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.

New Zealand Coming Up!

Tomorrow we're heading to New Zealand on a really long flight, hopefully we'll get business class. Make sure to keep checking it, I'll be blogging every day when we're in New Zealand.

My First Flight

Today was my  first step of my future career in aviation.  I had to start out the day by going to our math tutor, not that I'm bad at math but she makes sure we're where we should be compared to the students in school, then I got to actually start my day.  It was a perfect day for flying today, not a cloud in the sky which made me even more excited because we'd be able to do some sightseeing.  While the flight instructor that was taking us up was checking the plane, my mom took tons of pictures of me in and next to the plane.  Me and my dad climbed in, me in the front, dad in the back, and plugged in our headsets.  I didn't quite understand why we each needed one, I assumed only one person would have to talk to air traffic control but they were also used to just talk to each other.  It was nice because without them we'd be screaming over the loud engine but the headsets blocked out all the outside sound so we could all hear each other crystal-clear.  After we'd taxied and were about 30 feet from the runway, the instructor had to go over a long checklist before we could takeoff and I was longing to be in the air flying the plane.  Finally we pulled out onto the runway and he told me to push the throttle all the way in and we started down the runway.  I've never realized how big a runway actually was while sitting in a passenger seat on an airliner but when your in the cockpit it looks like it's be impossible to steer off it.  When we were up to the takeoff speed he eased the yoke back and we were soon two thousand feet in the air.  He asked us where we'd like to go and neither me or my dad had any preference so we flew over Buckeye Lake and he let me fly the plane from that point on.  I loved the feel of flying, after a couple minutes of it I was 100% sure that's what I want to do when I'm older.  We flew across the lake and then decided to fly over our house.  It was very easy to find because we live next to the mansion which has a huge field.  Two thousand feet really doesn't seem that high when your flying, I could clearly see the lacrosse goals and the fence.  Once we were done flying around over Granville, we had to head back to the airport.  I can't wait until I'm old enough to actually land the plane because it looked like the best part.  When we were off the runway we taxied back over to a hanger and got out.  My mom took pictures of us as we were walking back towards the airport.  Flying is the most fun thing I've ever done and I can't wait until I'm a pilot.  My dad was supposed to take pictures while we were in the air but he was too busy talking to the instructor, but I do have pictures of me in the plane on the ground.

Jeff's Piano Recital

Last week on Friday our new piano teacher Jeff held a recital in a church in Dublin. We had our rehearsal on Tuesday so we knew what we were doing and had heard each other pieces. It was different from other recitals like Mrs. Palmer's where she just sat up on the stage calling out names and making us bow. In Jeff's recital he told us to just recognize the crowd clapping with a nod but some kids still bowed. He also didn't announce everyone's name but just told us to look at the sheet and come up when it was our turn and just start playing. It was a lot more fun than Mrs. Palmer's recital because the pieces were more interesting and played with a lot more energy. In Mrs. Palmer's recitals people would just go up and play their Minuet or whatever but in this recital there were cool Christmas songs. Also, in Jeff's recital there weren't just pianists but also singers who were very good. I have to say though, I liked Mrs. Palmer's receptions more but that was because she made everyone bring something unlike Jeff who brought everything. So my main point in this is that I like our new teacher more than our old one.

What I'm Thankful For

The first thing I'm thankful for is being able to play tennis. My parents spend a large portion of their money on my tennis which I'm very grateful for. Even when they're having financial problems they'll still spend a lot of their money on tennis lessons and tournaments. During the summer I went to all three of Peter's camps which are all very expensive. The next thing I'm grateful for is having food on the table. In a lot of places homeless people are starving and I'm grateful that we always have a gourmet meal on the table. I'm also grateful that Obama got elected president because I think he'll be able to help the economy and make more job openings in America. Another thing I'm thankful for is being able to do lots of traveling. Even though the 7 wonders idea is kind of out we still plan to do lots of traveling in the next year. We've been to too many places for me to remember so I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful to be able to play piano even though sometimes I don't like it I think it will help me in the long run.

The First Seven Wonder

We had to get up at three to go to the airport to catch a flight to Washington D.C.  I've always hated getting up early but it was especially bad because I'd just been at a friends birthday party (his name's Alex and we went to see an Ohio State soccer game and I got back around midnight). I got about 3 hours of sleep.  We got business class once again going to Rome but long flights still aren't fun.  When we were landing in Rome I didn't know what to expect but there was a beautiful ocean and it was really nice and sunny out.  It was really confusing trying to find out how to get to our apartment.  We were originally planning on taking the train and then the metro or something but that was to confusing and expensive so we just got a taxi.  The actual city was a lot like Paris except not as nice (it's more crowded and lots of graffiti).  The driver's were also very dangerous.  There were lots of scooter and motorcycle riders that would go in between cars passing them by inches.  There was obviously lots of honking and yelling.  When we got to our apartment we had to wait for a while because we showed up two hours early.  We visited the Vatican and St. Peter's cathedral which wasn't fun, not because it was boring but because we were really tired.  We went to bed around 4 and woke up really early in the morning the next day.  The second day was the day we decided to see the Colosseum and the ancient ruins.  We got an early start and it was a really nice walk even though day got really frustrated because we couldn't find it.  When we got there we were on a balcony looking off at all the ruins imagining what it would have been like to be living in them 2000 years ago.  We walked through the ruins and it was amazing.  There were scientists studying certain parts so we watched the for a while.  It was really big but I'm not going to go into lots of details on this because I'd rather focus on the reason we came to Rome.  It was huge.  We could see it from the balcony rising up a lot higher than any of the other ruins and when we were right next to it looking up, we couldn't believe it was built thousands of years ago.  We started on the ground floor and walked all the way around.  There was a cross marking where Cesar used to sit.  You could look down and see where the trap doors were and where they would set lions on the gladiators.  Part of the underground passages were covered by a flooring that was supposed to show you what it used to look like when the gladiators were fighting on it.  It was just a wood covering with sand on top.  Then we moved to the second floor where you could look down on the passages which was really cool.  We didn't really spend a whole lot of time there though because we were all hungry and tired so we took the metro home.  The metro's in Rome aren't nearly as nice as the metro's in Paris.  On the last day of our trip we visited a lot of places but I'm just going to write about the Pantheon.  It's an ancient building but it's still in one piece so you can walk inside of it.  Before we went in we got gelato (ice cream) which was good but not as good as the ice cream in Paris.  Inside there was a big dome that had an opening but there was no glass covering it so when it rains it just rains right into the Pantheon.  It's supposed to being pretty cool.  There's lots of drains so it never floods or anything as far as I know.  It was a short trip but we saw a lot and learned a lot so we all thought it was plenty of time and were eager to get home.  It was nice but not as nice as Paris.

The Obama Rally

Today we went into Columbus so we could see Obama speak live.  When we got to the area where the rally was taking place there was a long line of people that were heading somewhere that we couldn't see.  We finally found a place to park and started walking towards the line.  On our way there were tons of vendors selling shirts, pins, and hats.  Above all the noise you would just here some guy yelling, "hats and shirts!, shirts and hats!"  It was a big line but it moved quickly and soon we were in.  There was already a large crowd gathered up where Obama was going to speak and if I would have known how many people were going to be there I would have wanted to get a spot in the crowd then but since we had an hour and a half we found a nice shady spot and waited there.  There were a few volunteers handing out free water so we didn't get hot and thirsty so it wasn't all miserable waiting.  Before the future president took the podium there were various people talking such as one of the senators and the mayor.  They were just trying to get the crowd going.  When Obama came everyone went crazy and started waving signs in the air but I couldn't see a thing because of the massive crowd.  There was some kind of construction vehicle that a bunch of people were standing on and mom told me to go over and get some good pictures for her blog.  I found a spot on it where I could see Obama clearly and it was much better than being in the crowd.  I got one really good picture of the huge crowd and the American flag in the background and I think mom nominated that one to go on her blog.  We didn't watch the whole thing so we didn't have to worry about the crowd but he was done soon after we'd left.  My favorite part of the whole thing was the secret service agents.  They were all dressed up in a suit with dark sunglasses.  They had guys on the roof with giant binoculars looking for potential problems.  It looked like a cool job to me.  When we left we went to the closest fast food restaurant (Wendy's) and all ate big meals because we were all starving.  We then went to Easton (a shopping center) and watched a movie about religion.  It was pretty much about some guy talking about how stupid religion is.  It was rated R but Isabel still watched it because there was just a little cussing.  Those were the highlights of our day.