It LIVESSSSS!!!

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. Well, ok, no one could call a day as beautiful as today dreary, nor is it November quite yet, but the words of Mary Schelley in Frankenstein are apt to describe the resurrection of my blog. It’s been almost two months, but now it’s back.

And when I say back, I absolutely mean it. I’ll explain why I didn’t blog for seven weeks soon, but all you have to know is that my blog is back. And I will be updating it every day for the next several days. So add it to your routine now. Tell your kids. Tell your husbands. Tell your wives. And you dog.

First the question of why haven’t I been blogging. Anything I say after this point is going to be pretty much BS because in all honesty, I’m not entirely sure myself. But nonetheless we still ask, why?

This question begins at the end of the mid-semester break. I spent two weeks of break travelling the North Island. When I arrived back on a Saturday night, I had two lab reports due on Monday which I had not started writing. That wasn’t some oversight, I just was busy with a lot of other work until I left for my trip, and then I had everything to do when I got back. And things continued basically in that manner for the whole rest of the semester. I always had very large portions of work on the horizon.

But making a blog entry doesn’t take too long, just an hour here, and hour there, you should have time for it? Well not in my head, and that’s because I had a lot of pictures to upload. I have since learned that there is a link at the bottom of Facebook albums that allow you to share them with everyone despite privacy settings. But prior to figuring that out, I believed that I would be required to take the time to upload all of the photos I wanted to share in my blog to Photobucket, and then format all those so that it wouldn’t take up all the space on my Photobucket account. It did not seem seem to me that I had time to do that, and I did not want to add photo uploading and formatting to my already-long to-do list.

The other reason that I haven’t updated is that I simply have not gotten out of Palmy (Palmerston North) again until last weekend. I had a few cancelled trips, and a few weekends in, and a few weekends with some good friends I have made here. But nothing that seemed urgent enough for me to make a blog post about. I will tell all about the actual content of my time in the next couple days. Finally last weekend I travelled down to Wellington to tour some Lord of the Rings sites, and it has given me sufficient reason to start making updates again.

Sky Tower

The final subject for today is that I left you guys hanging in my last blog post. I was still in Auckland in my mid-semester trip. Here goes the conclusion. The next day in Auckland we went to the Zoo. We were going to go to this volcanic Island in the middle of the harbor but instead all of us were feeling tired because of a cold that was going around, so we didn’t have the motivation to get up in the morning. That night we decided to splurge and go have dinner up in the sky tower, which is like a cooler version of the Space Needle. It is also the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. Afterwards we went to see Inception at the Imax theater.

Group photo in the Bay of Islands.
From left to right: Marty, Hannah,
Myself, Jackie 

The next morning we got up and took the bus up to Northlands and the Bay of Islands. That was pretty freakin cool. It is a bay of around 200 islands and it had warm and sunny beaches. The first day we had a lazy afternoon and I went kayaking. The next day we took a boat tour around, and got to see the famous hole in the rock island. Our boat actually went through the hole. We were supposed to get to see dolphins in our tour, and since we did not see any they gave us all a free voucher to come back and take the tour again. I’ll use it if I ever come back this way in my life.

Famous hole in the rock

That day was my birthday. It was also the last day that Hannah would be with us. She was studying in Christchurch and had to fly back the next day, so she had to get up the next morning and take a bus back to Auckland. When she left in the morning I found myself quite sad because I knew I would probably never see Hannah again. The rest of us, Jackie, Marty, and myself, continued on to take a bus up to explore the northernmost parts of New Zealand. The bus drove 

Ninety Mile Beach

up the beach along Ninety-Mile Beach, and then turned inland so that we could go sand boarding on the dunes. I got to see the Tasman Sea for the first time. Afterwards we continued up to Cape Reinga. The Maori believe that Hine-nui-te-Po guards the Cape Reiga and from there sends souls out to the underworld. Cape Reinga was breathtaking because overlooked the place where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet in a tumultuous cacophony of wind and waves. It had that sort of grey ocean air blowing in your face that years of going to Ocean Park has made me appreciate.

Cape Reinga

After that we bused back to Auckland. The next morning we got up bright and early and spent the entire day on a bus back to Palmerston North. Now, as promised here are pictures. If you are my friend on facebook you have probably seen these already, but if not, here they are. Part 1. Part 2.


I will tell all about my other experiences here in the days to come.