A big sigh of relief

Well, the GRE is over, and the job hunt is in full swing!

We

The South island was nothing short of incredibly beautiful. An amazing adventure.

Fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day. 

Train time!

Fun with the tilt shift setting on the camera

NZ has lots of cows!

This town has a gumboot (galoshes) throwing festival ever year. So they have a giant gumboot statue.

Some beautiful views from the train!

This yellow stuff is EVERYWHERE, especially on the south island. It's beautiful, but weird since it's so invasive.

This laser is electrical, as opposed to those hand-crank ones.

In our hostel in Christchurch we hung our clothes dry :D

A lot of Christchurch was destroyed in the earthquake. 75% of the hostels are gone. seriously they are now just parking lots. We were almost homeless on our first because we didn't have accommodation set up early enough.

This was kinda a cool area.. It's called Re-start. They've made cafes and stores out of shipping containers to get Christchurch going again.

Even a shipping container ATM!

We went for a canoe ride down a small stream that goes through this beautiful park in the middle of the city.

Some of the ducks here are pretty cool looking.

This building in Christchurch looks pretty plain from the oustside...

but it's not inside...

We made a stop in Darfield!

Apparently the love of naming cities Springfield is not restricted to the US.

We found a really neat hostel called 'Jugglers Rest' in Picton, where I went fishing for the first time!

And we got to see our second solar eclipse in 6 months!

I found a kitty for a kitty photoshoot :)

Meow!

Wellington was SO cool. We wish we didn't have our rental contract in Auckland so we could move there. The public places are just incredibly well thought out.

You don't even need to know how to read to know what this place is!

And these clothes... 

 The best part is a couple hours later i SAW A REAL PERSON WEARING IT IN PUBLIC. 

A little Obama exhibit at the Picton library....

Cool graffiti in Wellington

And home again outside our living room window :D It really does feel like home now...

Oh yeah we have real internet at our house now! So hopefully posts more often :)

Yesterday's island adventure, some wheels, and early Christmas

Today felt like Christmas!

Dar and I had left a box in Eugene for his mom to ship to us when we got a place. Just things that we didn't want to deal with carrying through Fiji and risk getting stolen, like my laptop (we've been sharing Dar's), our SLR and lenses, my year's supply of contacts, etc. I was floored when I saw the slip that it had got here in less than a week! Quicker than us! So this morning Dar went to the post office and picked it up while I took a practice GRE - also HOLY CRAP the test is in one week!

When we opened the package it felt like just like Christmas. I teared up a bit when one of my t-shirts smelled like home...

I took a couple pictures from our balcony with the zoom lens :D The quality of these blog posts may dramatically improve. That is if I can figure out how to rotate them...

Yesterday was a super adventure! We found a motorbike on TradeMe (NZ equivalent of Craigslist),  and decided to go see it. Turns out the guy selling it was on Waiheke Island so we HAD to take a ferry over to the island to go see it XD

Our city from the bay! Our house is in there!

The ferry ride was our first chance to really get out of the city just a bit. It was beautiful! A 35 minute ride, and the day was perfect.

Our first view of Waiheke

The bike was in great condition, and we decided to take it!

It's a Suzuki GN250E, apparently a great starter bike, and it's bright red!

Any votes on a name for our bike?

We spent the day driving around the island, grabbed lunch, and ate ice cream bars on the beach :D

Look out for the hungry boat! OMNOMNOM

There's a shy/sleeping duck in the middle :D

Cool Beach Shack

On the way home, we had to take the car ferry in order to bring the bike back, which goes to a different port, so Dar was thrown to the sharks when he bravely drove us home on the motorway at 100 kph (~62 mph) and then through the city. Keep in mind that neither of us have any experience riding besides the course to get your licence in the Lane Community College parking lot, so neither of us had ever driven on the road before, let alone the left side of the road, in a place we'd never been, on a new bike. Dar gets MAD props.

Our Ferry

In other news, when we first went shopping for our house, we tried to go with the cheapest stuff because we're going to have to dump it all when we leave and travel more. Housewares here are expensive here anyway, and it really just isn't worth it to pay extra for a bazillion thread count sheets when you'll only have them for a couple months. But, after a week of neck and back pain, and then waking up one morning unable to move my neck to one side, I learned that at least for me, pillows are something worth investing a bit in.

So, a trip to good old Briscoes was in order. Briscoes is something like TJ Maxx is in the states, but with more sales. Everything is kind of expensive, but most of the store merchandise is in a constant state of 40-60% clearance, so it ends up pretty cheap. I got an AMAZING New Zealand flag towel there for $12 last time XD When I get around to buying my New Zealand flag bikini I'm gonna look stupendous at the beach.

On the way to Briscoes we found this park which had a HUGE zipline in it. Nothing like that would EVER be allowed in a public park in the US. Too many people would get hurt and sue the city. So pretty cool that we got to play on it. There were big signs on both ends reminding people that the park was a "Liquor ban area." That thing was a drunk toy if I ever saw one.

Ready to go!

 Found a cute cat on my walk. Meow!

Found this cutie

And later in a different park I found more toys to play on, and I made friends with a frog.

Ribbit!