Yesterday (Tuesday) morning we awoke to some beautiful views in Lake Tekapo. After packing up the car and checking out of our hotel room, we had a late brunch at the little frendly cafe in town (though there wasn't many places to choose from - the population of Lake Tekapo is tiny!). Afterwards, we went for a walk/climb/adventure around a portion of the lake. Gorgeous weather, crystal blue lake, mountains and forests in the background - I really couldn't ask for more!

Eventually, we got back into the car and started making our way north to Christchurch. We stopped a bunch of times along the way - to get out and stretch, to take pictures, and even once to watch some random blokes hit some golfballs way out into the middle of nowhere. Fan-tastic!

After a 4 hour drive from Lake Tekapo, Dave and I arrived back in Christchuch yesterday evening. We hung about in the city for a while, just wandering around, not really accomplishing much except for walking around in circles. We did manage to find a nice little brew/pub, where we tried a local beer. After enjoying the free wireless internet, and a live band, we wandered around some more. Dave had been craving sushi, so it was Japanese for dinner ^_^ I had some yummy chicken katsu, and he ate some raw fish (blech), and an hour or so later, we ended up in the YHA in the city centre.

Saturday

We checked out at 10am, ans began our drive out to Queenstown. Turned out to be a much longer drive than I expected, but it was totally worth it! Mountains and streams and forests along the entire way, so we definitely had a good drive. We stopped along the way to admire the scenery in numerous places, such as Bruce Bay, and along the lakes. After arriving in Queenstown, we checked into our accommodation, and went to walk around downtown.

Not too much going on, but I did manage to find an ATM, and Dave got a new cassette for his video recorder. I wanted to find an optometrist, because I tore one of my contact lenses Thursday night, but the one place was closed for the weekend, so no luck for me. Bah. We picked up some dinner at the grocery store, and headed back to the hostel to cook it.

Friday

We booked a tour to do a glacier hike!

It started pretty early - 815, but it really took a while for everyone to get all their gear together and get on the bus. It was a short ride out to the glacier, and then a longggggg hike up! Tons of amazing pictures along the way, and was absolutely gorgeous the entire time! We climbing through some caves and some narrow passageways... but everyone made it out safely. As soon as we made it back to the hostel, we jumped into the hot tub for a soak of our tired muscles!

Thursday Dave and I drove out to the Franz Josef glacier. We stopped at a bunch of places along we way, because every place was more beautiful than the last. We crossed Arthur's Pass, where we did a short hike, and climbed some rocks up to the base of a waterfall, and then we continued along our way. Eventually, we reached the glacier, so we checked into our room at the Glow Worm Resort.

We are now in Rotorua, New Zealand!

Dancing this past weekend was absolutely fantastic - I met so many great people, and had tons of awesome dances, and I even learned a bit at the classes. The dance camp was at this little out of the way place in the middle of nowhere - when you opened the front door of the main building, the sheep baa'ed at you! ^_^ Made me crack up every time I heard it.



I hooked up with some other dancers who were doing some traveling, so the five of us have been exploring the north island. We were in Hamilton on Monday afternoon and yesterday morning, where we went to see the Hamilton Gardens. A little while south of there is Waitomo, which is a huge tourist attraction because of the glow worm caves. We did a caving tour Tuesday morning, where we had to suit up in wetsuits and explore about 1km of caves (which took us about 3 hours!). It was really cool (and cold!) because we got to do some swimming, some climbing, some crawling, and in the middle of it, we stopped at the "Hard Rock Cafe" where they fed us some hot lemonade and chocolate fish (a marshmallow candy bar coated in chocolate in the shape of a fish!)



Oren and Kitty had to leave Rotorua this morning to go back to Auckland to catch their flight, but Alicja, Dave and I hung around a while. Alicja had already spent two weeks touring around the south island, but Dave and I haven't, so it was here where we decided to part ways.

Our original goal was for Dave and I to hire a car and drive all the way down to Wellington, stopping to do the Tongariro Crossing. But then we found our that no one would rent out a car to us (because it would have been a one way rental). And then to top it off, we found out the the crossing was closed! And would be closed for the next coupla days! Oh noes!

Well, there went that idea, so instead we hopped on a plane within an hour and a half and were on our way to Christchurch! We arrived in Christchurch about 5pm, and hung around in the city for a bit until we went dancing! Yay for swing dancing in Christchurch! The scene here is pretty good, and the people are really nice. Chrissy hosted us for the night after the dance, and when we got back to her place, we were super tired, so we crashed almost right away!

I made it to NZ!

I arrived yesterday afternoon, in the midst of nasty nasty weather. When we went to land, the plane circled for quite a while, and there was absolutely nothing visible through the windows - everuthing was white with rain clouds! But we made it safely to the ground, and once in, I took a shuttle bus straight to Melita's house, where I am staying. (I didn't know Melita until yesterday, but she is a fellow swing dancer, and is absolutely wonderful for hosting me for a couple nights!)

I didn't get to her place until about 4:30-5pm, and she arrived home from work about 10 minutes after I got there, so that was pretty well timed. We hung around for a bit, and then made a run to the grocery store, for some snacky things, and some dinner. That night, a couple of other dancers came over, and we all worked on cutting "jandals" and gum boots out of construction paper. (Its all decoration for the exchange this weekend). It was a pretty late night by the time we were all done, so afterwards, Melita and I just went to sleep.

This morning, she dropped me off in the city about 10 am, on her way to run some errands. I wandered about for a bit, and then caught a ferry acorss the harbour to the borough of Devonport. Very neat! I walked along the ocean, and climbed a couple of volcanoes (not active anymore!) and just had a good time all around.

Eventually, I met Melita for some dinner in the city. Yum: more pad thai! There were a bunch of other dancers there, so we all hung out for a bit, and then walked over to the class. This other girl, Michelle, taught a beginners lesson, and then Melita taught an intermediate lesson, which was pretty good. (Andrea: the lesson was getting into and out of a swing jam, so a lot of it I already knew, but I learned "throw the baby") =D

After the lessons, the demo troupe practiced for their presentation on Saturday, so that took quite a while. Finally, Melita and I made it home, and we winded down the down with a cup of hot jasmine tea, and an episode of SITC =D

Tomorrow is going to be another long day - we are heading out to the camp at about 10 am, so I probably won't have internet for a couple of days! But I will be dancing 24/7 so yay!

Sorry for no pictures. =( This compy doesn't have a memory card reader, but eventually, I will get some posted. In the meantime, this is a generic view of Auckland:



and this is one of the volcanoes I climbed today (called North Head - it used to be used for defence of the city):

Quick Update from the Road!

Andrea and I are in Alice Springs. We just got back from our 3 day / 2 night camping, hiking, bushwalking tour of Uluru/Kings Canyon/the Olgas. We had an absolutely fantastic time, and the weather has been perfect! Hot, but not ridiculously so. We are hanging out here for another couple of days, and then we catch a flight down to Melbourne! Enjoy some pictures:

Day Two: Friday

After breakfast, Andrea and I headed into the city. We walked around for a little while and took some crazy pictures:


And then we decided to catch the city cat (the ferry) to go down the river. View from ferry stop:


On the CityCat:


Two stops later, we got off and went to the City Botanic Gardens:


We ate our peanut butter sandwiches while sitting on a bench overlooking a very pretty pond and were almost attacked by all the hungry birds:


More walking around:


And then we saw this guy sitting on his post:


Afterwards, we went to City Hall to climb the clock tower. Unfortunately, it had already closed for the day, so we just explored the museum instead. One of the exhibits was this random floor in this room:


From there, we came back home, got ready to dance, and went dancing!

Andrea is here!

She arrived this morning, after a very long time of traveling - 29 hours from getting on the plane in Tampa to arriving here in Brisbane!


She said all her flights went ok, and that she was able to get some sleep on the flight from San Fran to Sydney because it wasn't very full. Her last flight from Sydney to Brisbane ran about 30 minutes late, but I was still waiting for her when she got off the train from the airport:



Of course, I couldn't have her come all the way here without bringing me stuff from home. And one of the things I requested was a powder drink mix: Crystal Light. I have really missed it, and there really isn't anything similar here. Andrea, being the wonderful sister she is, brought me a tonnnn of it, maybe 8 canisters with 6 tubs in each. Sounds perfect, right? Except that she didn't pack them very well, and most of them broke open during the flight. Which means that sugary powder got all over her clothes and her bag.

Andrea inspecting the damage:


The bottom of the bag:


I managed to clean it all up, and salvage about 95% of it, which is fantastic. I also started a wash for all her clothes. While I did that, she showered and changed, and then sat down at my computer and got to work (Being a salaried employee now, if she works one hour a day, it counts for a whole day, which means she wouldn't need to a vacation day).



After she got an hour of work done, we got ready for tonight's dance (so we wouldn't have to come back to the house).



Then we headed into the city. We checked out South Bank, and the "beach" there, and walked around for a while.



Afterwards, we did a little window shopping at the Queen Street Mall, and then caught a bus to the dance. It started off pretty slow, but it became good later on (the dance was only from 6-12pm).

Andrea dancing:


We left about 11:30pm, and had to wait a for a couple of minutes for the bus, and the entire time Andrea was being narcoleptic, which was pretty funny.



But we made it home with no problems, and were soon asleep!

Andrea arrives tomorrow morning!

I have been tracking her flights since she left at 3pm her time (which was 5am my time) and so far, so good! She is currently somewhere over the Pacific, and will arrive in Sydney about 630am. But she has a 2 hour layover there, and then another 1.5 hours to get to Brisbane, so she won't be here until 10 am. So 17 more hours and I will be meeting her at the train station!

I spent the day today at home, which was very nice ^_^. My supervisor and I had a discussion yesterday about the paper that I need to be writing, and he gave me a lot of ideas about it. And then he told me that there was no point in my coming all the way to the hospital to work on my paper, so I might as well stay home and write. At this point, my actual research in the lab is predominantly finished (yay!) so I've just got to write the research up, and create a new Powerpoint presentation, and that will be my entire grade. Crazy.

Although I should have at least written a little today, I haven't yet. (But I still have time! And I will get to it today!). Instead, I kinda putzed around, straightened up my room, read my Lonely Planet- Sydney guide, put together a shopping list for food, and wasted time on the computer (ie, 100 games of freecell and hours on facebook). I did go through some of my things while thinking about what I am going to be sending home with Andrea. And then I started cleaning the house, because I don't want her to be as disgusted by it as I am ^_^. I wish I had "before" pictures, but you will just have to imagine everything as being disgustingly dirty - like so dirty you would be afraid to touch it for fear of contracting hepatitis. =) *not kidding*

"After" pictures:

Overall view of the kitchen/entry way:

I scrubbed down the front door (ewww dead bugs everywhere! and all sorts of dirt!)

I cleaned the sink and under the dish drainer (hello, slime!):


See that backsplash? It was so covered in grease that you couldn't tell what colour it was. The same thing for the stovetop. But thankfully, one of my flatmates saw me cleaning, and offered to help. So he scrapped off all the burnt crud until the thing shines now. I give it about a week and then it will be gross again.


And then I lysol'ed down the sink, mirrors, and walls in the bathroom:


I haven't yet gone near the toilet (which is in a different room than the bathroom). I am leaving that for tomorrow morning. Yuck.