Tuesday June 1st

Our parting gift from Auckland was yet another cloudy rainy day. Here’s a list of next 31 sleepless hours, where migraines and screaming children were our constant companions.

Waiting for flight in Auckland International airport

Flight to Samoa – screaming children, Sarah has migraine

Layover in Samoa – hot and humid, sweat clinging to clothes, had to wait 3 hours in hot open-air portion of airport with no a/c until just before flight

Flight from Samoa – Sarah still has migraine, drained from going from winter in Auckland to summer feeling weather in Samoa, miserably tired, screaming children, no sleep

Layover in L.A. – more tired than we’ve been in a long time, had to stand in line at customs for an hour and a half to two hours, no a/c, was able to eat lunch and cinnabon, which was a plus.

Flight to Denver – still no sleep, flight attendants were way into safety protocols almost to the point of rudeness, usually enjoy flying Frontier but not this time, finally arrived in Denver and Trudy picked us up for the drive home.

Finally home – arrived home at 2 AM and still couldn’t sleep until 6 AM, so tired but finally home!! We were told coming home would be much worse jet lag, and it definitely was! We had no problem adjusting once we got there, but it has been terrible since coming back.

Two days later, Friday, we are now on our way to Oklahoma to see my family and Sarah is in her friend Laura’s wedding on the 12^th! We are still really tired, but really excited!

We wanted to thank each of you who have kept up with us on our blog! We truly loved our trip and loved being able to share it with you, and hope you have enjoyed reading about it! We will probably continue blogging some, but less continuously…if you would have considered us at all consistent with our NZ writings.

Sunday May 23^rd

After leaving Wellington, we took a bus back to Taupo where we stayed four nights with the couch surfing family we had previously stayed with. They were absolutely wonderful yet again! We were really able to relax at their house while outside it persisted to rain….every single day…One of those days, we braved the rain and explored the town. Another day, Erin, one of the daughters of the family, took us around town and to a really cool place where they keep honeybees and make many different kinds of honey. Otherwise, we mostly spent our days hanging at their house.

We left Taupo on the 27^th and bused back to Auckland. Erin drove us to the bus station and when we came around the hill they live on we could see Mt. Ruapahu and Mount Doom on the other side of the lake and they were snow capped. It was beautiful! When we arrived in Auckland we headed over to our hostel, which was our last “home” in New Zealand. Our last few days in Auckland were mostly rain filled, but we were able to walk downtown and we spent about a day and a half there reading. We had run out of our own books to read, so we each picked up a book we’ve been wanting to read, and sat in the café and finished the books there cuz there was no way we were going to pay for the overpriced books!

Also, side note…which is actually more than a side note, more like the most random thing ever. As we were walking towards downtown from the hostel, we had to walk uphill over a bridge. When we were coming up to the bridge we looked up to see a tire/wheel rolling down the road all on its own…it took a moment to register what was happening. A tire was rolling down hill and picked up speed as it flew past us and continued on all the way down the hill! Once it reached the bottom of the hill as oncoming traffic was swerving out of the way, the tire hit the curb and bounced up 15-20 ft in the air!!...not even exaggerating!! It went impossibly high and landed and kept going until it slammed into a car, set off the car alarm, and came to a stop…it was the weirdest, most random, most ‘pause for a moment to see if what happened really happened’ thing I think I have ever seen! As we stood there dumbfounded, a couple of people stopped their cars to ask us where the tire came from. We were just glad someone else saw it because it confirmed we weren’t hallucinating.

After a while, we decided to keep going up over the bridge and we just pondered and wondered how it could have happened. As we talked, we played out different scenarios and couldn’t come up with something that made sense. Then as we turned the corner after the bridge the pieces started fitting together. We saw an SUV pulled over on the side of the road, and behind the SUV was a boat on a trailer, a trailer that just so happened to be missing an ENTIRE WHEEL!! We suddenly saw a man walking towards the SUV with something that looked like a jack. So we waited for him and asked tentatively, “Did you happen to lose a wheel?” “Yeah…did you see it?” he said. “Well, yeah, we saw it rolling all the way down the hill over there and we think it hit a car and stopped down at the bottom…” His face was a mix of relief and anxiety. We felt sorry for the guy and for person whose car was pummeled by a renegade tire.

Wellington, the beautiful capital city…

Sorry it’s been a while since our last blog! Update:

Monday, May 17^th- Just relaxed in our nice hostel in Auckland and got ready to travel the next day.

Tuesday, May 18^th-

Took an 8am bus to Wellington. If you aren’t aware, Auckland is near the top of the North Island and Wellington is at the very south of it. It was a 12-hour bus drive. If you were driving your own car, I’m sure it would go more quickly…prolly like 9-10 hours. Honestly, it really wasn’t that bad. The bus driver played movies the whole way there, starting with the latest Rocky movie, so Aaron was happy. I listened to my ipod and napped, happily tuning out Rocky until some better movies came on.

So, overall it was a good trip…besides being really nauseous the entire day with motion sickness, it was good. I have never really been car sick before, nor had Aaron, so this was a new miserable experience to attempt to avoid in the future. We did get some medicine, but it didn’t work very well. We arrived in Wellington around 8pm in the pouring rain, checked into our hostel(a very large, six story hostel, elevators and all - didn’t expect that), and crashed.

Wednesday, May 19^th-

Woke up late in the morning to a drenching rain. Spent the afternoon browsing one of the famous museums of New Zealand, Te Papa. Ate dinner at a cute place near our hostel and decided on postponing a walk around the city because of the continuing rain.

Thursday, May 20^th- This morning Wellington looked damp, but it looked like the raining had slowed. We moved out of our hostel and took the bus a little ways out of downtown Wellington to the suburb called Newlands where a sweet Russian family we had planned to couch surf with lives. We really like Wellington, more than Auckland for sure. It seems less commercialized and is just a neat and pretty city, located right on the harbor. Also, the Lord of the Rings cast mostly stayed here while filming in New Zealand, so it was neat hearing about and visiting places they had liked or hung out at. *(Giant strange bird above on the right is an extinct moa).

We ate lunch at a cool restaurant/pub across from the parliament building called Backbenchers, which the priest at the church in Auckland had recommended to us. It was very unique in that it is decorated with large cartoon figures of political figures and witty and humorous political jokes. Well, we didn’t understand any of the funny sayings/newspapers clippings/jokes, but we assumed they were satirical.

Next we toured their beautiful parliament building and library…it was neat learning about their government. We then walked to a famous church called Old St. Paul's, which is now closed but open for people to view. It wasn’t that large of a church, but it had very pretty wooden architecture from the gothic era and was filled with many stained-glass windows. We spent the rest of the evening walking around downtown, back to Courtenay St., one of the main, famous streets. We ate dinner at a cute little Italian place, which was my favorite meal so far, and then caught the bus back to our couch surfing house.

Friday, May 21^st- Slept in…I clarify when we get to sleep in because when sleeping in the van, we were always up by 6 or 7am cause we had to find a place to go to the bathroom, so it’s nice when we can stay in a place we can sleep in!

It was raining again today…really raining. That is what we asked for when coming during their winter season though. We headed on a bus to Lower Hutt – another suburb - this afternoon and browsed a mall until going to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D (excellent movie!). It has been interesting observing the shops and such all over New Zealand, and we came to the conclusion, we should not buy anything here. It is all very expensive, much more than in the

U.S. Clothes especially seem very expensive, I mean, I know clothing stores can be expensive in the States, but here there is no Target or Wal-mart or Ross to balance it out! Even books are shockingly expensive. Our Wheel of Time paperback books, that are $7.99 in the U.S. are $30-40 here in NZ dollars (which is about $20-30 bucks in US dollars).

The Russian family we were staying with invited us for dinner that night, which was good, and included Russian salad. We had a good night playing Uno with them after dinner, the girls dominating all but one game.

Saturday, May 22^nd- I woke up not feeling good with a migraine. We were supposed to go on a Lord of the Rings sites tour that day because I was feeling so bad. We ended up staying an extra night with this family that night. I slept the whole day. We got a bit of dinner near their house, and then came back and watched a movie (Leap Year) on our computer and then I went back to sleep very early.

Sunday, May 23^rd-

Leaving Wellington…

Interesting and humorous fact:

New Zealanders tease redheads...just for being redheads. They call them gingas (gingers/red hair color), or just as often: rangas (as in orangutans). Actually this Friday is “Hug a ginga” day.

-Sarah

On 1 December, 2003 Wellington hosted the World Premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Crowds massing close to 120,000 lined Wellington's streets to salute The Lord of the Rings filmmakers and stars as they paraded through the central city in open top classic cars. Led by a group of Maori conch callers, the parade also included groups of The Lord of the Rings characters - Hobbits, Orcs, Elves, Rohan, Gondorian soldiers, Ringwraith Riders, Easterlings and Uruk Hai.

The filmmakers and stars stepped from their cars on to 470 metres of red carpet, stretching the length of Courtenay Place. They spent hours signing autographs, posing for photos, talking to fans and giving media interviews. Three giant screens projected the World Premiere scenes for all to see.

This theater had a huge dragon perched on the roof at the time of the World Premier...looking like this:

“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by frost.” -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Thursday night, May 13^th through Sunday morning, May 16th

Driving to Tauranga: The shockingly curvy and very rainy drive was not pleasant. All the roads are curvy here, but this was the worst yet. Sarah made the drive in the dark with rain and fog! It was scary, but we made finally made it. The next morning we spent on the beach in Tauranga and it was a beautiful day.

There was a huge island off the coast filled with trees. The sand was incredibly soft underfoot. The waves were rolling in and the ocean was a beautiful greenish color. It was great. Our couch surfing family told us we had to go to the beach and get fish n’ chips, so that’s what we did. It was amazing! (f.y.i., when someone from the UK or New Zealand says chips, they really mean fries ;)

We sat at the café right next to the beach and a big mountain, or well, that’s what they call it, was to our left with some low clouds hanging over it. The fish n’ chips was very good. The fish was snapper, I believe, which we had never had before. I now know I love snapper! After we had our fill, we went on to Waihi.

It was…yep you guessed it, another beautiful drive. Once we got there we headed straight to the beach and it was a bit different than the Tauranga beach, but equally amazing. I mean, I’m not much of a beach/ocean kind of guy, but these were pretty amazing beaches. We walked for a while and then we set up the lawn chairs close to where the waves were coming in and Sarah read while I attempted to video myself chasing a bird. He never saw it coming, but he was still too quick for me! Grrr.

Because it was such a beautiful day, we never expected the monsoon that night!! There was so much rain and it was so loud it made it hard to sleep in the crazy van. Then the next morning, bright and early, a group of Japanese surfers decided to park right next to our van, pull out their surfboards and lay them in the grass, and scrape and wax their boards. Of course they couldn’t park in the 100 other spaces not even close to us, it was logical to park next to the ONLY CAR THERE!! Haha…it was quite annoying since we hadn’t slept well the night before because of the rain…oh well. After getting ready, we began our drive back to Auckland so we could turn in our crazy van and swap it with another since ours had to be back that day for a check up.

On the way there, we stopped in Paeroa so we could take a picture by the 20 ft tall bottle of L & P. This soda is New Zealand’s national soda. L & P is to the Kiwis or New Zealanders like Dr. Pepper is to most Americans in the Midwest. It’s served everywhere you go. It takes a lot like Sprite, actually, with a little Coca-Cola-like zing. Our couch surfing family said that this giant bottle was the Eiffel Tower of New Zealand. I think they were exaggerating, we hope, but it was funny. After the photo shoot with the big bottle, we continued on our journey. When we arrived in Auckland, traffic was horrible, which caused us to miss our turn…well…actually we had no idea where the turn was, but traffic didn’t help us in our effort to find the turn. Once we realized we had passed the turn, we found a place to turn around and got on the right exit, only to find ourselves heading down the wrong road off the exit, which lead us back onto the highway!! So we had to get back into bumper-to-bumper traffic and start all over again!

We finally made it to the crazy van rental depot and it was closed!! Of course they would close early on Saturdays and fail to tell us. We were able to get a hold of someone from the place and they told us we couldn’t swap and had to just turn in the crazy van. So, we were excited and super bummed at the same to as we now had no ride and no place to stay…We spent the next 3-4 hours sitting in Starbucks depressed and not sure what to do. But we finally decided that everything was ok and we would just book a hostel and have a good date night. And so we did. We went to Denny’s! Haha…well, we figured since Denny’s got us cheap meals in Niagara Falls on our honeymoon, we could give it a go on this one. It wasn’t very romantic, but man, the breakfast was good! Then we walked downtown to the movie theatre and watched Letters to Juliet. (Apparently it came out over here before over there.) It was actually really good. Once we walked out of there we saw that Robin Hood was about to start so we thought, what the hey, let’s go to another one! So we did and it was an excellent movie as well. What a great end to a roller coaster kind of day!

The next morning we went to a really neat Anglican Church downtown, St. Matthew’s, I believe it was. The architecture was beautiful, huge vaulted ceilings, and the service was beautiful as well. It was a liturgical service, which was different, but we really enjoyed it. If you haven’t been to a liturgical service, I would highly suggest you go at least once. Everyone had a bulletin with the order of service with the words of the songs and readings in it and we just went through the whole thing during the service. It was unique and different, and hearing everyone singing and reading together in different accents was really amazing. It seemed even more powerful to me because it was in different accents, not sure why, haha. The preaching was amazing, actually quite in line with what we learned at SNU, and the rest of the liturgy and songs went right along with the sermon. It was very refreshing and just what we needed for sure. I hope we get to go back at least one more time before we leave!

Until next time…

Hope everyone is doing well!

Grace and Peace,

Aaron

One of the prayers we prayed together:

God of grace, in whom we live and move and dance for joy, guide our steps through the complexities of life; widen our vision that our sight be not limited by what we see, nor our wisdom by what we know, nor our love by what we can accept. Amen.

Curious thought of the day: Why do so few people comment on the posts...or become followers...?

Tuesday, May 11^th 2010-Thursday, May 13th

Monday afternoon, after our Hobbiton tour in Matamata, we drove to Rotorua and spent the night there. Tuesday morning we made a delectable breakfast of egg blankets out of the back of our van and saw some of the geysers there. Rotorua is famous for their geyers like Yellowstone is. We tired of the sulfur smell quickly though, and left that afternoon for Taupo.

Taupo is located in the central of the North Island, and is right next to a monstrously large lake (Lake Taupo). It was Beautiful. It was this evening that we first experienced “couch surfing.” We couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful family to stay with! A wonderful couple with five kids around our age. We had a delicious dinner with them Tuesday evening; it was amazing to have a home cooked meal. We just relaxed with them the rest of the evening, chatting, getting to know one another, and discussing the differences in cultures. We learned so much about New Zealand, and truly enjoyed spending some quality time with the family.

Wednesday -rainy, extremely windy, and cold…so instead of hiking and mountain biking, we spent a relaxing day inside the Taylor’s beautiful house and enjoyed the amazing view of the countryside from the windows. We did laundry and worked on our advanced diving bookwork, had dinner again with the family and talked until late that night with them. It was so fun! We planned to leave the next day, so we loaded up and headed out Thursday early afternoon. As we were going through the lovely town though, the sun came out and it warmed up a bit, so we felt called to postpone our departure until we had hiked up to the top of Mt. Tauhara. It turned out to be a bit of an adventure.

Mt. Tauhara. Tramping up the mountain was beautiful…but definitely a very steep hike on a very narrow path that was crowded with the plant life that seemed to be attempting to swallow us up. Hiking along the path, we heard the rain before we felt it. Donning our raincoats, we kept up the trek though we pondered the issues we’d have on our return trip if our trail became a river.

Pushing our leg muscles to keep our quick pace, we pulled out some Starburst gummy rattlesnakes (that’s right, rattlesnakes), and pushed forward. Finally, when it felt like we’d never get there, we stepped through the clearing and walked up to the peak…and saw…nothing. Absolutely nothing. We were surrounded in clouds, and it was beautifully eerie, so we took a breather, drank some water, popped in another rattlesnake and started back down the mountain. We were wet, sweaty, and very chilly after our break…needless to say, we had gotten over the joys of hiking and decided to plow our way down the mountain, getting all the more wet as we ran through the overgrown bushes and trees that were soaked in the still coming rain. And run we did, or as much as you can run down a very narrow and steep mountain path with roots and rocks protruding at all times. Pocahontas and John Smith…that’s who my imagination painted us as, Disney’s version of course. I ran down the path, overall smoothly and quickly…and Aaron …tried to run down the path, tripping often, almost falling off the edge every now and again. I am truly not exaggerating. It was pretty amusing, unless something would have happened...Don’t worry, friends, he’s not the one who tripped, somersaulted down the mountain, spraining his ankle at the bottom of the path when we were almost to the crazy van. No, that was me, Pocahontas. It wasn’t a bad sprain, praise the Lord, and I’ve been able to walk decently fine on it since, which is good ‘cause we walk everywhere here. Because of our amazing bolt down the mountain, we made it back in great time before dark…soaked, muddy, scratched, freezing, and hungry. We decided it would be unwise and miserable to drive to our next town like this…so we went back to our wonderful couching surfing family and they let us shower one last time before we went on our way. They invited us to stay another night, but we wanted to get on to our next destination. We felt amazingly renewed after our quick showers and got on the road to Tauranga.

Couch Surfing. We heard about couch surfing the day before we left for our trip to NZ. A guy at mom’s work explained it to her and she passed on the info to us. There is an amazing huge community of couch surfers…go to couchsurfing.org. There are couch surfers, and people that host couch surfers. There are people all over the world who open up their homes if they have an extra couch or guest room. Anybody can couch surf. All you have to do is make a profile on the couch surfing website and email couch surfing hosts in the area you will be travelling. They will let you know if it’s possible to stay with them or not. Don’t worry, it is safe to couch surf. Couchsurfing.org does much to make sure people are who they say they are and that it’s a great experience for everyone involved.

It is a brilliant thing. The whole time we were planning our trip, we didn’t know how we would be able to really experience NZ if we didn’t get to spend time with anyone actually from NZ…how can you truly experience a different culture if you do not spend time with people from that culture? Yet we had no connections here and didn’t know how we would make any. This was exactly what we were looking for. We had an amazing experience spending time with fun people and talking about the many differences in our cultures, the different perceptions, and just getting to know one another. It was such a neat time, and our trip would be incomplete without such a time. We hope to have the opportunity to couch surf again this trip, and we definitely want to host when we have our own home.

Interesting fact: I named my computer Toby today, Toby the Mac. Like Toby Mack. Got it? I thought it was clever. Aaron didn’t. For those who don’t know, Toby Mack is a Christian singer/rapper…he used to be apart of the band DC Talk.

- Pocahontas

This last picture is one of the path...yes that is the path...rugged huh?

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Spent our first night in our van.  We were supposed to turn it in today, but we decided to keep it for the next week as it also provides us a place to sleep and a small kitchenette.  We drove to Matamata last night, where I tried to get Aaron to park the van right outside the Hobbiton film set.  He didn’t go for it, so we parked on a random quiet street in town and went to bed in the van in our warm sleeping bags.  

Up early this morning so we could go to the bathroom, and just been burning time until we could go to the HOBBITON FILM SET TOUR!!  It is surprisingly expensive, so it better be pretty freaking awesome…and I’m confident it will be.  As I’m writing this, I’m listening to the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack.  Perfect. 

*Later today*

It was worth it, totally worthy it.  For those of you who don't know, the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed in New Zealand.  There are tours to see some of the sights they filmed in throughout both islands.  The one Aaron and I saw today was special because they didn't tear down the entire set like they did most places.  They tore down a lot but there were still some of the hobbit holes left there.  You can also see the party tree and the field they had Biblo's 111th birthday party in...and so much more.  Amazing...totally made my day...my trip!  Tolkien wrote a brilliant series and Peter Jackson brought it to life.  

“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by frost.”   -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings


-SARAH

Sunday May 9th, 2010

Traveling day-driving to Matamata. It was a beautiful drive, but it was raining most of the day.  Finally late afternoon it cleared up, but was still pretty windy and chilly.  We stopped at a beautiful beach on the way south to Matamata.

Thoughts of the day:

I, sarah, do not like the hamburgers here…in my limited experience(they both tasted the same).  Some of you would really like them, as they are cooked with onions throughout the whole burger and have a different kind of flavor.   Gross, in my own humble opinion.  Also, the ketchup tastes very different and is not very satisfying when I already have a taste I’m expecting.  All to say, I’m done with having burgers here. 

*Later today*

 After I wrote this about hamburgers, we ended having to eat at Burger King for dinner because it was the only thing open tonight when we tried to find dinner…

I had a cheeseburger there, and it was delicious…with good ketchup and everything.  So satisfying, maybe because I was so hungry.  So I do not take back my previous statement, but want to clarify that it may not apply to fast food burgers.  They still do not have mustard here at any food/restaurant place.  


-Sarah