"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it is unreasonable to grieve when it comes to an end." -Twilight (shut up...)

We’ve made it back to the motherland!  I haven’t posted about it because up until a few days ago our early homecoming was a surprise to Brad’s family.  We were both getting a touch homesick and kind of got a little bored of working menial jobs and living on such a tight budget.  Also, our goal coming here was to see New Zealand, and see it we did!  But we weren’t finished yet: instead of catching a flight right to Auckland and flying home, we decided to do a bit of traveling: a weekend in Dunedin, 5 nights on The North Island, and 8 nights in Fiji.

         We got a relocator minivan (rental car companies need more cars in a certain city so you can move them for cheap- ours was $1/day) which we took from Queenstown to Dunedin to catch up with some old friends, eat at our fave haunts, and check out the gorgeous Dunedin scenery.  It was so good to see our friends from when we first got to New Zealand.  It seems like forever ago, but naturally we fell right back in the Rich and Gavin’s antics.

Brad: "Could you please turn up the Chinese?"

Brad, Rich, and Gavin out at Zucchini Brothers

Meat pies, bacon butties, and rhubarb slice- heaven!

Bacon buttie!

Caves at Doctor's Point

  We carried on in our van to Christchurch where we caught a flight to Wellington, the beginning of our northbound North Island trip.  Some highlights were riding the cable car for some great views and a walk through the botanic gardens, a trip to the Weta Workshop (NZ’s special effects/costumes/weaponry/everything awesome company that did “Lord of the Rings,” “Avatar,” “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” and many others), and a visit to the city’s museum Te Papa.

No poodles!

Wellington Cable Car

Wellington Botanic Gardens

Te Papa

Wetas!!!

After two nights in the capital, we drove 4 hours northeast to the small city of Napier: “Art Deco Capital of the World.”  It was very… art deco.  For someone who knows a bit about architecture I’m sure it would have been amazing, but for Brad and I it consisted of a lot of mockery of the terms “electro-Egyptian” and such, which were legitimately used in my self-guided tour pamphlet.  

 

The highlight of The North Island for me was our final stop: Rotorua.  There’s heaps of geothermal activity and formations going on which we explored at Wai-O-Tapu.  The ever-changing pools, waterfall, colors and smells were like being on another planet.   On our second day there, we drove an hour west to Matamata, aka “Hobbiton.”  You guessed it: it’s the home of  “The Lord of the Rings” movie set of where the hobbits lived.  Although I like the LOTR movies I don't consider myself a huge fan, but this was one of the coolest things we did in NZ.  The filmmakers recently fixed up the sets to full hobbit splendor for the filming of “The Hobbit” and you honestly felt like you were in the movie.  There were tons of “hobbit holes,” (including Frodo’s), The Party Tree, and since it’s on a working sheep farm I got to pet lambs at the end.  This is getting borderline nerdy so I’m going to go ahead and post some pictures now.

Fantail

Man made mold!

Frodo's house

Man made tree

 

A night in Auckland was our last stop before jetting off to Fiji, which I will post about later (I have 2 rolls of underwater pics to get developed and scan so bare with me).  The week we spent traveling around NZ was a great reminder of what a unique, breath-taking place New Zealand is.  I can’t think of many places where you can see glaciers, palm trees, geothermal formations, and volcanoes all in the same week.  Not to mention that the people are amazing: kind, curious, laid back, and adamant that family and personal happiness come before your career.  It’s still sinking in that my year abroad is over, but I hope that the things I love about the lifestyle stick with me as I dive back into teaching.  While I’m getting back to my old city and job, I refuse to get back to “the grind,” but to keep exploring and gaining new experiences.  And of course I can’t leave out the fact that the quote, “It’s your friends that make your world” has rung in my head many times while I’ve been gone.  There’s no place like home!