than in the U.S. People here also eat fries "chips" with garlic aoli sauce or mayonaise, never ketchup (which they call tomato sauce).

Also, I got a geography lab grade back today- an A! I haven’t been doing so great on my geography lab grades because it’s a really hard class that I’m taking with upper level geography students, so they know how to explain transgressive dune systems and stratigraphic results of progradational sequences on the beach a lot better than I can because they’ve been doing it for three years now. That’s why I’m proud of myself!