"are those penguins?" ".....no, they're cows!"

so, since my last update I left Gisborne with my friend, Laurence, and drove down to Otaki, which is about 6-8 hours away. I was hungover on the drive and ended up needing to pull over once to throw up my delicious McDonald's breakfast. But then I felt better. We took a long detour to go to Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, which is the longest place name in the world (duh). BUT when we got there, the sign with the name was gone!!!!!!! such a tragedy, we took a big long windy road detour for nothing. boo.

then I spent about 4 days or so in Otaki with Laurence, his mom and his grandparents, which was great. They made tons of food, we hung out on the (cold) beach a lot, went walking, and it was all in all a very nice and restful time. His grandparents are hilarious and super sassy, and they loved me, so it was fun.

After a few days I took the train down to Wellington to meet up with Tally, my friend I've known since I was about 8 (Houston's Hoop Camp, holler!), and her older sister Tara who is living in Wellington right now teaching Montessori. We met up and then hit the road for a big long road trip up to Tara's friend's bach, which is like a holiday home. On the way up we ended up getting stuck in a big blizzard for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. we were also on empty and only about 20 km (12 miles) from our destination, so that sucked. We turned the car off, played guitar, talked about our favorite books, and anxiously waited for the road to get cleared so we could go. finally we made it to Turangi, gassed up, and then headed to Lake Taupo and found somewhere to stay for the night.

The next day, we did something I've been wanting to do in New Zealand but have been way too chicken to actually DO, and went skydiving!!! AHHHHHHH! It was probably the best thing I've ever done in my life and I'm so glad that Tally wanted to do it because if she didn't want to, I probably never would have. It ended up being perfect, too--we were supposed to go in the morning and they canceled it because the weather was bad, so we just headed over to the place a couple hours later because it got nice out and asked if we could do it right then, and we did! From the time we decided to drive there to the time we were driving out was less than an hour, it went soo fast. We went up to 12,000 feet and...that was it! Our tandem instructor told us to smile, took a picture, and we were falling to the ground at 200 km/h. My face was frozen and I just screamed a lot of bad words. Then after 45 seconds of free fall he pulled the parachute and we floated around the biggest lake in the southern hemisphere, over cows and fields, and I was in heaven. I want to do it every single day of my life, it was the best feeling I could ever imagine.

After that, we spent a night in the bach, drank boxed wine, ate pasta, and laid by the fire. then we headed back down to wellington. last night we went and saw Harry Potter 6 (wahoo!) and yesterday we went to the HUGE museum. it's been a lot of fun. Tally leaves tomorrow and I think I'll head out as well, go up north a bit and hopefully do some WWOOFing before heading to the South Island. :)