Spring Break!

Hey everyone,

Sorry I haven't written in forever. I'vebeen so busy with everyone coming to visit and in the South Island for Spring Break that I haven't been by my computer at all. I just got back this morning from my spring break, and I leave tomorrow for Rotorua for 3 days! This will be our last Loyola sponsored trip, we get to go caving and zorbing so I'm pretty excited!
I had so much fun when Mom Ang Keith and Uncle Mikey came! They got to Auckland pretty late on Sunday night, so I took them to a nice Italian place that I have been to, and then to the ice cream place up the hill that I always go to. After that we all just went to bed. On Monday I took everyone to Waiheke Island for Mom's birthday present. It ius about a 45 min. ferry ride away from me, and it is a beautiful island! I had a tour guide pick us up and show us around the whole island for like 2 hours. We took a ton of really nice pictures, and it was a really nice day out which was perfect. I think Mom really liked it! Then for dinner we came back to Auckland and had dinner at the Sky Tower. It was a buffet type of resturant but the food was so good! It reminded me of things you would see on Top Chef on TV.
The next day I took Ang to my psych class! She seemed to really enjoy it, she was taking notes and everything. Then we met up with Mom Keith and Uncle Mikey in the city and walked around, and got tickets for the ferry to the South Island. I was able to introduce them all to my friends too which was nice. After that we went to this place called Newmarket. It is about 15 mins from me, but you take a bus to get there. It has some really cute boutique shops and cool resturants. We had dinner at a fun Spanish place, and came back and went to bed.
The next couple of days we were in the South Island. That was a lot of fun. We drove down (about 6 hours) to the ferry, and then the ferry was 3 hours. We stayed in a hotel that night, and went to Christchurch. Christchurch is one of the 2 main cities in the South Island, and reminds me of Key West when it is nice out. They have a bunch of little shops so we walked around and had dinner there. The next day we went to the Antartic Centre.. They had a bunch of penguins swimming around and eating, and a whole 'antartic storm' that you can go in.. its gets to like -7 degrees in the room! We took a gondola ride to the top of Christchurch after that and could see for miles! It was really pretty there too, so we hiked around a little. Thenext place we went to was Kaikoura. It is beautiful! Its my new favortie place! You look out onto the Pacific Ocean, and right up agaist it are the snowcapped Southern Alps! It looked fake. We got to see seals laying like 3 feet infront of us, and watched the sunset. The next day we rode ATVs on a farm that overlooks the ocean and the Alps, and there was a spot where the guide said up to 500 seals come to! It was so funny seeing so many so close to us. We started our way back up to Auckland after that, had a nice dinner, and the next day everyone left for the airport! I am so happy that I got to see everyone, it was so much fun and I am glad I got to see Mom for her birthday too. I think everyone had a lot of fun. Definately a once in a lifetime thing!

Spring Break was great! There were 7 of us in a 6/7 person RV for 9 days! It was a little tight, but we managed. They picked me up from the airport on the 27th and we headed to Kaikoura. There we did whale watching and seal kayaking. It was so cool to see the whales pretty close to the boat.. we saw 5/6 of them. The seal kayaking was fun too because it was a different way of seeing the seals than I had done with my family. After that we drove to Nelson and rode ATVs to the top of this mountain where they had a skywire. It looks like a circular cage and it speeds across a wire at up to 100km/hr. It was so fun to do because we were so high abouve everything else you got a different perspective on the scenery. And it was fun because at times it would go so fast. The ATVs were fun, we got to ride around on them.. right past sheep and cows! The next day we went to Franz Josef where we climbed a glacier. Everyone kept saying that it was the coolest thing they had ever done! You really felt liek you were in a different part of the world when you were climbing it. It was so cool! We went through little crevacies and in holes and all sorts of stuff. It took a total of 6 hours to do the whole tour. It really was amazing and definately worth the money. It wasnt even that expensive. Unfortunately, on our way to Lake Wanaka that night, our RV broke down on a hill! We were half way up it, 1130 at night, no cell service, in the middle of nowhere! We were all really calm though and decided to have the driver back down the hill so she wouldnt have to keep her foot on the brake (the emergency brake didnt do anything!) and also so we wouldnt be in the middle of the road anymore. We got the RV to a clearing on the side of the road, and 10 mins later an RV comes up the mountain.. it was the other RV from Loyola! We were so excited to see them, because they were able to drive 2 of us to the next town where we called a tow truck and the RV company. Noone was able to come get us til the next morning, so the RV came back for us, we got our van working, and made it to a car park where we were able to plug in and sleep for the night. It was a good thing too, because I got sick. I started gettiing sick around midnight, and was throwing up all night at the car park. In the middle of the night, 2 of my frineds also started getting sick. We think that we were dehydrated from the glacier climb because there is no other way the other 4 girls would not have been sick. Because the RV broke down, we needed to stay in Wanaka for the day. The Rv company paid for us to sleep in a hotel for the day, so me and the 2 other sick girls just slept the entire time! We had the Rv the next day, and the 3 of us felt better, so we started on our way to Queenstown, the other major city in the South Island. We didn't miss out on much luckily, beacuse we were supossed to go skydiving but there was too much wind so it was cancelled anyway. When we got to Queenstown, it was raining and gross out, but we still walked around. It reminded me of Vail because it is a cute little ski town. The next day we were able to go skydiving!! That was amazing! We jumped from 12,000 feet. It was so cool, I felt like a was just flying above the clouds! We all ordered the DVD and pictures, so I have all of that to show everyone which is really nice to have. After that we just had a nice big dinner to celebrate our 2 month anniversary of being in New Zealand, and came back to the RV and hung out with the other group since they were all there too. The next day we just hung out, and then drove back to Christchurch. Our flight was at 7am this morning so we got into Christchurch in the morning and hung out, went in shops and stuff liek that. We didn't get to go hot air ballooning like we had planned because it was snowing apparently! I was really disappointed about that because I was looking forward to it so much. But I am sure I will go some other time.
Other than that, it was an amzing trip. I had so much fun and took so many pictures. I am so tired now, and I have to pack for another trip tomorrow! Imiss everyone, and I will see you all soon. I am halfway done my semester here! I cant believe how fast it went by. Talk to you soon