Queenstown: Go big or go home!

I am TERRIFIED of heights. My palms start sweating whenever I think about high dives, or the Eiffel Tower, or window-washers on the SWKT (Kimball Tower) at BYU.

Just thinking about 440 feet (134 meters) of the 4th highest Bungy Jump in the world (and highest in New Zealand) used to make my stomach do cartwheels, back-handsprings, cartwheels, vaults, uneven bars, AND pommel horse routines.

But last week when they tallied people who were going to do the big kahuna, THE bungee jumps of all bungee jumps, I at first did not raise my hand.

Then I thought of how I would go home, call my mom, and gain sympathy. I'm convinced that one of my mom's primary jobs in life is to calm me down.
She's quite excellent at it, because she is the queen of phasing out what people think. Whenever I bring something to the table that I'm hung up on, she always feeds me lines of "You don't have to prove anything to anyone, including yourself." That is my mom in a nutshell...or perhaps it's not her, but what she knows I need.
So of course, when I brought up bungee jumping thing a few months ago, she just said, "I don't think you'll die doing it, but you don't need to bungee jump to prove anything, for goodness sakes."

Of course, it made it easier that people in the group confessed that they were just as terrified of heights as me.

(Of course, listening to heaps of Imogen Heap pre-jump helped too...as well as "Holiday" by Green Day!)

We spent the rest of yesterday running around town (while our adrenaline faded)... It was gorgeous, felt a lot like Park City...but even prettier!

And yes, now it feels silly how worried I was ... anyone want to go skydiving?

From Tongariro to Wellington

From Tongariro National Park, we drove to Wellington, where a bunch of us walked around the pier, had some fish and chips while listening to Matt's sobering stories regarding his LDS mission to central Russia...

jumped IN the pier,



made some Kiwi friends who were also pier-jumping...

then jumped in some of Wellington's fountains to rinse off....


Took pictures of the Wellington skyline...


The next day we went to the Wellington National Museum where we saw some exhibits on subjects including the Waitangi Treaty, early New Zealand immigration, and Maori art...

then boarded the Picton Ferry to the South Island across the Cook Strait, where our on-board passenger mates included crates of sheep...




and Kiwi kids running around playing imaginary cricket with motion sickness bags on their heads.

(Kiwi joie de vivre in a nutshell.)