red hair makes auckland better too

Hello everyone!

As we are having this little chat, I am marinating in red hair dye. Life is good :)

Some fun recappy stuff and life in general:

Dennis came and his visit was great. We left the day he got here and headed down to Wellington. Our first flight got flat out cancelled because our plane was stuck in Queenstown (apparently the worst planned or at least place airport in the world. We've had problems with them before). But we got on the next flight. The hostel was okay. Big city hostels are never as nice, but it worked. Wellington was fun, but it was kind of rainy. But we hung out at an irish pub and watched the rugby game. My new favorite activity- rugby games at bars. So much fun. Rugby in general is just awesome. WAY more entertaining to watch than football. Why has america not caught on to this?! Anyways, then we headed down to the south island. We stopped in Blenheim and OMG! BLENHIEM IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING!!! We had lunch and it was amazing!! Smoked salmon, YUM! That's all I give them credit for. At least they have something now. Stopped by Cloudy Bay for a wine tasting, then headed straight through to Kaikoura. Stayed a nice little hostel and we got our own room. It was sweet. It rained all the next day and our dolphin swim got cancelled because of sea conditions. Then it proceeded to rain ALL DAY. So we shopped and sat upstairs at the hostel by the log fire (so nice) and planned our trip for later in the week. Ate possibly the most amazing fish and chips ever. It was disgusting amazingness. The next day in Kaikoura was BEAUTIFUL. That is still my favorite place in New Zealand. It was cold outside, but the sun was out reflecting beautifully off the ocean and the mountains nearby were snow capped. There is quite possibly a christmas picture in there waiting to happen. Swimming with the dolpins was back on so that was fun. The dolphins weren't too interested in us, but they swam through us. I think Sean and Den still liked it. Then we had Hokey Pokey ice cream (I forgot to make dad get this! so sad) and headed to Christchurch to fly home. Got back and crashed pretty hard.

Then I went to class for the next two days. The boys ran around downtown, saw the sky tower and the museum and went over to devonport. The weather was nice and forgiving to them so that was nice. Then we left Friday morning to go to Waitomo caves and went black water rafting with the glow worms. Pretty awesome and SO MUCH water compared to when dad and I went. Half the waterfalls we jumped off of barely existed anymore. Then we drove to Rotorua. That place smells. I mean, I know there are thermal pools and such, but I didn't realize the WHOLE town smelled. Lame. But our hostel was pretty hoping. Another rugby game was on and it was perfect timing because we had just finished dinner at a bar and decided to stay and watch. Yet again, LOVE IT. Such a fan of the Wellilngton Hurricanes, which will be hard because they are coming up to play the Auckland Blues on Friday and I'm very conflicted on who to root for.

The next day we went to see the shitshow that is Rotorua. We went to see KIWIS (the bird)! finally! kiwis are nocturnal and live inthe bush so you won't see them pretty much ever. So we did the next best thing- we went to the kiwi adventure which has a noctural house and got to see kiwis. These animals are so cute!!! But they are so dumb! They should definitely be extinct. But we got to see them run around and forge for food. They are in these enclosures, but there isn't even glass between you and them. It was awesome. One looked at me and kind of freaked me out and another one was being spaztastic and running around and jumping for no apparent reason. IT WAS AWESOME. I have seen a kiwi. Another New Zealand goal completed. (Sadly, you can't take pictures in the kiwi adventure since it's would freak them out. So I attached a picture from google for your viewing pleasure)

After that we went to check out the argodome because I thought that is where the zorb was. The Agrodome is an embarassment. It looks like one of those creepy carnivals people just set up on open land. So we left that and found the zorb. I was SO EXCITED. We got all ready and paid and then the camera people went on BREAK. Seriously?! I can't zorb and not have documentation. So we were lame and waited around for them to come back. Then they took us up to the top of the hill to zorb. Zorbing is where they put you in this big rubber ball and send you down a hill. If you EVER get the chance, you must do it. It's so funny. We did the wet zorb, which was all three of us in the zorb with a little bit of warm water. You immediately fall and it was hilarious the whole way down. We didn't get to go down the zig zag track because the winds shifted, but the straight one was great too. You all start standing and try to run down the hill. That doesn't happen for very long. Dennis fell first and Sean and I kept running until dennis slid and took out my left ankle. Sean fell soon after. Then halfway down the hill Sean gets the great idea to try to stand up again and start to run. He got about halfway up and then landed on my head. I have a nice little bump from that.

BREAKING NEWS!!!! DIANA IS OFFICIALLY A RED HEAD AGAIN!!!! (it was about time!)

Back to Rototua- So zorbing was great and I will post pics soon. In fact I will post all my pics soon. It's a goal I have for the week so watch out for those. We then went to the thermal "wonderland" and it smelled. It was cool, but it smelled and it was cold so we went through that pretty quickly. Then we had more fish and chips following by ice cream (the best combo for massive indigestion) and headed back to Auckland. We didn't go out on Sat because we were all pretty pooped. We packed bags and such. The next day we were going to go bungy jump but all the spots were full at the only time we could make it :( so no bungy jumping sadly. Then the boys left for the airport and I sat down a wrote a paper. It wasn't good, but wasn't terrible considering I had to start from scratch with 17 hours to work on it and our internet was practically dead. So I'm pretty happy with it. If it really turns out that bad, I just have to do well on the final which seems like it will be easy (we get the 5 topics in advance, have to write on three of them, AND we get a cheat sheet. C'mon, really?). So I turned that in, came home, filled out a Davis survey where they basically corner you into talking about how great UC is and then PASSED OUT for 2 hours. It was amazing. I'm sure I was drooling and everything (I only slept 3 hours last night). Then lunch, then class, then hair dye!!! and now I'm here.

Other randoms:

Someone asked me for directions today... and I could actually help them!!! I'm such a local!!!

The sky tower is white again. I like it better this way then yellow. yellow was ugly (they periodically change the color of the lights that shine on it). I've only seen white and yellow, but white's pretty classic looking.

This is not California. The weather in Auckland was GREAT and sunny and not a cloud in the sky. So I'm pretty pumped because my paper is done and it's great outside so I jump into shorts and shirt. I walk to school and people are staring at me. I literally saw a girl with a scarf on. These people don't know how to appreciate the weather. In CA, the second you get a beautiful day after some crappy ones, it's time to bust out the shorts and flip flops, but apparently not here. And it's not like it was cold! Well, it was a little chilly in the shade with the wind, but walking to campus was glorious in the sun. These kids don't know how to live!!!

That is all for now, and really that's quite enough. I will try to be more frequent and I will get those pics up this week!