Ashwood Manor Hamilton

... feast, was so fillin. Did th blackwater rafting in waitomo caves, best thing i hav done so far by miles. Nt rafting bt abseligng climbing water cing glow worms al 60m below ground in a cave! In Raglan now about 2 do 3 days of surfin b4 headin 2 taupo, hopefully skydivin and th tongariro crossin if weather is gd. Wud describe more bt internet is expensive!

... to us. This will be the first time Adam has met this branch of his family. Before meeting them, their hospitality and benevolent nature is already shining through. They have given Adam the usage of one of their cars so that he can travel. We plan to work our way South from here eventually arriving in Wellington, which is at the southern-most tip of the North Island. Here, I have some contacts and probably somewhere to stay. We haven't really set ourselves a time ...

... suits. We then strapped our boards to the car and headed to the beach which was only 5 minutes up the road. When we arrived, there were a few surfers in the water already and one guy was kite surfing. Shortly after our arrival a surf school showed up with about 15 people in it. The weather at the beach was beautiful, but the water was COLD...probably about 60 degress, thank god we had the wet suits. We spent about 2 hours at the beach trying to surf ...

... 38][39] The chemical appeared to have been added to milk in order to cause it to appear to have a higher protein content.The Philippines banned all dairy product that came from mainland China. Melamine has been found in products produced by 21 other companies, including Sanlu, Mengniu, Yili, and Yashili[40] Melamine may have been added to fool government quality tests after water was added to fraudulently increase the milk's volume, since melamine ...

... evenings/weekends with the young girl. It's full on and being that her mom just got married and is taking off on her honeymoon soon as well as one of the staff leaving for six weeks, I am finding myself with a lot of hours. Which is both good and bad. Sometimes it's great and more or less "easy" and other times, she's sick and can't breathe very well which means I spend four hours pounding on her back, sticking a catheter down her throat and trying to ...

... apparently, is not the norm here. There were a couple days there where I ended up at work completely drenched and standing in front of the heater trying to dry my pants but so far this week is looking gorgeous. Though I've learned that the clouds can turn at any point and after fearing that there was a plane headed directly into the house last week, the rain can turn itself on and off much like an Asian monsoon! Hope all is well at home! xox K

... surf.... it has some famous members of the community... Jack Johnson and Ben Harper share a house here!!! I had no idea about this until Princess informed us. Let's just say not only was I STOKED to be going to Raglan and learning how to surf there, but also even more excited to be in the vicinity of where Jack hangs out :) More to come on this later.... So we headed up the hill, all while taking in the amazing scenery and stopping for some photo opportunities. As we ...

... no sleep made it even worse for me to even try to understand what the man was saying. So I made it through the class, and then started to walk back to the J's, with a very important stop on the way to buy a cell phone and a converter. I got back to J's and the owner of the place gave me the number of a girl that wanted to give up her room in one of the fully catered dorms on campus. I was ****ing pumped. All of the stress of personally finding a place ...

... on our packing list was country-specific gifts for friends and people we meet. I didn't bring any of those either. What did people want with little American flags to put on their walls? What could I bring? Little miniature statues of Liberty? I didn't feel any identification to the standard symbols of my country. I still don't, really, at least not a personal identification. But a sort of identification that means they are part of me and that I am happy to have them there. I find myself ...

... nothing to improve my poor mood. But I did have a chance to reflect on all I’d experienced over the course of a month in NZ, and there were some pretty extraordinary things on the list. And in all that time I hadn’t even heard a snippet of the song that is almost a Kiwi anthem – Dave Dobbyn’s Slice of Heaven. That was perhaps the most extraordinary thing of all.