First Post!

So it's taken a couple weeks to find some time to post here!  Been covering a lot of ground and having an amazing time.  I'll try to do a brief update with a few photos.  Started off with a couple days in LA visiting Andrew!  Then Dec. 22nd I flew to Auckland with my friend Nate - 13 and a half hour flight from LA.  Auckland is right on the water, really clean city and super friendly people.  Pretty quiet on Christmas, walked around the city, got a bit sunburned.  Warm Christmas day!  I got a bit sunburned.

Then we rented a car the next day and started heading south. We stopped in a little surf town called Raglan then went through the caves at Waitomo, which are full of glow worms.  Pretty incredible.  We spent a few days rock climbing at Wharepapa.

Stopped at Lake Taupo, then drove down to Wellington in a rain storm.  Spent New Years in Wellington, met some Germans, French people, and an Italian at the hostel, and ran into Eian from NH there too - we had a class together at UNH!  Small world.  Next day we took the ferry from Wellington to Picton (North Island to South Island) - about 3 hours.

Spent just a night in Picton then headed up to a beach at the beginning of Abel Tasman National Park.  Drove down to Takaka to do some more climbing.  Very different kind of rock from the pockety limestone at Wharepapa.  Met some super nice New Zealanders at the Mussel Inn.

We visited the Franz Josef Glacier for a day.  Kind of cloudy but we hiked up and got to see the glacier a bit!  You can do a guided tour on the glacier or take a helicopter up there, but we just decided to walk up there, still got a pretty good view.

Went rock climbing in Wanaka for a day on a rock called the Tombstone Rock.

Headed to Queenstown for a few days - such a fun place!  It's a big town on a lake, surrounded by mountains.  There's climbing nearby but we didn't make it there.  Instead we spent a day at a the rugby sevens tournament!  Really fun sport to watch.  And the 'sevens' tournament is where the teams play 20 minute matches with 7 people, instead of 15.  Visited the local fire station in Queenstown - such nice people!  The next day we went bungy jumping.....a little scary but Awesome!!  43 meter bridge, not the tallest one in NZ but the original one!  So fun :)

From Queenstown we went to the Fjordland National Park and went kayaking in Milford Sound - gorgeous.

Now we're in Dunedin!  I bought a cheap guitar here today.  Wish I could've bought a NZ-made guitar but those are superrr expensive.  Glad to have something to play though!

So that's a nutshell update!  It's been a whirlwind of a trip, gone by too fast but we've gotten to see some awesome places, meet great people, and do some super fun things :)  Loving NZ already.