I love the news and knowing what is going on where. Tonight I was looking at www.msnbc.com and noticed two stories in the headlines. One was about a woman in New Zealand and the other was about the Red Sox! It's definitely not a small world if our two "homes" are in the headlines together :)
Since it would have been a vacation weekend if we were in the US, we decided to take a trip ourselves. We drove about 3 and 1/2 hours from Auckland and landed in Taupo.
Prawns
Our first stop was at the Prawn Park with Shawn the Prawn. We ate some Prawns and a prawn burger which were very tasty. The toughest part was getting used to sucking the juice from it's head (very tasty). You can also fish for prawns, but we decided that we had other things to do besides waiting for a bite
Huka Boat
Next was the Huka Falls Jet Boat. This was an amazing ride with 360 degree spins, and pin-point accuracy by the driver to avoid branches and rock walls going at speeds of up to 80km/h. It was unreal. Erin decided to sit on the end and during the spins she ended up getting pretty wet. At times we were going so fast it was hard to open your eyes. We also saw the Huka Falls which were pretty neat as well.
Since many of our friends and relatives were camping this weekend and based on Jane's suggestion a number of weeks ago, we spent the night at another Holiday Park. Our cabin had it's own bathroom, kitchen, and TV this time, so a little different then hanging out in a tent that's for sure.
Sunday was a crazy day as well as we headed north out of the Lake Taupo region and towards Rotorua.
Zorb
Our primary goal was to go ZORBING. Zorbing made ESPN's top 10 sport's moments back in February as well. It's basically like a big ball and you get inside and act like a hamster as you go down this big hill. Erin and I went together and there was water inside so we slide all over the inside all the way down. We also went 1 time by ourselves on the zig-zag track. It was UNREAL and so much fun.
Swoop
Erin was ready to go home after this, but I had something else on my mind. We headed over to the Agrodome and I was able to quickly talk Erin into doing the SWOOP. It's basically like a swing, but we are in sleeping bag type things. We were 40 meters in the air and I had to pull the rip cord. I'll be honest when I pulled the cord I think that Erin and I both thought that our lives may have run short. (But safety is a big concern down here so everything is very safe). We accelerated to around 130km/h, it was unreal. We purchased the picture pack at the Swoop because they capture some GREAT pictures of Erin's facial expressions (see recent picture post)
Those are the highlights from our weekend away. Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day Weekend and the weather cooperated everywhere. Please enjoy our video and pictures posted below!
We are very excited for the weekend as we are heading off for a big adventure at Lake Taupo. Taupo is well know for sky diving, but this weekend we will take advantage of the high speed boat tour and hot spring pools. To those of you who are heading to Franstead for the weekend, have a wonderful weekend in New Hampshire and we'll miss you!
FINALLY...
We have joined a gym! It's very exciting and now we are official members of the gym called Les Mills. It's actually the largest gym in the world and has 10,000 members (that's what we were told). 3000 people per day go there to work out, pretty crazy eh? (www.lesmills.co.nz)
We had our first work out tonight and we are ready to go and get into good shape so we can do lots of tramping.
We had another great weekend down here and it included various activities:
Beers
On Friday night we met up with some Kiwi's (Erin's work mate and her husband) and had some beers, and ate dinner. We learned all sorts of Kiwi like stuff and we made plans to go to one of their friends farms and maybe milk some cows at some point.
Blades
Saturday morning was beautiful so we strapped on our Roller Blades and roller bladed from the city down to some of the bays and ended up at Mission Bay. Here we hung out, got some brunch, and enjoyed the sun. (I put my feet in the water, but that's as far as I was going, the water was chilly).
BBQ
Our search for a BBQ continues...We headed down to the BBQ Factory as we have heard they have some good BBQ's and some at reasonable prices. We found a decent 3 burner one and decided that it would be perfect for our porch. Yes that's right, our search is over and we finally have a BBQ.
Books
Those of you who know Erin and I well know that we aren't huge book readers (me especially). But as I get older I'm starting to get more into them. So we headed to a Book Fair at Random House Publishing. This event happens 1 time per year and it was AWESOME. We ended up with 22 great brand new books for only 80 dollars. Now it's time to start reading.
Beaches
We travelled around the North Shore with another girl that Erin works with and visited some of the beaches. They were pretty nice and we saw tons (heaps as they call it over here) of wind surfers, kite surfing, etc.
Overall a busy weekend and unfortunately Monday is right around the corner. Check out some pictures from the weekend below.
There's been a lot of requests for me to follow through on my post from a few weeks ago regarding taking a picture of Erin before her first day of work. Well, I didn't get that picture, but this morning I was home when Erin left and I was able to snap a quick picture for all of you to see her heading out the door. Doesn't she look GREAT!
We went out to dinner tonight @ Sushi Train. It's this great place where different plates of sushi travel around on a conveyor belt and you sit at a bar. You just select which plates you want and pick them off the belt. At the end, they add up the cost of the plates and that's it. What a cool idea.
Friday's almost here...whoohoo!
So a few months ago prior to coming to NZ I had signed up to be a guest lecturer at a University of Auckland class. Today was the day for the lecture, so I had my material all set and headed up to the University. I figured the class would be around 50 students and probably 10 wouldn't show up, so only about 40 in the class.
I walk into the lecture hall and THE PLACE WAS HUGE! The place holds over 500 people and there were approximately 300 people in the class. As you can imagine I was slightly stunned at the the sheer volume of students, but continued my walk to the front of the classroom. I met the professor, and then did my stuff.
Overall the presentation went very well and hopefully some of the students (who stayed awake) learned something. Good think I didn't' have any fears about public speaking today.
In addition Erin had a successful day as she placed her first candidate in a job (Hooray for Erin, and for the bottle of wine she got as a congratulations).
So the weekend is coming to a close down here in New Zealand. It was a great weekend. Friday night included a night of drinking and bar hoping. Saturday morning we have the mechanic come to our place and change our oil and do a couple minor things to our new purchase (THE VECTRA). It's a really cool service here in Auckland that this company actually comes to your place to work on your car so you don't have to drop it off or anything.
We then headed off to do some shopping. Unfortunately we did not get a BBQ, but we did get 3 plants, a tall bookcase, couch pillows, wine glasses, 2 new bed pillows, and 2 pot holders. Our place looks great and we are very excited about all of our purchases.
At night we went to this play called Bare which is at Silo theatre. It's the 10 year anniversary at the theatre and this play started it all. A quote of the play from the website below "unforgiving snapshot of the city’s culture, complete with its prejudices, dilemmas and delights" (http://www.viewauckland.co.nz/bare_auckland_silo_theatre_index.html). We went with a group of 9 people and we hope to make our way back there for another play in the near future.
Today we travelled to the Fish Market again and got bought some Squid Tubes which we cut into calamari and cooked up (very tasty). We also got some Blue nose fish which was delicious also.
We miss everyone and hope all is well. We want to send out a special Happy Mothers Day to all those Mothers out there. (Happy Birthday to Dad Ciaccia 13 May and Mom Warden 14 May)
By popular request, we have taken a few more pictures. Take a look below...
I'm sure everyone is wondering what Erin was making, it was TACO'S. They were very tasty.
Erin and I were very excited to get our car so we could head out and get a grill or (BBQ) as they call them here. We headed out last night and went to a few different stores. We went to this place called The Warehouse which is like Target or Walmart. BUT, they are all out of BBQ's and said that they aren't going to have any more until the summer. We don't want to wait that long so we are currently looking at alternatives.
We spent some time searching on TradeMe (NZ equivalent to ebay) and saw a couple BBQ's that we might put a bid on. Then Erin found out from a girl that she works with about this place called BBQ Factory. This place has all sorts of BBQ's, so we will most likely head out there this weekend to see if we can make a purchase. Hopefully we will be successful and we will have our "grill".
Erin would like me to add that tonight we watched Lost which was very good. We are a few episodes behind the US, so don't tell us anything about it because you will ruin the next few episodes for us.
I'm happy to report that life is back to normal...I finally have a cell phone again. It's red to match my ipod :) http://store.vodafone.co.nz/mobile_details_summary.aspx?ptrecno=3019
Please send more fun and exciting comments about what you are up to. We want to hear from you!!
As noted in an earlier blog, Erin and I decided to become slightly frugal this week as our monetary funds were extremely low as I was owed a very significant amount of money from PwC for our relocation costs. So, for the first 3 days this week Erin and I have both brought our lunches.
For those of you who know me, that's not typical as I'm generally not extremely excited about making my sandwich in the morning, etc. But, we have some great rolls, and the ham and chicken (that's right sliced turkey at the deli is very uncommon here) from the deli are very tasty. In addition Erin's been a big help and has made my sandwich along with hers in the morning. My job has been to put some cookies in some baggies for each of us.
I'm not sure how long this whole "bringing lunch" thing will last, but it's been fun for the first 3 days this week.
Now I have been reimbursed from PwC, so we now have money in our account over here (Yippie!). We'll see how the bringing lunch thing works out, but I'm assuming that Erin and I will eat out our fare share of times as well.
