Getting to New Zealand and Culture Week in Rotorua

Day one February 11th 2011:

Left Cleveland - excited but got super sad, especially when mom and dad were crying as I got on the plane. Super cool though, the ticket lady allowed them to go through security and to the gate with me. It was great to spend the extra 30 minutes with them.

 

Arrive in LA - Met my cousin Nicole (and shopping examiner for Examiner.com) and had a great dinner with her. Got on the Air New Zealand plane headed to New Zealand, sat in the very last row right next to the bathroom... For 13 hours. Slam flush slam. Plus the girl I was sitting next to was super
awkward. Time to get out that awkward turtle... for 13 hours...

Day two February 13th:
Arrive in Auckland at 8am. Coming down through the clouds was the coolest sight that I have ever seen. A most awesome first impression of New Zealand. Customs and bio-security takes 2 hours to get through. Booooooo
Meet the AustraLearn contacts Paul and Hannah, sat my bags down and called home.
Gavin (another AustraLearn employee) walked a group to the bus and meet Ben, the bus driver and former student of University of Waikato (where I am going to be studying), learn the term “sweet as” but with the accent sounded like “sweet ass”. I got super excited that people use sweet ass on a everyday basis, but alas. Go through AustraLearn orientation session one. Watched some sweet as youtube videos about New Zealand. Learned about New Zealand’s unofficial sport “bombs and ice cream” During our free time I and a few others went to the local jazz festival in the park.  We got lost on the way there, and wandered through some guys’ backyard which had a sidewalk running through it. He came out covered in Maori tattoos and yelled at us, that was exciting. Most of the kids went to the beach, I wanted to see what the locals were like. In the park my now friend Max was drawing the scene and other people. He asked me to draw something in the book for him, I’ve never had someone ask me to draw in their book before. I attempted to draw the coffee stand and gazebo that the jazz band was at. This video sums up the afternoon: clouds and jazz. After we got ice cream (best ice cream I’ve ever had in my life)
Dinner was pretty terrible, but the scenery was most excellent.
After dinner a group of us took a ferry to Daven port and watched the sunset. Excellent.

Day three February 14th
Got on a bus headed to the city of Rotroura where
AustraLearn we covered session two which was about goal setting.
Went and did bombs in the local river

THIS WAS AWESOME! My friend Cody Howell put this sick as picture together!

After bombs we learned the Haka. This was super intense, and some really crazy pictures. A Haka is a Maori dance that was performed before battle. It is now seen performed before a rugby match. Makes your palms sweat kind of intense.

Day four February 15th

This was the prearranged day of adventure part of the AustraLearn week... except I didn't prearrange an adventure package. There were other students that didn't also make plans, so we talked to Gavin and Paul of AustraLearn about some sweet local spots to go check out. Gavin pointed us to Blue Lake. So what Taylor, Aaron, Dakota, Alyssa, and I do is we go hire (rent) bikes, go to the Pak-n-Save (grocery store) and get some lamb chops and sausages, tomatoes, and wine and bike through the Red Wood Forest to the Blue Lake. But this was so much more of an adventure, naturally. To get to the Red Wood Forest, we needed to bike through a sulfur field, under a bridge, along a fence, and other random goodies to find the Red Wood Forest visitors center. This was the most difficult visitors center to find ever. We get a map of the forest, and begin the trek. Little did we realize that the trail was UP HILL THE ENTIRE WAY.

After four hours of essentially walking our bikes up this mountain we get to this awesome downhill part and let it fly. We finally get to Blue Lake and run and bombs in the lake. The water was so so refreshing! We got out and fired up the public grills and grilled up the lamb chops and sausages and feasted. Best tasting lamb chops ever. We meet some really funny kiwi's and swam and feasted with them. As we were leaving the kiwi's invited us to dinner later that night. We biked back into Rotorua and got our bikes into the shop with 15 minutes to go. Boom!

Day five February 16th
Community day and hangi dinner. This was super cool, but also super tourist. I hate hate hate tourist things. But this is a sweet as photo. I titled it "Welcome to the neighborhood"

Day six February 17th
Waitomo caves specifically the Haggas Honking Holes. This is probably one of the coolest things that I have ever done.

Day seven February 18th
Travel and meet host family

Got up early and said good bye to all my new friends before they head off to their separate schools all over New Zealand. This was sad because although I just met and barely know everyone, I feel like I know all of them so well! I will see everyone soon though when I am out about traveling the awesome country of New Zealand.