Mom's visit so far

Mom has been here since Monday (its Wednesday now), and we have crammed a lot into the past three days. I am an amazing tour planner.

On Sunday I went to get Mom from the airport, and that in itself was a task. Eoin had left the car lights on over night and the battery was dead by morning. Our landlady drove us into town, and while Eoin went to work I went to the bus stop. The bus was late, and so I was late getting to airport to get mom. We then had to take a taxi back to the apartment and the driver was nice enough to jump start our car. Mom hung out here while I went to work. Eoin came home in the early afternoon and brought mom to her hotel. We then went out for a quick dinner and discussesd the weeks plans before calling it a night.

Monday we did a double decker bus tour. The double decker bus is an import from London and brings you to the AJ Hackett Bungy Bridge, Gibbston Valley Winery and Arrowtown before returning back to Queenstown. It was a bit of a rainy day, so there was only one brave jumper at the bridge, but at least we saw something! The winery was nice, too, because I was thinking of doing a wine tour during the week. But we had our own wine tasting at Gibbston Valley for about $16 all together. Mom then bought 3 bottles of wine (did I mention it was 11 AM??). Arrowtown, which you might remember from an earlier entry, is a very scenic little place. We mostly just walked down the main road and poked through all the little shops. But it was nice anyway, and a good thing to do for a first day "adventure".

Tuesday was a bit more eventful. Even though it was still gross outside and rainy we went to the Kiwi Bird and Wildlife Park. It wasn't that exciting, especially for the price you pay, but if you REALLY want to see a kiwi then its a good place to check out. Mom thought Kiwi's were tiny birds like robins or something...but they aren't. They are about the size of chickens and they cannot fly. Just clearing that up for all you foreigners out there! After the park we went on a scenic tour of Lake Wakatipu, the lake Queenstown is situated on. The TSS Earnslaw is a steamboat that is fueled by one ton of coal each trip. The ride was about an hour long, and on the way back instead of commentary they had a sing-a-long. It was really cheesey, but the little kids and old people sure enjoyed themselves. After I went to work (4-8) Eoin, Mom and I had dinner at Hell Pizza (best pizza in the WORLD) and then went to the Minus 5* Bar. It is a bar made of ice, with ice sculptures, ice couches, and ice glasses. It was fun, but after about ten minutes it was kind of like, "Okay soooo can we go now?". Still, it is an experience you should do if you get the chance, very novel.

Today is Wednesday and so far it is the most action packed. It started with waking up at 7:25 AM and groggily getting into a taxi to the airport. We then hopped on an 8 seater plane, and took off towards Milford Sound. I didn't even puke, although I thought I was going to. I took a drammamine, so I fell asleep on the boat, but Mom had a good time seeing the seals and waterfalls and we even saw an dolphin! Crazy! It was the size of a whale, and swam right along side the bow of the boat. We then flew back to Queenstown where we ate some lunch and booked some seats at Haka. A haka is traditional Maori dance that tells a story using facial expressions and movement. If you want to see a haka, google it or even look it up on youtube, they are very cool and I am excited to see one tonight! We are also going to the luge, and to the grocery store and maybe even doing some laundry..the day just keeps getting more and more exciting!

Well, I know that you only come to my blog to see the pictures so...here you go!

Here we are, drinking wine at 10:45 AM. Can your day start any better??

Here is mom, re-enacting my now "famous" alpaca picture (found here:http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30775797&l=3cfae&id=49800283)

Here we are standing next to our airplane at Milford Sound. Can you believe we actually FLEW in that thing? Ridic.

I got a job!

How excited are you all? You are reading the blog of the newest memeber of the checkout team at Fresh Choice, the same grocery store as Eoin! Yes, I gave in and decided it was "okay" to work at the same place as Eoin. $12.50 an hour, 30-40 hours a week. Not bad, except that its not as fun as Glassons. But at least its money and I don't have to waste any more paper turning in CV's.

I haven't updated in a while because there really hasn't been much to say. My mom will be here on Sunday (two days!) so I am busy planning things for us to do. I will definitely update my blog while mom is here, so you can all see the awesome things we are going to do!

Also, the local news paper in Concord is doing a bit of an article about me and my trip to NZ. If you live in Concord, it will be printed in the Insider on feb 24th. I am basically going to be famous. So get your requests for autographs in NOW.

Miss you all! Updates and pictures coming soon!

Arrowtown and Deer Park Heights

Sorry I haven't updated in a while...my life has been SO EXCITING!

NOT

Sadly, I still haven't found a job and the temp agency I was working with has stopped calling. Apparently they only need hotel cleaners during the holidays, and those are over now :(

So now I spend my days doing the following routine:

Wake up around 9 and either a) go running or b) stay in bed for an extra 20 minutes

Shower and get dressed

Head into town with Eoin (he heads to work)

Drop of CV at any place I haven't already applied (I've handed out my CV 15 times)

Grab the news paper and look for jobs

Eat lunch

Walk home

Look online for jobs

Apply to jobs that are posted online

Clean the apartment

Watch TV/Surf the net/go insane

Eat dinner when Eoin gets home at 9-9:30

So, my days are pretty awesome.

That being said, on Eoin's days off we have gone on some awesome adventures. Our first adventure was to Historic Arrowtown. Arrowtown is about 20 minutes outside of Queenstown and was "born" during the gold rush. It is a really cutesy little town that has a bit of a New England feel to it. There are walking trails that we didn't get a chance to do (next time, we foolishly wore flip-flops on our trip) and you can even rent pans to search for gold in the river. One guy found a huge piece of gold and it was worth $15,000 NZD (this was a few years ago).

Our land-lady recommended we go to the Chinese Settlement located right in Arrowtown. During the New Zealand gold rush a lot of people from China came to the area to try their luck, and they did quite well. They built their own little community of houses, gardens and a general store/lodge/bank/bar and stayed there for a few years. Once they were satisfied with the amount of money they made, they left the settlement and went back to China.

The entry to the Chinese Settlement. An outhouse in the foreground and the shop/lodge/bank/ shopkeepers house in the background.

Some houses built into the rocks. The houses were really small, only a few had a window.

Another place we recently went to is called Deer Park Heights. It is a working farm and is also where several scenes from Lord of the Rings were filmed. There are pigs, chickens, sheep, ducks, goats, donkeys, llamas, alpacas, miniature ponies, yaks, buffalo and deer.

The animals roam free, except for the ponies and the huge pigs, and there are amazing views all around. The owners also supply animal feed and tins for you to take with you through the farm and feed the animals. AND GUESS WHAT!!!! I fed some animals!!

Me feeding a piglet. It was so gross.

From the top of the mountain you can see Queenstown. So pretty!

This is the cliff that Aragorn fell off of in LOTR....and Eoin fell off it too! Oh no! Good thing its only two feet off the ground :)


Alright, that's all for now. The Internet is really slow. I'm sure Eoin will write a much better entry than me, so check his blog in a few days.

Bye!

Milford Sound

Yesterday Eoin and I took a trip out to Fiordland National Park, hopped on a boat, and cruised around Milford Sound for a little over 2 hours. We weren't sure how the trip would go, because as we left Queenstown at 9 AM it was pouring rain. However, when we got to Te Anau (about 2 hours and 15 minutes from the sound) it was clearing up. It turned out to be quite a beautiful drive in the sunshine. We were in the rain forest and could see mountains covered in waterfalls all around us. Most of the waterfalls were thin but some were very big, and almost every one of them found their way to the roadside. There were drainage ways for the water that flows off the mountains along the roads and in some spots the plants along the cliffs on the road were "raining" on our car.

We got to the Milford Sound visitor center around 3 PM and waited for our boat to dock. Our cruise left at 3:45 and our boat was one of the smaller ones in the sound. This is a good thing because on the smaller boats you can go close to waterfalls, vegetation and animals. It was also good because there were not a lot of people on the boat so there was plenty of room to walk around, stand outside or find a nice warm place to sit once the rain started pouring down. Yep, our rainy day- turned beautiful day became a rainy day again. The rain held out until the last half hour of the cruise, so it actually wasn't TOO bad.

Milford Sound is actually a fiord, but when the English settlers arrived here in the 1880's there wasn't an English word for "fiord", there still isn't (that I know of). A fiord is made by glaciers and happens when a glacier carves out a "U" shape in the rocks/mountains. A sound is created by rivers, and carves out a "V" shape in the rocks/mountains.

Here is evidence that Milford Sound is actually a fiord:

Notice the "U" shape between the two hills? That's a fiord!

Another part of our cruise on the sound was getting close to the wildlife. Sometimes the crew spots (and points out) dolphins and penguins, but we didn't have any luck in seeing them. We did, however, see our millionth colony of fur seals! And they were doing what they mostly do when we see them, lounging around doing nothing exciting at all.

See for yourself:

Another highlight of our trip, that isn't offered on any of the large boats, was that we got to drink fresh glacial water! Two poor souls got suckered in to standing at the bow of the boat (holding trays of cups) and collect water from a waterfall. They got completely drenched, and we all got to laugh at their expense but later on the captain got us all back...that comes later...anyway, fresh glacial waterfall water is pretty good. It's full of minerals and stuff, and oh...it's yellow.

You can't see it in this picture, but I promise you it was yellow water. It is yellow from the roots of all the trees it meets on the way down the mountain.

So after we drank some yellow water, the captain informed us we were all going to get soaked. I, being somewhat smart, ran inside. Not Eoin. He stayed right out in front and got completely drenched by one of the larger waterfalls in the sound. He seemed to enjoy it, so that's good, but I stayed nice and dry.

Even though it was a bit windy and rainy, it was a great time and a lot of fun. The waterfalls were really cool, and the scenery wasn't half bad either :)

Until next time.....

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great New Years Eve and New Years Day! Eoin and I ventured into downtown Queenstown where there were supposedly 10,000 people in the CBD (Central Business District) along with live bands and whatnot. I think I counted 12 people. Okay, maybe I am being a little sarcastic, there was a crowd, but it was not 10,000 people. Maybe 5,000. Regardless, the live band, dDub, was pretty good. They were a reggae/ska band and they played music and then lead the crowd in a countdown to 2009. There were fireworks, which were awesome, and that is about it.

So it was a good NYE, nothing crazy or exciting.

The day after New Years Day (January 2nd) is also a public holiday here in NZ, so lots of shops/restaurants/attractions are closed. However, since I don't have a real job yet, I did some housekeeping on the 1st and 2nd and got paid time and a half (19.50/hour). Not too bad. But, I am never doing house keeping again. Some people are nice and strip the beds when they leave, and don't leave big piles of crumbs and dirt everywhere, but other people are plain old slobs.

I have a job interview on Monday with a place that supplies photographers to various attractions around QT. Hopefully, I get that job, and then I can be outside taking pictures of tourists rafting, horse back riding or whatever else they need me to take pictures of.

That's about it in terms of anything exciting happening right now. If you read Eoin's blog, you will have seen that he is doing this "101 things in 1001 days". Basically, you pick 101 things you would like to accomplish in 1001 days (2.5 years) and then you work on ticking those things off your list. I saw his list, and thought it looked like a good idea. So I made my own list, however, my list has only 56 things on it. You may call me a slacker, but I wanted my list to have things on it I'd really like to do and I didn't want a bunch of "fillers" in there just to make my list have 101 items on it.

Sooooo because I am sure you are really interested, here is my list!

Health:

Exercise at least 3 days a week for at least 10 minutes (0/143)

Go one week with no soda

Go one month with no soda

Vegan for a week

Go a week without products containing high fructose corn syrup

Enroll in a yoga class for at least one semester (four months)

Try one new food every other month (0/16)

See how much it will cost to get my moles removed

Have moles removed or start saving for it

Make one new recipe a month (0/32)

Go one month without eating at a restaurant or ordering take-out or frozen/pre-cooked dinners

Eat broccoli once a month(1/32)

Go one week without chocolate

Go one month without chocolate

First Monday of every month eat vegetarian all day (0/16)

Try eggs (fried, scrambled, omelet and hard boiled) (0/4)

Find out how much it will cost to fix my jaw

Save money to fix my jaw/get it fixed

Get Health Insurance

Daring:

Try a real roller-coaster with Eoin but not a scary one

Handle raw meat without gagging or making "guuuuuuuuuuh" sound

Do something that scares me once a year

Just for fun:

Watch 30 movies that are on the IMDB top 250 list (0/30)

Go a week without using the Internet except for essential emails

Spend my summers at Camp Micah

Get a really expensive/good massage

Eat seven egg rolls for dinner

Try ten new alcoholic drinks (0/10)

Try surfing

Go snorkeling

Eat dessert first

Get a dog

Go out on a date once a month with Eoin (0/16)

See a famous comedian live

Education:

Read 50 books (0/50)

Complete Pre-Reqs for grad program in physical therapy

Enroll in Grad-School

Become CPR certified

Double the money in my savings account

While in school, maintain at least a 2.9 GPA (would have been higher but science/math and I don't mix well)


Travel:

Visit two new continents (0/2)

Go back to Israel (or save for it)

Go on a romantic holiday with Eoin for at least 5 days at a nice hotel

Go to Universal Studios

Go on a road trip

Meet up with college friends

Go some place warm during the winter every year (0/3)

Community:

Donate $2 to charity for every item crossed off my "101 Things in 1001 Days"

Donate my time during the holidays for 30 hours (0/30)

Go through my clothes once in the winter and once in the summer and donate what I don't need to charity (0/5)

No Wal-Mart for 1001 days

Donate 500,000 grains of rice on freerice.org (0/500,000)

Recycle all my plastic bottles, even if I have to carry them home to recycle them( allow 12 exceptions 0/12)

What do you think? Hopefully I can do most of these! I will start a separate blog for keeping track of my progress. Anyway, here are some pictures :)

Look at the THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE in Queenstown for the New Years celebration! (ok so this was taken earlier in the evening, more people showed up as it got closer to midnight)

Queenstown from a jetboat. Sooo pretty!

Queenstown Blog

I promised you all I would write about Queenstown, so here goes!

The drive from Nelson to Kaikora took about 5 hours or so, and Kaikora isn't too far outside of Christchurch, so we drove a bit further and camped about 25 minutes outside of CHCH (thats the abbreviation...Wellington is WGTN and Queenstown is QT as well). We then took the scenic route, through MackenzieCountry, to Wanaka. Wanaka is a tourist town, but it has beautiful views in every direction, and delicious pizza too! I made Eoin sleep in a cabin because, really, after a week in a tent I am not the happiest Alexa you've ever seen.

So we slept in a cabin, ate delicious pizza and then started off towards QT (Queenstown, remember?). BUT FIRST. We stopped off at Puzzling World. It's basically a museum of holograms, puzzles, and illusions. It was pretty fun. There was one room where everything was on a slant, and there were stairs you could stand on that made it look so crazy! I can't even explain..here is a picture:




Woaaaahh! What is going on? :)

They also had one of those cool rooms that makes it look like one person is a giant and the other person is teeny tiny.





Anyway, after that we drove into Queenstown, pitched a tent, and started the hunt for jobs and apartments. We got an apartment our second day here. It is a studio apartment (bed, livingroom, kitchen and bathroom) with internet, TV and a washing machine for only a bit more than what we were paying in Wellington. Eoin also got a job our first day here, and I am still looking. There is nothing available except Housekeeping and bricklaying. I'm a bit frustrated because I had such good luck and fun in Wellington with jobs, I just expected it to be like that everywhere...oh well.



Anyway, aside from getting an apartment on our first day here, Eoin and I also went on the Skyline Gondola which overlooks the town. From there you can also luge, paraglide, eat expensive food and go to a giftshop. We did all of it except the expensive lunch (its about $30 per plate for a buffet!!).



The luge was really fun. We got two rides, and the first time you go you have to do the scenic route. It's really tame with wide turns and maybe one or two dips. The second track is steeper with sharper turns, more tunnels and more dips.



After the luge ride, Eoin told me to think about paragliding. I thought about it and decided to ask the people at the ticket desk about it. I convinced myself to do it, along with the help of the skilled sales people at the booth, and here are the results:


It may look like I was having fun, but shortly after this picture was taken I felt really sick. I rode the rest of the way down with a barf bag in my hand. I didn't get sick, but I felt really out of it the rest of the day. Don't worry. I am done doing crazy things for the rest of the trip. :)


Well, unfortunately I have nothing else exciting to say. I posted some pictures and some videos and the links are on the right-hand side of the blog.

Waitomo Caves and The Whanganui River

I am in Queenstown now, but before we get to that I wanted to continue telling you all about the rest of our holiday.

When I left off last time, I mentioned zorbing and the coromandel peninsula. After we left Hamilton, we drove to Waitomo which is famous for its many caves and the glow worms that live in the caves.

In order to see the glowworms, you can either take a short guided walk that leads to you an indoor overlook OR you can put on a wetsuit, jump off a waterfall and black water raft your way through the caves. Eoin and I chose the latter. Here we are in our awesome wetsuits, gum boots, and helmets.

Look how excited we are!

We had a brief training on how to jump off waterfalls (butt-first) and the proper way to carry our inner-tubes (over your right shoulder) and how to eel (sitting in a line holding onto the person's feet behind you).

Here is what it looks like to eel..


After our training, we rode up to the top of a hill and walked into the beginning of the cave. It was very dark and wet so the lights on our helmets came in handy as we tried to find our footing in the caves. For the most part, we were walking in ankle deep water or floating along the river occasionally bumping into rocky walls or other people. The glow worms looked like stars in the sky, but in actuality we were looking at maggot poo. Gross?

There were two waterfall jumps, one was about 3 feet high and the other about 5. We had to walk to the edge of the cliff, turn around, and jump backwards in our inner tubes. It was actually a lot of fun. Towards the end, we got further from the "rapids" and had to paddle ourselves with our hands. Not unsurprisingly, I was the last one out of the cave. No matter how hard I paddled I kept going in circles and bumping into the walls, so one of the guides simply pulled me the last part of the way. Embarrassing.

We got complimentary hot showers along with bagels and soup when we got back to the main building. Amazinggggg.




After we ate and warmed up a bit Eoin and I headed out to Taumarunui, a small town known for absolutely nothing. This is the town where our canoe trip started. We had one night to relax a bit and back up our four blue barrels with the supplies we'd need on our trip (rain gear, pjs, mess kit, food, sunscreen, polypro, socks, sleeping bags and a tent). Early the next morning we headed to the Canoe rental place, which happened to be a family's home, and they were some of the nicest people! They gave us some insight on what to expect on our canoe journey and how to handle to RAPIDS we would encounter. Eoin and I set off a bit before another couple that was also there, but they had never canoed before and needed more training than we did.

We canoed for about 5 hours our first day, and went approximately 51 KM. There were 45 rapids (up to level 3's) before we got to the first campsite, but we didn't stop until the second campsite (about 20 more rapids away). We never capsized, although we definitely came close once! The rapids were a lot of fun, even if we occasionally went through them sideways or backwards :)






Our canoe at the campsite. Some rapids can be seen in the background. Those are the rapids that almost tipped us over.

We put our tent together, and put on our pajamas before making some dinner. Eoin had collected some fire wood and leaves and whatnot, and we attempted to make a fire. However, it would not stay aflame without someone constantly tending to it, so it wasn't the best campfire ever, but it was nice and warm :)

We went to bed pretty early because we had to get back in the water by 9 AM. My arms hurt so bad from all the paddling, and my hands and wrists were sunburned too. But we managed to sleep alright. We got up earlier than planned, and got back into our canoe by 8:30 AM. We made it to the end of our journey much earlier than the 2:00PM van would be there to pick us up. So we pulled our boat ashore and walked around Whakahoro (pronounced quite vulgarly, fuk-a-hor-oh) while we waiting for our ride.
One of the many waterfalls along the Whanganui River.

This is quite a long blog, so I think I will write about Queenstown in my next entry. But just know that I am having a blast!

:)