Wellington

So another weekend me and Whitney went down to wellington to visit our friends from Orientation in Rotorua. We stayed with my friend Caroline from Texas and she lives down the road from where my cousin lives in southlake, texas! We took the train down and the first night we were there we went out on the town and onto Cuba Street basically the ped mall in Iowa city plus state street in Madison, Crazyness!!! All of us girls def got some international guys that night, they were from Scotland, Asia, Germany and England!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday; we climbed Mt. Victoria, in my flip flops and this mountain is also straight up, which was absolutely wonderful as well. Then we took the cable car to the botanical gardens, the view from the mountain was much better, but i did get the postcard picture. It then started to rain and ruined all of our night plans, plus we were really tired...

Sunday; me and whitney went to Te Papa, the NZ national museum and the wharf and the farmers market, which I got a tasty corn dog. We did some shopping later and since everything closes at 5 we crashed and had a nice dinner at a Thai restaurant.

Monday morning we went home on the bus to start class again...

Lake Taupo

To escape what happened the previous weekend we(about 8 of us; me, David(minnesota), Whitney and Lizzie(Virginia), Stefan(kiwi), Tess(Georgia), Mariel(Norway) and Lisa(Sweden)) rent a van for the weekend and head up to the Adventure Capital of the North Island, Taupo. So Much FUNNN

On our way up we drove through middle earth, so amazing, and got out for an photo op.

We got their about 9pm and me, david, stefan and tess decide to go to some bars.

The next day; saturday, some of the girls went skydiving and me and lizzie went to the beach and walked around, the water wasnt as cold as we expected so we went home to get our suits. We then met up with the Scandanavian girls and they came to the beach to go swimming. The water was so clear, and with snow capped mountains in the background, it was breathless.

Later, we went kayaking down the Waikato River, we then stopped in some hot pools, it was very relaxing. Later that night we decide to go to the famous Huka Falls, however we quickly learned that we took the long way to get there and it was an hour hike. When we got their, dusk was quickly approaching. Chaos errupts, there were a few well experienced kayakers stuck in the falls, so they had to get them out. The boys helped them, it was really scary he has hanging with his kayak still attached to him by a thin rope. Luckily they got him out, he had to climb out of his kayak to get out safely because there was to much bush and trees to bring a kayak up. Later that night we went out, danced with some creepy guys, which is always awesome!

Sunday; we climbed Mount Tauhara, the only Dacite Volcano in New Zealand, most of them are andesite. That was def. a climb, it was a straight up 45 degree angle the whole time and there wasnt really a path some of the time, which was also so Awesome(sarcasm, a little :-))