Week 20 – last week at home & flight back home

Hi there! This blog post will be about my last week before I had to fly back to Germany..

Saturday 12th was my last day on the maize farm and the night to Sunday my last night in Paerata.

On Sunday I had to pack everything, whih took me a while (I don’t particularly like packing, especially for leaving a home). Marcel, a friend from Germany came around with the van he bought and after a really sad goodbye/farewell from Paerata we made our way down to Taupo and to Whakapapa village.

We stayed in a holiday park for the night. It was raining all night long and would not stop in the morning. Our plan was to do the Tongariro crossing: Marcel decided not to go as it really was raining the whole time. Niklas and I thought it couldn’t be too bad and we really wanted to do it, so we were prepared and started walking… we walked 1.4km in and (luckily) stopped at the first hut so I could get rid of my bandages which were too tight and therefore stopped blood flowing into my legs. At the hut we got told the wind had sped up to 110kmh at the top of the mountain. That obviously would have blown us off the edges.

With the tongariro crossing not being safe to walk and Marcel not having a phone with him (he left it in Paerata), we walked back to whakapapa village. The walk was 3hrs and we had lots of fun, even though we got soaked. From Whakapapa we tramped to the end of the Tongariro crossing, as Marcel would pick us up there some time in the afternoon.

Niklas and I were just walking the last kilometre to the car park when marcel turned up with his van! After this adventurous day we relaxed in a hot’n’cold spot in the Waikato river in Taupo.
On Tuesday we dropped off Niklas at the bus stop in Taupo, he went back to Auckland to then fly to Christchurch to pick up his van.

Marcel and I then drove to Napier and went to the Maraertotara Falls that afternoon. Before we went to the car park right next to the beach for the night we tried to catch us a fish for dinner, but we didn’t get any.

Wednesday 16th was a beautiful and sunny day. We picked up Jana, also a friend from Germany, who’s staying at a hostel in Napier and went to Ocean beach for a swim and to the Falls again to jump from the rocks. Jana jumped from the rope only one-handed because she had her goPro in the other. As she came out of the water the goPro was gone! Luckily Marcel had snorkel gear in his van, so he went back to get it. I then went in the water and prepared for diving, but the goPro was almost too easy to get back. In the shallow part, just on the last rock, it smiled at me. I also saw a pair of sunnies a metre from the goPro, so we got us some new sunglasses as well :))

After fish’n’chips for dinner we camped at the car park in Napier again.
The rain started on Thursday.. We went to Havelock for breakfast, then chilled out at Napier beach again and had a nap and delicious french toast before going to Logan’s house in Havelock. (friend from Havelock North High School) All together, Marcel, Logan, Lizzie(his girlfriend ) and me, we then went to „flip out“, an indoor trampoline place in Hastings. That was so fun! And I finally managed to do a backflip again, after I had lost my confidence in doing one a couple of months ago.

We all had dinner together and Marcel and I parked his van in front of the house for the night.

On Friday Marcel left to drive back up to Auckland, and I got a rental car for the day. That rental car was difficult to get: I totally forgot about Art Deco Weekend; Napier was really busy and many people came to the city from all around the world. I got the last car one company had available and so it cost me more than I expected.. It was a really good one though, and I only had to pay about $16 to fill it up again (and I drove 115km!)

I also caught up with Wendy on Friday, and it was so good to see her again. I then went to Zibby and Jim’s for the night. Their daughters Holly and Lucie and Lucie’s boyfrind Zack were there as well. I enjoyed being with them on my last night. It was so hard saying goodbye the next morning. It hurt so much leaving home.. All my love to Zibby and Jim, who are two of the best people in the world! I already miss them so much.

So on Saturday morning it was time for me to say „see ya later“ to Hawke’s Bay and a couple of hours later to the whole country. I took the flight to Singapore at 1:30pm from Auckland.

I enjoyed flying with Singapore Airlines, as well as my stop-over in Singapore. Changi Airport Singapore is lovely, they’ve got two gardens in every terminal, many plants and fish ponds everywhere and also a pool on the roof!

After about 4hrs I jumped on the next and last flight to Frankfurt. This one was operated by Lufthansa and it was an A380! (my brother was all excited when he found out I was on an A380)

Having landed safely in Frankfurt early in the morning on Sunday 19th my dad and my boyfriend picked me up from the airport.
Being in Germany again feels weird, everything seems familiar, but it kind of does not. It will take me quite a while to completely „be back“.

The traffic, the language, the weather, the houses, the busy streets, .. everything seems strange to me.
This was probably my last blog entry for now. Maybe I will continue updating you with bits and pieces from my life back here in Germany, but that probably won’t be as regular as all the other posts were so far.

Miss my New Zealand friends, flatmates and family ❤ and hope to see you all again!

Week 18 & 19 – Camping in Whangarei, Possum Hunt & Farm work

Shortly after Nick and I came back from our January ’17 South Island tour we left to go camping in Whangarei for a few days. It was Nick, his son, Duncan, his girlfriend with daughter, Joel (our flatmate), Niklas (german guy that will stay here with Duncan and Nick for a few months) and me.
We left on Saturday 21st in the afternoon, picked up Niklas from the airport (he literally just arrived in New Zealand), and drove to Pataua Bay. The campground we stayed at is also known as Treasure Island Campground. We had a lovely view from on top of the little hill where we put up our tents. It was already getting dark and we had to improvise a bit with that big tent, as pieces were missing or used somewhere else als a pole, but we did manage to get it up somehow. A big storm was blowing over us that night, and Niklas and I had to go outside in the rain at 1:30am to fix one of the tent’s corners again. Joel and Niklas got soaked inside, I got a little wet as the water also got into the tent. It is one really big tent, so we only put up this one for the night and set up another, a little smaller one, the next morning.

The sunday morning was so sunny and warm, the storm was all gone like it never happened. The nice weather now allowed us to go bodyboarding on the beach, climb the little mountain (more like a big hill), where you have a stunning view of Pataua Bay and Whangarei, and to go fishing. We didn’t pick the perfect spot or time for fishing, but I caught a fish!! I think it was my first time fishing and I was so happy when I cought that fish! It was about 30cm long, so not the biggest one, that’s also why we released it back into the sea.
With no fish for dinner we went up that hill again at night and enjoyed the amazing view of all the stars and the milky way. The night sky is so impressive, there is so many stars and you can see the satellites and some shooting stars.

The next day we jumped off the footbridge in Whangarei (into the water ^^ no worries mum) and went to the beach again. Also we went for a nightwalk to the bench next to the foot of the mountain/hill and enjoyed the night sky.

Soon after I woke up the next morning we packed up everything and drove back to Pukekohe, with a stop at Te Arai Point to jump off the rock.
That was the weekend in Whangarei 🙂
The rest of the week I spent on enjoying the summer sun, which was quite nice that week, and noticing how freezing cold it becomes at night! I remembered 3 weeks ago when you easily could run around in shorts and a singlet at 10 pm.. Great times.
We also went for two possum hunts that week. In the first night we went out I shot the possum as well, but that one was really tough and it took so long for it to die. Sounds cruel, also was kind of cruel. Usually it only takes one shot and they fall out the tree, which is way better than them taking so long to die, in my opinion.
We gave the possum of the first hunt to Zephyr (dog) who loved it.

The second time we went for a hunt, a few days later, we got the possum in one shot. Because it had such a beautiful fur we decided to skin it before giving it to Zephyr. And I did the skinning. It took me quite long, but after about 2 hours we had its skin and Zephyr enjoyed ‚the rest‘. The saddest thing about it was that the possum we shot was a mum.. she had a little baby in her pouch. Almost every possum has one though, and this little thing was too small to keep it and trying to raise it.

didn’t know what to express with my face in that picture.. don’t zoom in

Okay and now to some fun part:))

We had some really nice and sunny summer days! Niklas and I made some really good Kaiserschmarren the other day as well 🙂

Last Monday Nick, Joel, Niklas and I went to Whangarei again and went out to Poor Knights Island with Nick’s stepdad’s boat. It was a pristine day and we snorkelled and jumped in the water, went free diving a bit and enjoyed the day out. here’s a video Niklas edited of our day out at Poor Knights: Poor Knights Island

On Tuesday I started work on the maize farm here near Pukekohe. For the first two days it was all a but confusing and the people didn’t really tell you the procedures of the day and how they handle stuff, but after two or three days I eventually got told about most of it or found my way around.

Today was the 7th day I worked there. Yesterday, Monday, I took a day off and we all went to Port Waikato to the beach and to sand dunes nearby. We took the body boards for rides down the dunes. It was so nice to sleep in and have a day of relaxing and spending time on the beach. I also really loved sandboarding the dunes! This video Duncan edited for Tylah’s birthday (his daughter in law), but it kinda shows our day at Port Waikato.

My work on the maize farm is alright, it definitely is nothing for me to do for a long term, it is very exhausting and my back hurts after working in the blocks with the little plants.

corn stuff.. the theories behind what we do at the nursery

The company I work for employs students over summer to help in the whole pollination process in the nursery. That includes shoot bagging, hanging, pollinating as the main tasks.

Shoot bagging: isolating the shoot from stray pollen by putting a clear plastic bag on the shoot before it silks

Hanging: collecting pollen from one plant that will be used to pollinate the same plant the next day. You do so by putting a bag on the tassel once it has anthers on it

Pollinating: Usually we do self pollinations (also cross pollinations): removing the bag from the tassel and shaking the pollen on the silk on the shoot under the shootbag. Removal of the shootbag. The pollination bag now is to be fixed on the plant, around the shoot.
I can give you more information about all that corn stuff if you’re interested in it^^ Just won’t bother everybody with more details.

I will do this job for a couple more days and then I have a few plans for my last days here in New Zealand.

Week 16 & 17 – South Island N°3

Another lap around the South Island! As you probably have read the other two blogs about the South Island tours, I will make this one a bit shorter, tell you all about how this one was different and put up many photos. I did not take many photos on this tour myself, but students took epic photos, so there will be few of those. (and mine as well)

So this time, in January, every place we went was quite busy, as everybody goes away for holidays or just a weekend to enjoy the summer sun. We drove down to Wellington on Thursday 5th, had beautiful weather and 7 students with us. One of them came all the way from Melbourne, Australia (german, but international student in Aussie). We met the rest of the group in Wellington.

Mt Doom (for non-LotR-Fans: Mt Ngauruhoe) and Mt Ruapehu were really pretty and we had a nice view on both of them, as well as on Mt Tongariro.

The first half of the tour was generally quite warm and we could easily run around in shorts and singlets all the time.

Picton (where the ferry goes to from Wellington) was really busy! I have never seen that place so crowded, it usually is dead as. The Pelorus River jump was perfect later that day. We also had a bit of fun blocking in a car with his trailor that parked in the bus park. Man, it clearly says „bus“ on there..
The next morning we walked to Anchorage Bay (in Abel Tasman National Park) and we tried to get our 4 students that wanted to go skydiving in the plane. Unfortunately the wind picked up so they couldn’t go. Not even the next morning 😦

Slideshow Abel Tasman (Anchorage Bay):

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

On our way to Greymouth we picked up two hitchhiker girls (again 😀 seems like we always pick up hitchhikers on that part of the tour)

In Franz Josef the day after, Monday 9th, we could not out our hearts & souls into karaoke, the bar we went to was too busy and it would have been too noisey.

We also couldn’t do the glacier helicopter flight the next morning. But here is what I realised with that: It always is too cloudy in the morning when we want to do the flight, but it always clears up later on in the day.. Such a shame!
We enjoyed our walk onto Fox Glacier though and had a stunning view on it, as the sun was just peaking out of the clouds.

I loved our stop at the fruits store near Cromwell, where we stayed on Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th. All those delicious fruits in one place looked like a paradise. It was a lovely day as well, so we had water fights and everybody was in a good mood.

The group was only 16 students this time. The earthquake must have scared off some parents. We had a great time on our new route through Twizel though.
After a busy day in Queenstown where I had a delicious Fergburger, Cookie Time coffee, Patagonia chocolate, Tacos and bought another Frisbee (a Putter, for short distances) we all walked around town with our Penguin hats on and made some people laughing by making them feel awkward a bit. (Can’t understand why. Who does not want to be surrounded by crazy penguins?)

Slideshow Queenstown:

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

Milford Sound day was pretty fun as well. We got so soaked in the waterfall, and the crew really liked us, a few other brave people on the boat even joined in on standing outside on the deck with shorts, singlet, bikini or New Zealand undies (the boys all bought NZ undies and wore them to basically everything) when driving into the waterfall. How much more fun can a Milford Sound cruise be!

a Kea, New Zealand Parrot (they love to chew on rubber, so don’t leave your car unattended for too long

Our stay in the Catlins farmstay backpackers was nice, but the lovely weather kinda let us down from time to time.

The Lost Gypsy Gallery was open though (the guy usually is away over winter, so January is the perfect time to have a chance of having a look around his collections and artworks. He collects all sorts of material and creates hilarious and sometimes useless bits and pieces.

After that we went surfing and even saw the dolphins around us! This time the Hector dolphins swam in our surf waves and had a look what all these crazy penguins were upto. One student got hit by a surfboard, so I took her to the hospital while the others went to Slope Point, the southernmost point of the South Island of New Zealand.

Trouble started on Sunday 15th, when we were just about to drive north from the Catlins into Oamaru. Just as we left the backpackers, maybe 40mins on the road, the bus broke down because the gearbox was burnt out. Perfect spot for that, the next couple of houses were 5km away! But we managed to get it working for a bit and really slowly started driving as far north as we could.
Eventually we ended up in Waihola, about 1 or 2 hours away from Oamaru, where we then swapped busses with Duncan, who flew down to Christchurch, picked up a bus he bought earlier that day and met us in Waihola.

we got up early that day to see the Yellow-eyed penguins wake up, stretch and hop into the water

The new bus is pretty cool, and all the students loved it. It is a 30 seater, black and white, and had mean karaoke mics in there (not working, but so much fun singing into those mics).

After that long day we went to see the Little Blue Penguins in Oamaru, and there were so many!

In Twizel we all had a round of Frisbee Golf, chilled out and went stargazing at night. It wasn’t a perfect night for stargazing though, many clouds covered the stars and we had a full moon. This area around Twizel and Lake Tekapo is an International Dark Sky Reserve and on a clear night you can see so many stars. It also is one of the few places where it is possible to see the Southern Lights (in spring and autumn, not really in January..).

The rest of the tour was quite like the one in November: Lake Tekapo with its famous church on Tuesday 17th, the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch and then off to Hanmer Springs. This time we made pizza in Hanmer, and it was soo good! Home-made pizza is the best.

Slideshow Lake Tekapo:

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

at the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch

We also went to the hot pools the next morning before driving all the way to Picton.

The ferry back to the North Island on Thursday 19th was delayed for a couple of hours because of a storm, so we arrived even later at night in Auckland.

All in all I had so much fun doing this tour and seeing all the places again, most of them crowded, and having another group of High School students to show the South Island to and making it an unforgettable tour for them.
Here are some more pictures:

at Lake Hawea (we’re standing shortest-tallest person^^)

Chocolate fountain at Patagonia in Queenstown

running race at the end of Cape Foulwind walk

more chocolate at Patagonia in Queenstown

Week 14 & 15 – Christmas days and Northern Bass Festival

Hi y’all!

My Christmas days weren’t really busy and I basically just hung around relaxing for a few days, doing a little bit of work and a little bit of baking. Everybody was away apart from Nick and myself.

On the 23rd I made an apple-cinnamon pull-apart bread, which was delicious! Unfortunately I did not take a photo, it was gone too fast 🙂

As we both were not going to be at the house over New Year’s, Nick and I tried to build an automatic fish feeder to keep the fish in the Aquaponics system stay alive.. So on Christmas Eve we went to town to buy all the pieces we would need and then spent the whole day building it from scratch. At the end of the day and a couple more rides into town we ended up leaving it like it is.. The motor we bought was still running too quickly and definitely did not have 38 rpm (which it should have). Another problem was the food that got stuck and not falling down to be pushed out.

IMG-20161225-WA0002[1].jpeg — worth a try.. and was fun to build it

Northern Bass Festival:

(pictures on the bottom of the page)

Soon after Christmas, on the 28th, I went to pick up the rental car that Lisa (boss, Donut Express) got me to drive up with 4 others of the team for the festival.
I picked them up on the way and we arrived in the afternoon. We were a team of 6, one girl arriving later that night.

Starting our shifts on the 29th in the morning, it was not really busy. I was trained for all the jobs in the churro and in the donut cart and then had all day off until my shift started later that night. I had a look around the festival area and made friends with some awesome canadian spraypainters who also turned out to be out tent neightbours!

We weren’t really busy selling donuts and churros, though donuts was a little busier. The only time when it was really really busy was just after midnight on New Year’s Eve, when everybody came back from the stages where they had a big countdown and fireworks to get their 2017 donuts or churros.

I woked 10hours on the 30th and 2 6hr shifts on the 31st. In between or after my shifts I could enjoy the festival. They had set up a big main stage, a „jungle stage“ that was a little smaller, and also „Oasis“, a beachy looking area with a pool. But the music was quite repetitive, mostly all the artists were dj’s or rappers, and most of it was club music. So it was alright, but maybe a little overrated.

I got burnt by the churro oil, when the tongs slipped in and oil spilled over my face, neck, arm and on my side. It has been healing though and looks almost normal again.

On New Year’s day I took back to Auckland 3 of the team and we stopped at Te Arai Point to jump off a rock. Sadly it was low tide, and we didn’t jump (we probably could have anyways though). We also picked up a hitchhiker from Austria who needed to get to the airport.

the food court seen from the churro cart

Resumé of the festival and working there:

awesome to experience the festival for free and get paid for the work
cool festival experience
music was okay, but I wasn’t completely excited about it
work was alright too, and also fun. not very busy though, so there were times where it was a little boring

This was a very short blog about the festival, and I wrote it quite quickly, so if you want to know anything else about these two weeks leave a comment or contact me.
In a few days I will be taking another group of students around the south island with Nick. Next blog post will be about that.

Hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year’s!!
Cheers

Week 13 – Rarotonga (Cook Islands)

As promised in my last blog entry, this one will be about my holiday in the Cook Islands.

For those of you who don’t want to read the whole blog, go check out my Facebook with photos of my week in Raro, that will give you an idea of how it looks over there and how everything went.

We flew over to Rarotonga on Sunday 11th really early in the morning. Well.. the flight was supposed to depart at 12:15 am, but because our pilot couldn’t be found (what a reason^^) the flight was delayed for 7 hours! So I had a night at the airport ahead.
I did not sleep much and it was really cold.
Devonne and Joe, two English friends I met in the Rotten Apple backpackers in Hastings, were already through the security check so I met them after they opened at 4am and I could go through.

Finally on the plane at about 8am on Sunday morning we left Auckland, passed the date line and arrived in Rarotonga on Saturday 10th at around noon. Great to live a day twice! 🙂

I was a little disappointed that, because of the delay we missed the Saturday market in „town“ (Avarua). But we made it to our accomodation, Club Raro Resort, and chilled out at the pool, had cocktails and I went snorkelling.

The colours of the water were stunning! So turqouise and blue, it looked unreal.
We also saw all the chicken and dogs running around freely and the beautiful flowers, that the Rarotongans out in their hair sometimes.

As we could not do much on Saturday, (all shops closed and we had no transportation yet), and we couldn’t get a car or scooters on Sunday, we took the bus (which runs on island-time) to a nearby Christian Church.

Island-time explained: There actually is a timetable for the bus, but it is also „on time“ when arriving any time of the hour, may it be 5 or45 min after the timetable says. Some tourists might think the two busses (one going clockwise, one anti-clockwise) are a myth when waiting for half an hour next to the road feeling like a hilarious entertainment for the locals driving past. „Island-time“ is also applicable to all situations of the island life. Nothing is ever „late“, it just arrives when it does, at that’s perfectly fine.
(This makes life much more relaxed, Europeans should adopt „island-time“ and make it part of their lives as well!)

OK now back to the church: The service was absolutely amazing! I loved it when everybody started singing and people singing harmonies; it created a really touching atmosphere.

After the service we took the bus into town, had a look around the (closed) shops and went back to the resort.

Christmas-themed decorations at a shop in town

That night there was a night market in Muri, which was pretty cool! No mosquitoes, live music, smoothies and such good food.
Mosquitoes were quite a pain in the first night at the resort, I got eaten alive and had 60 bites on just one foot! My legs looked the same.. The rest of the week was fine though 🙂

a nu (drinking coconut). I got a fizzy one, didn’t like it much

On Monday we slept in, as it should be on holiday, and went to town to hire a car. I wanted to hire a scooter, but you need to be 21 or over for a Cook Island licence or have a full bike licence.. But a car was cheaper for the three of us anyway.

With our car we drove to Fruits of Rarotonga, a really cool snorkeling spot where you can also see the beauty of the Cook Island lagoons. I used my phone to take some underwater videos as well, I will post them once uploaded to YouTube.
We spent the day at the beach snorkeling and swimming and went out for dinner later that night.

Tuesday 13th was a bit of a messed up day.
The first problematic thing that happened had to do with our breakfast. We got asked for our room number when turning up for breakfast that morning, and it turned out there was no breakfast booked for us.. Joe checked his emails (for which we had to buy internet for, which is really expensive!), and we could not find any confirmation for our breakfast. That was a pain, beacuse the included breakfast was the reason Joe and Devonne booked Club Raro!
A little bit frustrated we went to the supermarket to buy baguette and some jam and bananas. To brighten up our day we had a delicious Fish Sandwich at „The Mooring“, a fish café. That sandwich was sooo good and had a reasonable price on it. Everything is quite expensive on that little island in the South Pacific, so I was happy about a lovely well-priced sandwich.

As Joe burned his whole upper body in the sun the day before and had huge blisters on his shoulders, it was only Devonne and I who went on the Cross-Island-Walk. Usually you should walk it starting in the North, but as we were in the South, we started at that end.
We had a little adventure here.
I only wore my bikini and a small sarong around my hips, which was totally fine, the humidity in Raro is almost always 100%.
Starting to walk up along the river we had no problems staying on the track, but as it only is sign-posted North to South, we sometimes had to figure out where to go. I knew the easiest thing would be to follow the river, as this leads to the pinnacle and another river flows from there to the Northern end of the track.

But we got to a point where the river split into two.. we tried about 3 or 4 different „tracks“ (basically just assuming where to go in this rain forest), but there was no way we could go, so eventually Devonne and I turned around and went back all the way to the Southern end of the track. I was gonna try some more tracks or walking in the river, but Devonne was not really keen.. It also started raining on our way back.

We had Joe waiting for us at the Northern end, so we hitchhiked around half the island to the Northern end.
A lot of adventure on this day.

On Wednesday 14th Devonne and I (Joe wasn’t alllowed to get wet, go in the sun, or basically do anything you would normally do when on holiday on a pacific island) went on a lagoon cruise. They took a small group out into the lagoon for snorkelling, on one of the little islands on Muri beach for a BBQ lunch, coconut tree climbing and a little cultural show of how to open coconuts.
The snorkeling was awesome, there were so many fish and I also saw one of those big eels and fed it with fish skin. The BBQ lunch was really good as well, the fresh fish tasted absoloutley amazing, so did the bananas and coconuts.

local instruments (ukulele & percussion)

Thursday 15th was Devonne’s birthday. We went to Charlies Café & Beach Hire and had a huge and delicious sandwich, before hiring stand up paddleboards. The paddleboarding was really fun!

at Charlies Cafe & Beach Hire

a sandwich as big as my face

starfish

Later that day we went to the Te Vara Nui Village Tour & Cultural Dance Show. We got picked up at the resort, and got a tour through the set up village and learnt something about Rarotongan history, culture, fishing, medicine, costumes and the coconut tree.

After the tour we had a buffet dinner (which was sooo good, I ate waaay too much and was so full afterwards) with live music in a lovely garden and got to see a cultural dance show. The dance show was pretty impressive! (I will upload videos of it to YouTube).

After the show at dessert time (Yes, more food! And very tasty as well), Joe & I were waiting for a cake to be brought out to our table for Devonne. We bought one that morning for her. Funny story tho: The cake was brought out to the table next to us, and it was the birthday of a woman on that table as well! The Te Vara Nui staff quickly brought out another cake for Devonne, she also got half of her original cake which was left over, we all had a big laugh about it and at the same time there was a calling for our bus shuttle back to the resort! It really was hilarious.

20161215_2157051 — Devonne and half of her original cake

Our last day, Friday 16th, we spent shopping for the last souvenirs, e.g. a Cook Island Visitor licence, a three-dollar-note and I bought another passionfruit.
After that shopping was done and the shops were about to close just after noon, we went to the Whale & Wildlife Centre. The Centre was really interesting and had so much information about the marine life on the Cook Islands.

We also drove past the prison, which has hip-high walls, and chilled out at Fruits of Rarotonga, before playing mini golf and „sneakily“ walking into The Rarotongan beach resort & spa to have a splash in their pool and to watch the sunset at the beach. (No worries, it wasn’t that sneaky, we just walked in, and they are ok with people being there, as long as they don’t cause any problems.)

another lovely day at Fruits of Rarotonga

Before driving to the airport we had the best burgers on the island (Vilis burgers).
We then had another night at the airport ahead. The flight would leave at 6:15am, so we slept a bit and waited for the gate to open.

20161217_065855[1].jpg — Bye bye Rarotonga

So that was it, my holiday in Rarotonga. Check out my Facebook gallery for more photos of Raro and stay tuned for the upcoming videos on YouTube, I will post it once I uplodaded them.
The next post will be about my lazy Christmas days and work at the Northern Bass Festival over New Years.
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year:)

Week 11 & 12 – little roadtrip & back to work

Hi there!

This blog entry is all about my little roadtrip around parts of the North Island last week and being back to work this week.

So just after we came back from the South Island Tour and had a couple days of rest and jumping off the Waitangi Falls (just 10 min drive from here), I thought it would be nice to visit Hawke’s Bay and some friends who are back in the Bay over summer holidays.
Without making too many plans I took a rental car on Wednesday morning and made my way down to Napier/Havelock North.

I made some stops on the way including Paeroa, the Owharoa Falls, and Tauranga. Buuuut, it was a really nice and hot day and Tauranga was just beautiful!
Long story short: I got my togs and went for a swim on Mt Maunganui beach, saw some people jumping off the rocks at Moturiki Island (little island on Mt Maunganui beach, connected via a man-made landbridge) and jumped as well. Funny side-note: My bikini broke shortly before jumping, but I fixed it for the jump and was glad I bought another one in Queenstown;)

out on Moturiki Island. Mt Maunganui in the background

pretty view at Moturiki Island (jumping spot into a blowhole where the people are)

Having spent some time at the beach it already was late afternoon so I stayed in Tauranga for the night. I found a nice car park right on the beach where freedom camping is allowed and slept in my cute little rental car. It was really cold, but not too uncomfortable.

the beach seen from the car park where I stayed at

The next morning, Thursday 24th, after I spent a bit more time on the beach, I started driving south towards Napier. The drive was long and a bit lonely, but I had good music and again made some stops on the way. I stoppedat the Okere Falls, in Taupo and in Rotorua at that hot’n’cold spot (spot where there’s hot and cold water, near the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland).

photostop on the road from Rotorua to Napier

Finally arriving in Hawke’s Bay I stayed at Zibby’s house. It was so good to see Zibby and Jim (and Fern (dog) and Pippy (cat) of course) again, I really missed those lovely people <3.

I went to school and to the special needs unit with Zibby on Friday 25th. The kids were so happy to see me again and so was I.
I drove up Te Mata Peak and enjoyed the view over Hawke’s Bay that afternoon and then went to Hastings to say hello to the Rotten Apple backpckers where I stayed the first couple of nights when I arrived in NZ. Most of them still knew me or recognized my face and I loved having the relaxed and happy Rotten Apple atmosphere around me.

The next day I went for a little drive around Napier in a friend’s car at whose house I stayed the night and to Napier beach. There was a Christmas parade going on, but we couldn’t find a parking spot so we didn’t get to check it out.

I spent that day in Napier and met another German backpacker. Later that night as I was just about to drive back to Waimarama beach to Zibby and Jim’s, an accident happened on the road from Havelock North to Waimarama beach, so I had to take another road which took 40min longer. That drive was tiring..

My Sunday started off with a nice sleep in, went on a walk along the beach with Zibby, Jim and Fern and tried to write my blog entries (WordPress was NOT doing what I wanted it to do). At lunchtime I met with Sian, a friend from school and we had a nice milkshake in the village before going to the Maraertotara Falls (10 min out the village, on the way to Waimarama) and jumping off the rock and a rope that was attached to a tree. Two young boys even jumped off the tree!

It was late afternoon when I was in Havelock North after I dropped off Sian and thought about what to do next. Spontaneously I knocked on Wendy’s (hostmum from when I went to school in Havelock North) door and cought up with her. She was a bit surprised, but very happy to see me and having a chat.

Monday 28th was a late start in the day as well, but that’s just what I needed: relaxed days in sunny Hawke’s Bay (at its best in Waimarama). I will always love that.
I did a little bit of exercise and went to the beach at Waimarama for a bit of sun-bathing and soaking in the sunshine. Before driving into Havelock North I stopped at the Maraetotara Falls and went for a jump or two. SO MUCH FUN!

In Havelock North I walked around one of the reserves through native bush before making my way to Logan’s flat (friend from school). We went for a drive in his 4wheeler. There is a track near Havelock. We went through water, steep parts and over branches and did not get stuck, YAY! His girlfriend and one of his mates came as well and we went for a swim in the river, which was really warm!
After making Pizza at his place his mate took us up a hill at the farm he works at. You could see the whole Bay from up there and soo many stars! That is a really mean place and I appreciated it so much that they took me up there. I even saw 3 shooting stars. I love the night skies here, in some places the sky is so clear and clean!

not even close to what the Bay and the sky looked like in real

Almost at the end of my little roadtrip, (two days left,) I got up at 5:20am on Tuesday morning to catch the sunrise on the beach. It was magnificent and the colours were unbelievable! This place is amongst the places that are the first ones in the world to get the morning sunlight! (Gisborne, not too far away from Havelock, gets the first morning light).

I said goodbye to Jim and Zibby as they left for work a bit later that morning and then stayed at their house enjoying the sun until 9:45 am, when I went to Havelock to have a coffee with Hannah (also a friend from school). I had a loaded shake at the café we went to and it was soo good but soo rich as well. It was literally a desert in a glass. We went to the Falls and had fun jumping off the rocks.

my „Chocolate indulgence “ and Hannah’s shake in the background

At around lunchtime I then started driving up north again, through Gisborne, and arrived in Te Koha at about 9 pm. I stayed in Te Koha at the „camp site“ where Niklas & Peter are staying for their work on a kiwifruit farm. The camp site was right in an orchard and had a tab, a little toilet house and a fireplace. We made a fire and had a good long chat.

The next morning they got up for work, I slept in their van for a little longer and then spent the day walking around the little peninsula on the beach and having a good read.
Shortly after the boys came back from work I had to leave, as I had another 4 -5 hours driving ahead.
It is really funny when your navigation app tells you to „follow the course of the road for 120 kilometres“… Seems like you’re gonna be on that road for forever. I also drove through Betlehem and past an „Avocado Lane“ and „Orange Lane“.
Being back in Paerata students for the Rarotonga trip arrived and left the next morning. Nick took them on the tour. The following days, and basically the whole last week I spent on doing the website profiles.

On Saturday 3rd I had 5 hours of work at Churro Express at the Coldplay concert in Auckland. It was pretty cool and I could see the stage, but it was very far away and it got really busy before Coldplay came on stage. I worked as the cashier.

On Sunday Duncan, his girlfriend and her daughter came and we went to the Waitangi Falls to jump from the rock, walked trough a reserve and watched a Christmas movie (Me Santa) on DVD.

To follow up my food blog:^^ On Tuesday I made delicious broccoli-cheese patties!

Yesterday Duncan cut us a Christmas tree ( /branch )and I had to decorate it. (Photos will follow)

Today we picked up the group that went to Rarotonga. They all had a great time, which makes me looking forward to my stay in Rarotonga. I will fly out tomorrow night and will be back on December 17.

My next blog entry will be about my time in Raro! Keep yourself updated 🙂

Week 9 & 10 – Shaky South Island Tour

Hi everybody!
Another two weeks have passed.. which I spent in the South Island. Sorry that this post is too late, WordPress didn’t always do what I wanted it to and deleted things or just stopped working.. Anyway, here it finally is.

We went on another tour with 18 high school students and had a good time travelling around (almost the same route as last time).

We started off on Saturday 5th and drove down to Wellington, where we stayed the night and watched the fireworks for Guy Fawke’s Night.

20161105_205730[1].jpg — Windy Welly at night (could be better quality, I’m sorry)

Having taken the ferry to Picton on Sunday morning we drove to Motueka and stopped at the Pelorus river to jump off the rocks. It was very cold and a bit raining on the way, but as we arrived in Motueka the sky cleared up so we decided to call Abel Tasman SkyDive to ask if we could jump right now.
This was a very good decision: they called together a few jumpers for us and we were able to do the SkyDive on Sunday 6th Nov, rather than the next day, which turned out to be rainy all day long.

above the clouds, freefalling through the sky

I also jumped out of the plane from 16 500 ft (just over 5km) … and I am still alive 😉 (No worries Mum&Dad)
It was an awesome feeling! The only thing that bothered me a bit was the pressure on my ears, they wouldn’t equalize for 4 hours!

On Monday 7th we walked the 4hrs to Anchorage Bay in the Abel Tasman National Park (it was raining and cold) and spent about an hour at the beach waiting for the watertaxi and having fun going for swims. The water was actually warm! I got thrown into the water by a student so all my clothes were soaked. We spent the afternoon at the accomodation in Motueka, as we already did skydiving the day before.

20161107_084451[1].jpg — rainy day at Abel Tasman National Park .. this is one of the bays you see on the way to Anchorage Bay; I forgot to take a photo there..

On our way to Greymouth the next day, which is a long drive with a couple of stops on the way, we gave two hitchhikers from Holland a ride, walked around Cape Foulwind, saw the two hitchhiker girls again at the Pancake Rocks and they went with us to Greymouth and joined in on our beach bonfire. We saw a beautiful sunset, cooked potaoes, sausages and stick bread on the fire and played with the firestick Nick made a few weeks ago.

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

On Wednesday 9th it was raining again… we made our way to Franz Josef and had a few stops on the way: The Greenstone Factory, the Kiwi House and Bushman Pete’s. Because of the rain and it being quite cold we didn’t do the rock jump in the Hokitika Gorge. As we arrived in Franz Josef though, the weather cleared up! We spent the afternoon at the backpackers and in their spa pool and went out for dinner to the „Blue Ice Bar“ where we had fun doing Karaoke. Afterwards we went for the bushwalk in the total dark to see glowworms. Like last tour, we all lined up and Nick took us on the walk.

20161109_1231501 — Wallabe at Bushman Pete’s

The helicopter flight on Franz Josef glacier and the walk on Fox glacier was on the next morning. I took the group that went on the walk.

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

This day was a sunny one again so our stops at Bruce Bay (where we blessed our greenstones that we bought the day before), the Thunder Creek Falls and Lake Hawea were quite enjoyable. We stayed the night in Arrowtown, as well as the night after.

Friday 11th was all about Queenstown and all the activities there. For me that day was exhausting as well, I spent quite some time running around organizing things or picking up people.
I skipped breakfast to have Fergburger at around lunchtime, went shopping before, got a $1 coffee from the CookieTime shop. Queenstown is always good for food… maybe a little too good 😉 There are so many good places to eat! Fergburger, the CookieTime shop, the Patagonia café, …
Before we had dinner at Subway I went to do the frisbee golf course with some others, and ended up buying a frisbee! Frisbee golf is really fun!

20161111_2106111 — 4 girls of the group in the ice bar BelowZero

Making our way down south we left Arrowtown early in the morning on Saturday and went to Te Anau, left the trailer at the accomodation and spent the whole day at Milford Sound and Milford Sound Road. Many stops and a lovely day, what could one wish more.
On the Milford Sound cruise we did not get soaked at the waterfalls (too much wind), but we had so much fun on the road on our way back to Te Anau chasing a really slow van! They also stayed at our accomodation in Te Anau!

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

Sunday 13th was the last „normal“ day, and the one before the earthquake. We drove to Slope Point, with a stop in Invercargill, where we went to see the Tuatara, at Bluff Point, Stirling Point and Waipapa Point.

20161113_1019361 — the Tuatara, closest living animal to dinosaurs

20161113_1239141 — panorama at Bluff Point

20161113_1348431 — Group photo at Stirling Point

20161113_1602101 — sea lion at Waipapa Point

After some changes regarding the accommodation the girls and I stayed at a beach house and the boys at the backpackers.

So just as I was about to go to bed there was this loud banging on the door and all around the house. Nick and one of the boys came to evacuate us and talked about an earthquake and a tsunami warning! We had no cell phone reception at the beachhouse, so it was a good idea to get us out there. After I had woken up all the girls and they all grabbed a blanket and some warm clothes we stayed in the lounge of the backpackers. As we were waiting for all the girls to get ready, one of them started blowdrying her hair while another one worried about her not having finished all her washing! ^^

20161113_2042531 — Käsespätzle for dinner .. yumm!!

20161114_0810581 — the night of the earthquake

But we all were safe and didn’t feel the quake at all.

The next day we chilled out at the beachhouse and went surfing.

Driving to Oamaru on Tuesday 15th we stopped at Nugget Point, in Dunedin for lunch and the Baldwin Street and at the Moeraki boulders. Later that night we went to see the Little Blue Penguins (the World’s smallest!) (Ninja Penguins, as we call them).

Diese Diashow benötigt JavaScript.

From this day on we had to detour: The tour usually would continue to Hanmer Springs and to Kaikoura the day after, but from the earthquake, roads were damaged and the situation in Kaikoura was not good at all..

Our solution was to stay in Twizel for two nights and then moving on to Picton.

The area around Twizel has some really beautiful landscape and scenery! We stopped at the lakes and at the salmon farm and went for a night walk to Lake Ruataniwha to watch the sunset.

20161116_1331281 — one of the lakes on the way to Twizel

15178218_1815152302032222_2116699533656138193_n

20161116_2020591 — sunset at Lake Ruataniwha

20161116_2114541 — group photo in Twizel (don’t look for me, I am taking the photo)

Twizel also has a cool frisbee golf course! On Thursday, so did the website say, there was a competition against the locals, so our little frisbee golf team got all ready, we bought team t-shirts in Tekapo and looked like professionals (… a little ridiculous as well maybe.) We turned up in the black bus with good music on and were ready to face the other teams and … nobody was there ..
All too scared to face such a prepared professional team 😉

In Tekapo we had a look at an old chapel at the waterfront and went to the hot pools, it was a bit rainy that day and cold, so we enjoyed relaxing in the hot water for a bit.

After the second night in Twizel we got up early for the long drive up to Picton. Our first stop was Christchurch, where we dropped off some students that wanted to fly out rather than going for long drives in the bus up to Auckland.
The weather was really nice and sunny and we could see Mt Cook as we drove out of the Twizel area.

Mt Cook seen from near Twizel (photo credits to Matthias Bockamp)

After Christchurch we carried on north and saw some of the road damage near Hanmer Springs. We had to almost drive to the Westcoast through Lewis Pass, as the roads on the East Coast are all cut off or damaged.

Finally arriving at the backpackers in Picton we made Schnitzel for dinner and enjoyed the free Scones for breakfast the next morning.
After a 3 hour ferry drive on Saturday 19th we made our way to Pukekohe, where we arrived at around 11pm! 7 of the students stayed on the farm that night, and we also dropped some off on the way from Wellington to Pukekohe.

So this was the South Island Tour, all a bit shaken up, but we made the best out of the situation of having to detour. It is so sad that we couldn’t go to Kaikoura, which is such a lovely place.. And I am really sad that the Ohau stream was destroyed (a spot near Kaikoura where the baby seals sometimes hang out and play in the waterfall).
My thoughts are also with those who were affected by the earthquake damages!

Week 7 & 8 – slowly, but summer is coming!

Hey guys,

last week was basically building more website profiles, some sunny and warm days and working outside on the farm.

So in detail it was about that:
Tuesday 25th I did the profiles all day long, got 12 done, and we had scallops for dinner. Nick brought them from Whangarei, where he spent the weekend. I could not remember eating scallops before (perhaps as a child?) but they are very delicious! I tried one raw, which wasn’t that tasty, but cooked on the BBQ in the shell with champagne, cheese on top and pepper: yumm!
After we had such a lovely weather on the weekend it rained all day long on Tuesday..

img-20161025-wa00061 — scallops cooked on the BBQ

On Wednesday it still was cold and rainy and I spent 12 hours of doing the profiles. Yep, that’s pretty long, and it was effective: I finished updating all of them so I could start creating new ones the next day.
Aaaaand…. now this happened that night:

I was just about to finish off the last couple of profiles, as I noticed one of the cats chasing something. I had a closer look .. and it was a mouse! So I quickly grabbed a glass and catched it. (Was pretty easy, it was hiding underneath a pillow^^).
I took the poor little thing outside:) Here is a photo:

20161026_215445[1].jpg — you can see the cat couching in the background

Finally it was a sunny day on Thursday!

Nick and I did some archery, set up the trampoline and, of course, had a test bounce!
I had never shot arrows with a bow before, but I actually hit the little target a couple of times. The photo below doesn’t show my best shots.

these were not my best shots ^^

trampoline set up 🙂

Friday 28th I spent outside, which was pretty cool.
We went to St. Lukes (Auckland) into the Amazon shop (surf shop), did some gardening and bought some new plants.

I ordered the strap for my lovely sisters‘ watch 🙂 at the Amazon shop.
The gardening I did was taking cuttings of the lavender and the rosemary and planting them into little pots. Then we bought more strawberries, chilli and capsicum plants and a coffee plant and set up a net for the strawberried against bugs (shown below). Looked really pretty:) I am so looking forward to the strawberries, we already had a few from four other plants.

20161028_182246[1].jpg — the chillis in the foreground, the three sets of strawberry plants are the white ones on the right in the background

On Saturday the work outside continued:
Duncan had alrady cut down some trees in the paddock in the morning so we all three went out there and chopped the branches off and burnt them. That was a massive fire!
Burning all the trees (about 8 trees) took a long long time, and the fire was going until the afternoon.
It was fun to throw whole branches „around“, though I got a few scratches and poked one of the little branches in my eye. (All good now:) )

20161102_193104[1].png — photo credits to Nick

The Sunday really lived up to its name.
After I slept in a little I started working on those webpages again and took a blanket out in the afternoon and did them while laying on the grass. Fantastic weather!

I will just write about the three days of this week as well, as there is another South Island Tour starting on Friday (in 2 days) and I won’t have the time to update you this weekend. The next blog post will therefore be about the next 2 weeks South Island. (It is the same tour as last time, with different students of course.)

So on Monday 31st I went to a school in Auckland with Nick and Joel to film some shots for a promotion video for the school to send overseas to inernational students. The weather seemed to be really nice and we got some shots, but it sooned turned bad and there even was thunder and we saw a few lightnings!
The traffic on the way back was crazy as well.. gotta love Auckland..

Yesterday, Tuesday November 1st I had a job interview!

I had applied for a weekend job at a maize farm quite close to here. It was a group interview with three more people. It didn’t go too bad I reckon. They will get back to me by the end of the week, so we’ll see how that turns out!
In the afternoon I took my laptop and a blanket out onto the grass again and did the website profiles there.
Later that night we watched „The Conjuring“, a really good scary movie.

Today I just have been doing more website profiles and went for a little walk with the dog. I lost a short running race against him :))

Week 6 – built webpages and weekend at the beach

Hi everybody! Here’s another blog entry about last week here in New Zealand.

I am still in Paerata and currently working on some webpages for the Active Planet website.

On Monday 17th I cleaned the bus, vacuumed it and cleaned those cigarette things each seat has (gross what people stuck in there!)

img-20161017-wa00031 — Ewww why do you do this people..

I also swept the floor in the house down the bottom of the hill and Nick showed me how he built the webpages. That basically was my day ;D
The gnocci for dinner were absolutely delicious. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo, I’m sorry.

Tuesday sounds really boring when I list what I’ve done: Built 6 webpages (It still took me a lot of time for each one. It takes really long to get all the information you want to put in from each website.) An actually reeeaally good thing about Tuesday were the Käsespätzle for dinner. Nick and I made them ourselves (without a recipe) and absolutely nailed it. They were sooo good! They could totally beat all the Kässpätzle you can get in some restaurants in Germany!

Snapchat-1698281519[1].jpg — before they went into the oven… makes me want to eat them right now!

So you might already assume what my Wednesday looked like ;))

Yea, correct. Did some more webpages, 10 in fact, and we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner. Sitting the whole day is so physically exhausting, it is unbelievable!

At the restaurant I ordered a rice dish, which was quite good. Not breathtakingly good but not that bad either. I took some home, as it was too much to eat so here is a photo of what it looked like the next day after I upgraded it with some other rice and gherkins. Yumm!
20161020_202056[1].jpg

mhh.. I feel like all I can post about is my food ;))

Anyway^^

Thursday 20th was all about more webpages, I built one completely new and updated the tout dates for 2017.
What I noticed on that day was that my legs really hurt from sitting on that table all day long! Especially my thighs.

Therefore I was happy that Duncan said on Friday we are going to his girlsfriends‘ place for the weekend (long weekend: Labour weekend) to have some time off.
We took our laptops though and I built some pages before we left Paerata.
Lisa lives just 5mins away from the Eastern Bays‘ beaches in Auckland! Duncan and I took a bike to her place so I went down to the beach a couple of times.

It was such a nice day and I enjoyed sitting on the beach, reading my book and I even went in the water for a short period of time (maybe a minute or so ^^ it was really cold).

This was the first day on which I could wear shorts without freezing! Helloooo summer!

Saturday 22nd was beachtime again:) I got onto the bike and drove along the waterfront for a while and enjoyed the sunshine and the biking.
I went back for lunch, as one of Lisa’s friends was coming over. We had a fabulous quiche.

After lunch Duncan, Lisa and I all went down to the beachfront again, took her dogs as well and went for a little walk. I took some roller blades this time.

Before dinner and the scrabble game afterwards (which I lost^^) I built another few webpages.

Sunday was another relaxed day. Beach with the roller blades and the bike, mac’n’cheese for dinner and another round of scrabble.

Because Lisa took the roller blades I had on Saturday, I took her daughters‘. After two metres of „rolling“ they just stopped and didn’t move any further! So I had a lot of work to do to get them moving. We went along the waterfront for a few kilometres and put something in the bearing. It was better for about 1,5 km, but after that it got worse again and I had to work hard again… This kind of workout was fun, but really exhausting.

Speaking of workout: I managed to do some exercises every morning for over the last week and will try to keep that on. It is fun and wakes me up 😉

We stayed one more night and so got back yesterday, on Monday. We left in the morning. The rest of the day I spent on building more webpages (and I still have about 25 to go), watched „The Block NZ“ (tv series, no ambitious content, but good entertainment) and cooked tomato soup for dinner.

20161024_192145[1].jpg — Haha, this almost seems like a food blog^^

Update on my sickness: my cough is waaaay better! I just cough a couple times throughout the day and I expect it to be gone within the next few days!

Keep yourself updated and healthy! :))

Week 5 – sickness and silly weather changes

As the title says: I was sick for the last week. But on the other hand, I did not have to do much and had quite a relaxed week.

And I couldn’t even do much on Monday, as the car wouldn’t start (on Sunday; I wrote about it in my last blog). So I slept in a little, and I really needed that sleep (didn’t get much of that in the 2 weeks on the south island) and Duncan came around and we kickstarted the car. It probably striked because it wasn’t moved for the two weeks we were away.

My Tuesday was more productive though. I did a whole lot of washing and, EVENTUALLY!!, this was a sunny day so I had a lot more energy than on those rainy days before..
I also went over to the neighbour’s house and brought them the carrot cake. I stayed over there for over 2 hours and had a lovely chat with Anette and her mum. A piece of carrot cake, a coffee and good talks 🙂
In the afternoon I drove to Pukekohe (15mins drive) and had a look around the city.

some pretty blossoms I captured in Pukekohe. such a lovely day

Aaaand there was the rain again on Wednesday…
So basically all I did was some cleaning around and in the house. But I was so happy that the sun came out a little in the afternoon!
I made some apple sauce that day. Delicious!

img-20161012-wa00041 — my home-made apple sauce (and some cereals)

My cooking continued on Thursday, as I made potato salad! And finally it was a really nice day again. I stayed outside almost all day long, went on a walk and had a good read lying in the grass. Maybe wasn’t the brightest idea to stay out there for so long.. I got a sunburn and I reckon a slight sunstroke as well..

Still happy because of that lovely day the day before I put on a dress on Friday, and in the morning it seemed to be a sunny day, but as soon as I finished breakfast it started raining again.. That day was very cold and I felt my sickness getting worse. It was that cough that bothered me the most. I did not have a runny nose at all and my throat was not that sore, but that coughing all the time is really killing me!

It went on like this on the weekend. Saturday was full of coughing, more cleaning around the house, and strong wind blowing over from Pukekohe.

There is something positive though: The sky is so beautiful every night! Really bright and mostly you can see lots of stars. You can also so see so far which lets you see so much of the sky! The sunsets are also really pretty over here.

20161016_2234201 — I tried to capture the full moon..

Love goes out to all my friends and family! ❤

Erfahrungen am besten Ende der Welt

Erfahrungsbericht über meinen 3-monatigen High School Aufenthalt und 6 Monate Work&Travel in Neuseeland

Autor: newzealandbekka

Week 20 – last week at home & flight back home

Week 18 & 19 – Camping in Whangarei, Possum Hunt & Farm work

Week 16 & 17 – South Island N°3

Week 14 & 15 – Christmas days and Northern Bass Festival

Northern Bass Festival:

Week 13 – Rarotonga (Cook Islands)

Week 11 & 12 – little roadtrip & back to work

Week 9 & 10 – Shaky South Island Tour

Week 7 & 8 – slowly, but summer is coming!

Week 6 – built webpages and weekend at the beach

Week 5 – sickness and silly weather changes