I'm comin home...soon...

Well, the trips not over yet, but it will be soon! I can't believe I will be home in a couple days, it's unbelievable! We made it to Rotaroua, spent the night in a hotel, and spent the day exploring the Agrodome(we saw an awesome sheep show!), and then went to a zoo and saw a kiwi!! It was sweet as!(a new Zealand saying, definition; sweet as the coolest thing you can think of). The next day, yesterday, we left Rotaroua and drove 15 minutes to another of my dads friends houses, where we watched TV, had a lovely dinner, watched more TV, stayed up till 2012, and went to bed. Today we are relaxing. See you soon, and happy new years!! :)

5 days to go

Only 5 days left, yikes. I'm definitely going to miss NZ. I cant wait to see all of you! My first hangi was cool, I got to watch them take it out of the ground! The food was in little containers, in a metal cage on top of really hot stones, and covered with a few layers of burlap, then the dirt. The food was pretty good, but I wasn't feeling so good, so I just laid around in our room. We left the day after the hangi, and went to a hotel with my nanna and uncle Pete. we slept there and visited Toni and Sharron the next day at their beach house. We had a ton of fun, but I brushed againsted a bush and ended up with a spider on my hand, and now i'm terrified of spiders again :( oh well. Right now we are going to Rotoroua, i'm doing schoolwork and dealing with a slight bit of carsickness. See you soon!

merry Christmas!

Its the day after Christmas, and I had a good Christmas! I got a boomerang I can paint, a glass Maori symbol, 20$, 50$, a huge lollypop, a lego set, a koala magnet, and I think thats it! Yesterday we hung out until around 10 o'clock, then we went to the beach for a couple of hours. After we arived back at the house, we played on the ipad and basically did nothing. For dinner we got all dressed up and went to the hotel down the road and had dinner in the Bryers room! It turns out one of my old relatives owned the house that was on the hotel property, so they named a room after the origial owner! Dinner was lovely, it was a fancy buffet. We had a good time. Today we are going to have a hangi, where you cook the food in a huge pit for around 6 hours. It sound pretty cool. Hope you all have a lovely Christmas! Only about a week left, see you soon!

Christmas eve!!!

I can't believe its Chrismas eve! Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, we've left Waiheke and drove a couple of hours to my dads friends house. The guy, Brad, has 3 girls, ages 5, 4, and 3. Unfortunately, Brads wife died unexpectedly about a year ago. We spent the night with them and hung out with the kids, who we're very enthusiastic about playing that we were criminals and they were going to lock us away forever! Ouch. We left the next morning and drove another couple of hours to the hokianga habour, and the little town of Opononi, where the Bryers family is local. We went out to dinner the first night and found a relation at the bar! It was strange. And today, we went over to some sand dunes and played around, and the boat driver asked my nana who we were and she said 'I'm Rose Bryers' and the guy was like 'oh! You're a Bryers!'. Also, we went to a local museum and there were lots of photos of my great grand parents and people like that. My cousin Michael keeps saying 'you guys are famous!' and I keep insisting 'our family is just local!'. Somehow, Christmas snuck up on me and now Im going 'what!? It's Christmas eve!?' Tomorrow we are going to have Christmas dinner in the Bryers room at the fancy hotel! Merry Christmas everyone!

Dream home

Yesterday I met my uncle Ken! Ive never met him before, so it was good to finally meet him. We went out to dinner and had a good time. Today we checked out of the hotel and took a ferry to Waiheke (wyhikkie) island. We rented a little cottage next to the beach, it's really lovely. My dad lived here during summer break, when he was attending Dilworth, and the old farm is here. We visited where the farm was, but it's mainly a vineyard now, with a few other houses on the edge. After that, we went down to the beach and walked a ways to a bunch of rocks and tide pools and scrambled around. We found some really lovely shells, my favorites being the scallops I found. The man who is renting us the cottage has a nice house behind it, and he has alpacas! We got to feed them, it was so fun! (6 days till Christmas!)

Auckland museum

Yesterday we went to the Auckland museum! They have a huge display of Maori artifacts, it was really cool. We paid extra to see a Maori performance, it was awesome!!!! The Maori peformers did songs and dances, we saw some games and fighting stances. Once, they were showing us how they fought using a club sort of thing. The warrior suddenly shot out, using this thing so fast you couldn't see it, while he was doing that with the weapon, he bellowed out a confrontation. It was so scary and startling I jumped a couple of inches of my chair! At the end they performed the Haka, the chant they would do before they went to battle. It was terrifying. The all-blacks (rugby) do it before each game, its sooooooooooo cool, look it up on youtube and youll see what I mean. Do it!!! (7 days till Christmas!)

New Zealand!!!

We are in Auckland! It's a fair bit like Seattle, only the ocean is on 2 sides of of it. Yesterday after we arrived and found the hotel, we went to a familys house for dinner. We didn't know the people, but we had met a relative of there's on our road trip around the US. They were a pleasant family, and we had a great time, the highlight of the evening though, was their tiny dog. The dog was smaller that a cat! I think it was a fox terrier or something, this tiny dog had so much energy! It was rocketing around the house the entire time, it was hilarious! Today we visited my dads old school, it was amazing! They had a huge gym complex, gorgeous sports fields and grounds, even a swimming pool for heavens sake! My dads name was everywhere on citizenship awards, sport trophies, he was even a head prefect! After that we headed to my dads cousins house for dinner. They had a huge trampoline, it was really fun! We just got back from that, and it's 10:40pm, so I should probably be going to bed... (9 days till Christmas, yay!)

new zealand, here we come!

A couple of days ago we went to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, it was alot like the Australian zoo. Since Ruth had gotten to go hang gliding, I got to hold a koala! It was alot like holding a baby on your hip, same kind of weight and shape. It was a posing for pictures kind of thing, and I got a big photo and 4 magnets. My smile is so big I thought I would strech out my face!

From Currrumbin Wildlife Sanctuary

We have left Pete and Laura's house(after getting a chrismas present we eagerly unwrapped and re-wrapped to save for chrismas, it was legos! :), and now we are back where we started, Brisbane and Cathy and Sean's house! Tomorrow we fly out to New Zealand, good bye Austrailia!

Snake!

Today we went to a koala protest! There is a housing development that is supposed to be built, but it's in koala Habitat! Our friend was attending the protest, and we went with him. We stayed for awhile then went out for lunch. It started raining, and we went to sledges house and watched a movie( I wasn't feeling to good, hay fever). After that we headed back to Pete and Laura's house. On the way home we saw a huge snake! It was as long as me I think, and about as thick as my fist. It was laying on the road, and we were worried about it, so my dad found a stick and moved it to the side. It was pretty, green and a little black( we think it was a carpet snake). We were supposed to be on Fraser island right now, but it was going to rain the entire time, so we're having a stay-cation ;p

Argh!

Today Ruth went hang gliding! I didn't, I'm to nervous ;p. she did really well and had a ton of fun. After that we went to the beach, and there was a really strong current that knocked you of you feet and pulled you down the beach! I had so much fun jumping in the waves and getting soaked. It was awesome! I really hope we do it again.

Nimbin

Today we went to nimbin, small town/village where our friend sldge lives half time. It is a relatively hippie place, lots of people with dreadlocks. We visited sledge and his son then wandered around for a little bit before returning to Pete and Laura's house. It was cool, but there were to many people smoking for my like. I had my first taste of a Timtam, a choclate biscuit sort of thing, they are sooooooooooooooooooooooooo good! I also had a peanut slab, a chunk of chocolate with roasted peanuts in it, tasted a bit like a Reese's penutbutter cup, but more natural and better.

Not sure what to call this

Not much has happened, we just stayed at Peter and Laura's house and did home work. I started a new book, Brisingr, book 3 in the inheritance cycle. Got about a 3rd of the way through it in an hour or so. I think you've read it HL, I'm not sure though. I can't think of anything else to say.

Don't frack my future!

After I blogged yesterday Sledge got out a suitcase full of tee shirts supporting his cause, No Fracking! Look up Fracking and you'll see why. So now I have a new light blue tee shirt with 'don't Frack my future' on the front, and 'say no to coal seam gas mining' on the back. I like it. After leaving Sledge's house we went to the Byron Bay market. It's a huge farmers market, pretty cool. We had lunch there then headed to the beach with our parents friends Peter and Laura, and one of their daughters Maya, age 14. We met up with their other daughter, Carmen, age 12. She was at a friends birthday party on the beach. We hung out at the beach, then headed to their house. They have a marimba, and I was teaching Ruth a little bit, and she was jamming out for quite a while. :) I'm really starting to miss you guys, January is soooo far away. 1 month and 1 day to go!

Ironic

Ok, so the deal is we left the hotel and drove a couple hours to Coolangataa, to visit my cousin Michael. We had lunch at a place he was working, then gelato at another place he was working. After that we drove to Kingscliff to visit our friend Sledge. We went to the beach and waded around in the water. It was really shallow, and there were a lot of small fish. The thing that was surprising was that there were lots of dead jelly fish. Turns out they were not poisonous, just fun to look at and scary to have bump into your legs( I shriked a lot). But guess what!? Did Ruth get stung by a jelly? Noooo! She got stung by a bee. On the beach. On her toe. Its ironic! So right now she's sitting drawing and resting her toe. I feel so bad for her.

Noosa

We left my nanna's house today and drove to Noosa, a small town by the ocean. It's cloudy here, but the ocean is warm enough to swim. My dad, my cousin Lauren and I went swimming for around half an hour, before we got to cold and had to get out. We are currently in a hotel sort of thing, there are lots of two story small houses connected with a pool in the middle, and a tiny hot tub. There's also a tennis court. It's pretty nice. Unfortunately, we're only staying tonight, I wold love to stay another night. Last night at my nannas house it rained! That may not sound exiting, but they hadn't had rain for a long time, and there was also thunder and lighting later on. I just stood out in the yard and laughed, getting drenched. It felt so good!