First Week in New Zealand

I haven't been able to blog lately because we've had trouble getting online at the previous places we've stayed at but we're at the last place we're going to be staying in on our trip and we've got internet access that isn't dial-up. I'll start with the plane ride. It was the nicest seat I've ever had on an airplane. It was business class but we didn't get to sit on the upper level of the 747. The seat reclined all the way back so it was just like a bed making it easy to get some sleep. I've always had a problem with sleeping on airplanes but for once I got some sleep. We also had our own TV's, but they have those on other airplane's too. This is the first one where we could watch whatever we wanted when we wanted to. You had a menu and could pick from a variety of movies, games, music, and music videos. I thought it was pretty cool that you could play other people on the plane in different games. When we landed in Australia, it was hell. We were really confused and couldn't get on any flights. Finally, they were able to get us on a flight to New Zealand. We flew on an airline called Qantas, I didn't like the seats nearly as much as the ones they have on United. The meal was really good though, I liked it more than the one we have on United. In New Zealand everything went pretty smoothly. We made it through customs quickly and found our driver that took us to our rental car without a problem. Finally, after about 25 hours of flying, we made it to our house near Auckland. The next day we just rested, nobody was in the mood to do any hiking so we just sat around all day except for our walk up to the village which was very nice. Now that I've summarized our first couple days in New Zealand, I'm just going to go over the highlights of what's happened.

THE PENGUIN MUSEUM was the first major thing we've done so far, it was a lot of fun. On our third day, we drove into Auckland to see some penguins and other sea creatures. Auckland was beautiful, right next to the ocean and it was a sunny day so there were tons of walkers and people on sailboats which made it a very happy atmosphere. When I saw that the museum was indoors, I wasn't as excited about it because it was such a nice day, but when we walked inside, it was really cool. There was a huge tank that they kept the penguins in that was just like a slice of Antarctica. We took a snowmobile type thing that ran around the perimeter of the tank so we could see the penguins up close. It was really cool because it was like riding around a group of penguins in Antarctica. We were also fortunate enough to watch them get fed. The penguinkeepers were putting fish in their mouths, one second the fish was there, then it disappeared very quickly. We also got to see baby penguins that were very fluffy. That was my highlight of the museum but there were also other tanks of stingrays, paranas, and other fish. We even got to see the parana's get fed which was pretty cool.

ZORBING is where you get in a huge rubber ball and roll down a hill. For one ride it's like $30 so it would probably be a good business idea for a business in America. You could choose between being strapped in and doing flips in the ball or having the squirt a bunch of water in and go rolling down without being strapped in. I chose to go down with water in it. First you have to dive through a tunnel that goes to where you are when you roll. You get to choose between two different tracks on the hill. One that goes straight down (the wussy track) or the one that zigzags back and forth (the fun track). I obviously picked the fun track while the girls picked the girl track. When I dove in, I expected the water to be freezing cold but it was actually as warm as bath water. When you're rolling down the hill, you don't have time to look outside the ball and enjoy the sights, it's violent. You're constantly being pushed in different directions in the ball when you come to another curve in the track. The girls experience with it was probably much different because they got to stay in one direction. It was lot's of fun and would love to do it again sometime.

THE WORLD FAMOUS SHEEP SHOW- Mom made us get up early to go to a sheep show which sounded really boring to me. We drove to the farm and went to where the show was going to be. There were tons of people in a large auditorium and a big pyramid where there were places for the sheep to stand and every stand was labeled. Before the show started, he asked what country everyone was from and we were the only American's there. Everyone was pretty much from Asia. The show started off by the guy naming different types of sheep while they ran up on the podium. It sounds like it would be boring but he was really entertaining and it was a lot of fun to watch. After he had all of the sheep on the pyramid he sheered one. The sheep started out all fluffy and after he sheered it there was barely and wool on it. He then did a demonstration with dogs used to round up sheep. Since there wasn't enough room on stage for the sheep, he had to use ducks instead. The dog was very well trained, it didn't know how to round up the ducks on it's own but the guy running the show would tell it to go right and it would go right or to go left and it would go left or creep up, there were tons of commands knew. The dog easily rounded up the terrified ducks and the show was over. To prove that the dog could round up real sheep, there was another show outside in a big area where he was having the dog bring a group of sheep through an obstacle course. Sheep are really stupid animals because even though they were twice as big as the dog, they were terrified of it and went through the obstacle course obediently. We then went on a tour of the farm and got to feed alpaca's, and other farm animals.

We've also done many other thing while here in New Zealand but I'm not going to go into detail right now because I'm going to go explore around our house. One disappointment though is that we didn't get to see the Shire where the Lord of the Rings was filmed.