Neverland snapshot

Friends over at our house in our detached "sleepout" ...

(Here is our adorable room that Anna, our host mom, decorates with pretty flower arrangements - she's the NICEST!)

we looove our huge window...and our fold-out couch people sleep on when it gets too late ;)

while chill music (The Beautiful Girls, Atmosphere, 311, etc) plays throughout...

chatting about weekend plans...

one is out jumping on the trampoline...

and then,

to gild the lily...

Anna (not only is she the NICEST, she is uber-cool and an amazing cook) walks in with a plate of sour cream blueberry and lemon zest muffins..

Just another day in the paradise the Kiwis, and I currently, call home.

Pizza delivery!

This is why I love my roommate...

The Kiwi pronunciation of "Fish" ends up sounding like "fush"... and so naturally, being the old Kiwi English ladies we are, we talk about it to no end.

This is when we were delivering the pizza to the beater car winners (see previous post).

Sorry the video is shaky; I was laughing too hard...

The kiwi life...

So we have been in Invercargill the last three weeks (less a day trip to Queenstown and a 3 day tramp to Borland)...

Needless to say, it has been pure Neverland bliss.... here is what you can find us doing around town...

Riding our bikes to the beach...

and just when you thought the beach couldn't get any better...an ice cream truck pulls up... gild that lily!

After day 1 of school classes. Rough life, I know.

Queens Park: our default meeting/play place in the center of town. We spend a lot of time here and it is glorious.


Riding bikes through Queen's Park.

Queen's Park even has a reindeer, llamas, and an ostrich whom we named Ozzy, naturally. Everytime we ride past him Christina and I chortle like old British ladies. Actually, we talk like that regardless of Ozzy's presence...


Slacklining near the kiddie playground in Queens.


Come home from the park to the kiddies jumping on the trampoline with a sprinkler.
Go to the Sport Southland complex for some cycling championships...


Play Ultimate Frisbee in Queens Park... can you spot me? Yes, on the ground. I was never really that competitive haha!

And get too lazy to take off our helmets indoors...this is a sign for our school. Best face forward!!


Oh and the blue suit has already made a few appearances...stay tuned...

Growing with the wind...

After winning a beater car as part of our school's orientation festivities...

(they held their elbows on the car for 8 hours and all we did was deliver them pizza, hand them things they couldn't reach, and cheer them on!)


a few of us took a trip down to The Catlins national preserve area....

Biggest sea lion I've ever seen, or probably will ever see. Sea World had nothing on him...

Are we in Maine??

Found out we could fold down the backseat...sweet!

Christina crawled into a tree...

And these gorgeous waterfalls...

they even let me drive the beater a little! this was before I was going 100 clicks over the one-way bridges...



My favorite image was of these trees. If you look close, they are slanted, growing with the wind... like life, where you have to find a way to grow with whatever the wind blows your way...

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?

Greymouth, Green Jades, and Glaciers = The West Coast of New Zealand

First stop from Christchurch was Greymouth...at a campsite with a short trail to the beach, falling asleep to waves crashing, just like my childhood.

Green jade stones are a novelty. Nearly everyone purchased something from this shop in Greymouth, to the owner's delight.

Then along the west coast to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers.

The last bit of coast in the west...

Then through the mountain passes through Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea. Gorgeous.

After a quick night sleeping under the stars in Cromwell, we arrived in Invercargill, ready for a bed and a non-communal shower.

(I'm loving it here, can't wait to further share what we've been up to!)

Kaikoura and Christchurch

So I am not getting any comments, but apparently my mom told some family and friends about this blog, so hey guys! Love you all and miss you too!

Our first stop on the South Island after spending a night in Picton off the ferry was Kaikoura, followed by Christchurch.

Kaikoura is the whale-watching capital of New Zealand. It was cloudy and overcast the half-day we were there, so it wouldn't have been that fun had we done it. Driving the east coast of New Zealand feels a lot like the northern California coast- beautiful and green.

Can you see the seals?

From there we were off to Christchurch, a stretch of drive that was not without being stopped by the Kiwi policeman! Basically, he pulled the vans over because we weren't spacing them out on the highway enough for people to pass. It was such a 'spirit-of-NZ' experience though, as after he stopped us, he walked by our vans, smiled wide and asked if we were having a good trip, before talking and cracking jokes to the drivers and sending us on our way. Such friendly people.


Then onward to Christchurch.

The first night a couple girls from the BYU rugby team taught us how to play in this huge field we found, and we had fun with that. I made up silly words for the formations (ex/ for the flock of geese pattern that you ideally form behind the ball on offense- I would tell people to 'Geese up'). Basically, acting like I was 12 again, again.

The next day was Sunday, so we attended church, followed by walking around downtown and the Botanical Gardens, and then went to the Institute building for dinner and a ‘fireside,’ which is like an hour long casual religious sermon. Because I’m already with BYU students so everything has a religious overtone, with spiritual wrap-ups to each day this trip … plus we had already done 3 hours of church that day, I felt like the fireside was going to be unnecessary religion overkill and was frankly, not looking forward to it.

I was initially so peeved that we had to sit in another meeting I ended up writing emails from my iPod and hanging out with a couple people from the group in the corner while people were eating. Then we got the idea to play tricks on the crowd and effectively shushed them for a few seconds, until the Institute director said “Whoa, what happened?!” You had to be there, but trust me, we still laugh about it.

But after everyone was done eating, and despite it being 2 hours long, the Institute director ended up delivering a really awesome message about how and what we can learn from the scriptures (I found out later he is also a professor at the University of Canterbury- makes perfect sense)…

I told my parents that if anything dire ever happened to Southern California, Christchurch would be a fantastic place to relocate… good weather (their #1 priority), coastal (#2), bright people (probably #3), and city with a smaller-scale London-like feel to it (not necessary, but a nice #4).

At a concert in the Botanical Gardens. It was Sunday afternoon and the band's name was "The Unfaithful Ways." hilarious.

The Busker's Festival was going on. There were street performers from all over...Kiwis, Aussies, and even a duo from New Hampshire, USA! Represent!

This was the 'Rubber Band Man'...bet you can't guess his shtick...

I suppose it's never too early!

At the Institute Building.