Gardena Court Motel Hamilton

... Retro and welcoming. Which was surprising as many little 'fuNked' up cafe's of this style seem to exude the 'only for those as cool as me' feel. Tables outside and in. Semi child friendly with a rather cool rocket ship to sit in. (although i didn't take a close look so maybe it was just a decoration!)<br><br>Staff... overall, friendly - however, there was a little too much personal information conversations behind ...

Raglan is famoous for good surfing and a left hand break (waves break from the left......apparently that doesn't happen very much in surfing circles!) We decided to do a 3hr surfing lesson, to see if we'd really forgotten everything we learnt at our surf camp. And boy had we!! We did manage to stand up and ride some waves in, but not nearly as many as I would've liked! We decided to spend an extra day in Raglan as the area and accommodation were so nice.

... people from the North Island vacation in the summer and spend the holidays. We arrived on Friday evening to Darrel's (Mike and Irene's son) beach house in Pauanui where we met his wife, Gail, and son, Travis. Everyone was so welcoming and hospitable and they even gave us our own trailer to crash in for the weekend! We spent Friday evening getting to know each other, eating AMAZING food and drinking by the fire. Life couldn't be better! Darrel and Mike took ...

... or your new apartment or your sad stuff. I'm greedy and the biggest thing I worried about before I left was missing out on the lives of people I love. So help me out! Send me stories about you - I want to be included even if I am a million miles away. You've all had to 'listen' (read) about me over the last months... you know what I'm doing...I want to know what you're doing even if you think it's uninteresting or boring. I don't! /END LIST I'm sure there are other ...

... which is a seaside town with a lovely beach. I went for a paddle in the Pacific before we sat on a cafe by the beach for afternoon tea. The drive back to Rick and Lindas through the Waikato region was beautiful and I thought it quite ironic how the place they have chosen to live is the most like Herefordshire of all the places I've seen in NZ - that is lots of farmland and little holdings ...

... but then I remember I won't see the sky ever again in my new job and I remind myself to enjoy it while it lasts. So if the photos linked here seem a bit landscape-heavy I make no apologies whatsoever. Some are average, some are good, but none of them could do it justice. This particular box gets a big tick, as long as that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to come again. Sweet as. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sannagarto n/collections/72157605951287940/

... so I can actually get paid for this work I'm doing! So many logistics to working in another country! Well....I don't know whatelse to tell you. I go to work, I come home, I drink wine, I go to bed, I go to work, I come home.....etc. There is a festival going on right now called Fuel Festival and I'm hoping to catch some performing arts in the next couple of weeks. Wooo! The pictures are from Rototuna (the suburb I'm living in); enjoy! Miss you all, lots of love, K

... They have some great songs, particularily one about how Daniel Vettori looks like Harry Potter! By the end of our second day, and thankfully our last, we were ready to head into town and see what Hamilton had to offer. For a town with a population of 120,000 it is suprising that Hamilton is able to sustain around 30 bars! We ended up visiting about six of them, all which were good fun and where we met loads of friendly Kiwi's, all of ...

... s free to use for guests and really cheap for everything else. In the kitchen there's a bucket for food scraps for a local pig and under the board that tells the weather and surf conditions and tide changes for the day there's a bowl for Meg, the beautiful longhair tabby cat that lives at the Backpacker. She's fairly shy unless you have food, but she doesn't run from me at least. There's a pair of kingfishers that have a nest in the tree right out the back door on ...

... to music. It has been a wonderful break and will continue to be until I get tired of taking a break and find I'm ready to start studying again. Well, if that ever happens. J Hopefully I'll be able to keep this blog up and get the other one updated too. I am definitely going to concentrate on pictures for the other one for a while but if I get them all sorted and posted I'll take my camera around the university and take some pics to post with this one. It's times like these when I do ...