April 3

New Zealand is amazing. There isn’t one part of the country that isn’t stunning. Jenna and I went on a 6 day tour of the south island. Our favorite place was Queenstown. It’s known as the adrenaline capital of the world and most of the kids went skydiving and bungee jumping. I choose to go hang gliding which was soooo cool! You basically just run off a mountain and take flight with a massive kite attached to your back. The guide even let me steer. I felt like I was on top of the world. Jenna and I also took a gondola up a mountain and then took a luge ride back down. All I could think of was the movie Cool Runnings. That night in Queenstown, our trip leaders took us to a bar called Minus 5. It’s a bar made 100% of ice. They give you big jackets and boots and gloves. The walls, tables, chairs, cups, everything was made of ice. I had never seen anything like that so it was definitely a cool experience. Speaking of ice, another one of my favorite moments was hiking on a glacier. I always heard in school about that thing called the ice age but it was pretty neat to actually be walking on one.

I would also like to redeem my reputation by saying that I won a hula-hoop competition at a club one night and got a free sweatshirt!!! Those bar and bat mitzvahs really do pay off.

The only downside of the trip was that most of it was spent on a bus. They packed so much into the days that we were constantly on the road. I was up to see the sunrise almost every day. On one of the drives, they took us to see where Lord of the Rings was filmed.

After our tour, Jenna and I went to Wellington to stay with 2 friends from UT who are studying there. We had such a good time together and it was so good seeing them. But it made me really homesick for the first time. :( Speaking of home, what are the chances that I walk onto the tour bus on the first day of the trip and 3 faces from Wilmette are staring back at me. It was such a weird feeling to know someone in the middle of New Zealand let alone kids I went to elementary through high school with! These 3 guys are studying at another university in Australia and booked the exact same trip as me. And I also ran into another Wilmette girl in Queenstown. SMALL WORLD!

Oh yeah, cool story I almost forgot… Jenna and I arrive into NZ and are going through customs when we see this group of old, ugly guys with long hair, a body guard, and hot girlfriends. We immediately knew something was up. So Jenna asks one of them “are you guys like a band or something?” And the guy turns around and shows us his shirt. We look at it blankly not knowing what the hell it meant. Seeing the empty stare, he goes, “we’re Alice Cooper… you know, the one’s playing with Ozzy Ozbourne and Kiss tonight.” It was straight out of a movie. Yet Jenna and I being the young ignorant generation we are, still didn’t recognize them. So Jenna continues with one of the stupidest questions she can think of and says. “oh cool, so do you like what you do?” And his response was, “it’s ok; it’s a job”. So then a minute later we all walk out of baggage claim behind them and all the fans are yelling and taking pictures and asking for autographs. I felt like a celebrity. And also slightly idiotic for still not knowing who they were. We had to go home and google them. Anyway, that was our 5 mins of fame.

Other than that, I can’t think of any other good stories. It was a great trip and now it’s back to the books. Hope to hear from you all soon!