Day One: First impressions of New Zealand

Well...when i signed up for a trip down under I don't think it meant what we decided. Almost, everything is backwards, winter during summer, night during day, driving on the opposite side of the road, and the needles on the pine trees point up! Literally, my first impression of New Zealand was, "wow, it's so green!" The ferns are green, the grass is green, and the trees are green! There is grass and hills everywhere. All you can see are ferns, trees, hills, fences, grass, sheep, and cows. The cool thing is that the soil is a reddish-yellow orange color, unlike ours which is brown! I was surprised though, there were a lot less sheep than I thought there was going to be. For some strange reason I had in my head that there were going to be all sheep and no cows. There were a lot of cows also. Finally, after being to China, I thought that the people here would be a lot easier to understand. Sometimes their expressions and accent are harder to understand than a person in China who can speak English. Needless to say, today was still wonderful. I love New Zealand already.

We started at North a long time ago. It was 90 degrees out and we were on a yellow school bus to the airport. I still tried to make the best out of it. We had our first flight from Chicago to LA. I was determined to stay up the whole time on that plane, so I could sleep the whole time on the plane to Auckland. Luckily, on my first plane ride I sat by Reilly, Morgan, and Kelsy. We just talked pretty much the whole time. Which kept all of us up until we landed. Plus, Reilly would kick the back of my seat if I started to drift off. We had about zero time in LA. I went to Starbucks really quickly planning on getting a coffee. Being tired, I forgot you can't bring cold drinks on the plane, so I had to drink it really quickly. I sat next to Alvaro and Hana on our plane ride to Auckland. Hana is a college student from Arkansas, she was studying abroad. I learned from my China trip to get up during the plane ride, so my first experience in New Zealand was, not fainting this time (someone else did on the plane though) eating lunch in a town. We just walked around for a while until we decided on a cafe. Although there were signs, I had no clue what they were talking about. I ended up getting what I thought was the most delicious. I had something that tasted like an egg, cheese, and ham filled pastry and L&P soda. I had heard about L&P before we went from Ms. Titus and from my research project. I was dying to try it! Turns out it was so good! We decided that L&P is like Sprite but without the lime and more lemon, it's so good and truly unique to New Zealand. Unfortunately, I've tried something I haven't liked already. Bridget had minced mystery meat pie that I tried, and wasn't a big fan of. Although, the meat could have been worse. I also tried what Alex got, that was super gross! She had a sausage, well that's what we decided it was, with mashed potatoes on it. Honestly, it was super gross, nobody liked it! It doesn't really matter though because it's all about the experience. After lunch, we went Luging. Well first we went in a gondola to get to the top of a mountain. Next, we went luging! We went in these scooters and sped down a mountain! I did it twice, each time we had to take a ski lift back up to the top! It was so cool, and If you talked to Amanda you'd hear her say "I swear we're in Jurassic Park" it didn't help that they had dinosaur sculptures. After we finished luging, we went to a jade factory. I went to one in China, so I heard everything already. Although, I learned about the different symbols that the Maori used. We were finally in our destination, Rotorua. It smelled absolutely horrible, like rotten eggs to be more specific. I learned that Rotorua is geothermal, which means that it's really warm underground. Unfortunately, that also lets a lot of sulfur into the air. It's so gross. We went to Burger Fuel for dinner. Their burgers were so good. After I finished eating, I wrote a postcard for my family. Hopefully, they get it before I get home. Then, we went to a cost-co and Reilly and I got water. We met these two guys who were studying abroad from Iowa, and they told us how cool New Zealand really is. Steven bought Milo that we all tried because we read about the famous "chocolate en polvo" from Pobre Ana Bailo Tango, that we had to try. It was pretty good!

In the near future I am really excited to meet the kids from Rangitoto college because they are around the same age as us living a "typical" kiwi life. Also, I am really excited to go to Australia because the weather is supposed to be warmer, like in Cairns. The weather here is cooler than the 90 degree bus ride we had to the airport when we left. I'm sure I'll get used to this weather though.