I am in New Zealand!!!

Hey guys! AH!!! THis is amazing! I can't even put into words my expirience so far but I'll try to give you a quit summary...I left Minneapolis on Tuesday at 10:00am. Everything started off great but when I landed in Dallas for my lay-over my flight to LAX had been cancelled :( suprisingly I stayed calm and spent about a half hour on the phone trying to catch a different flight so I wouldn't miss my flight to New Zealand, got put on a flight to San Jose, CA and then another to LAX. This happened very quickly and I would rush inbetween flights and then end up just sitting anxiously on the plane. I ended up making it to LAX at 6:10pm and had to go through customs, find my now lost luggage, and meet my group because my final flight left at 6:45. Looking back I have no idea how it worked, there was running, many calls, and lots of worried people but surprising it all ended up working great! The flight was 13 hours and by hour 7 I wanted to cry but we made it to Auckland around 4:30am New Zealand time with very little sleep. We loaded up in vans, went and bought groceries, and headed to the One Tree Hill to get a beautiful view of Auckland. It is very different getting used to the driving on left, the bizarre driving, numerous round-abouts, the language, and always saying "toilets" rather than bathrooms, but I feel like we've caught on quickly. We spent a few hours at the park and then we went to a beach. We then loaded up the vans and spent the next 4 hours heading to the west coast to Piha. It was absolutely beautiful! We camped on a beach :) and got to watch a surf context on the most amazing black beach. We had a free day and spent a great deal of time resting, getting sun, and exploring. We went out to a bar as a group that night (its legal here ;) haha) and had a great time. I learned lots that night! We spent another night on the beach packed up in the morning and spent about 5 hours driving south to Waitomo. We were immediately greeted by Maori people who sang to us and welcomed them into their home. It was extremely different than the last place, we were now in the hilly countyside. We spent the evening repacking our bags, exploring once again and trying to catch up on sleep. All the driving and sun is exhausting believe it or not. Today we woke up early and it was raining (it has been extremelly sunny and hot up through this point, about 70-80 degrees, we are all started to peel) our rappeling trip was cancelled due to rain but we still got to go black water rafting which was amazing! We got all geared up in wet suits and went in single tubes through caves filled with glow worms. Extremely difficult to describe, but it was freezing, scary, and exciting all at once. Very different than anything I imagined. We then went to a farm show which was interesting but honestly quite boring. We watched the man shear a sheep ;) now we have an hour of free time to work on school work and check the computers before we meet back for supper. As a group we have been cooking breakfasts and dinners. They have actually been quite good and nutritious. I sure eat a lot less here and its much healthier, lots of fruit.

A couple things I have noticed right away here: Kiwis (the New Zealand people) are extremely nice and friendly, they see all resources as precious and are very particular about conserving water (we have been taking very limited short showers), they also have much smaller portions of everything, and seem much more carefree over all. THey seem much less stressed and are not worried so much about time or material things. It is not uncommon to see people walking in and out of shops with no shoes. Its crazy! but I love it

Wow I feel like that was extremely long and I hope I didn't miss anything but I am running out of time on the computer, so I'll try to update you again as soon as I can. I hope that wasn't to hard to understand.

I love you all and I miss you!!!