Wow.

This is another holiday post, but a holiday post that i wanted to keep separate to the previous one, cause my feelings while doing this were high.

We decided to go to a Hangi and we heard a LOT of good things about. So we went to that one, and it was AMAZING. I'm a little bit sad that i don't remember the name of the place, cause y'all should go there. It was the most wonderful food ever.

Cooked in the ground, for like 8 hours, under all this.




But, in a way, I'm glad i don't remember.

Before the food, we were taken on a walk through the area around to see a show, while the food was finished.

This is the part i wasn't sure about. Basically the show was about the Maroi culture and some of the songs that they sing and dances and things like that. Sounds alright on paper, right?

That's what i thought. I thought that i would learn some things that i didn't know and that would be that.

Here are some of the photos that the husband took, just so you know what I'm talking about.






Now, i may be kinda a hypocrite for what i write next, but I'm going to say it anyway.

There were maybe 60 people including us, at this dinner and show. They were all mostly also taking photos.

Towards the end of the show, the leader of the show tried to teach us a song and dance.

About halfway through the show, i was thinking to myself that this was amazing, and interesting and all those other things that you would say if you were in a museum, only these were people. These were real people who's life may not be like this completely now, but was at one stage. These are real people and we are staring at them like they are in a zoo. These are real people and people are taking photos like they aren't real. These are real people and real history that we are kinda making fun of, by learning and laughing about this.

And i felt bad. I felt bad for watching, i felt bad that paid money to see this, and i felt bad that i didn't go along with learning this dance and song and i felt bad that i felt bad about all these things.

I felt like i disrespected them. I felt like i had wore a hat in a church, or didn't wear a head scarf in a Muslim mosque (is that what they are called?).

And i know that these people have a business doing this daily, and they might enjoy it, and everything like that.
But i felt like i had disrespected their past and their culture.

I don't want to say that i regret going to it, because it made me look at myself. But i don't know how i feel about it all now.

Holi-day cele-brate!!

The first two weeks of August I was in New Zealand.
I went there with the husband and the older sister. Other people were supposed to come too, but let's not go into that.
The plan was to go do the fun north island stuff with the sister and then the husband and me fly to the south island so he could ski (and I could relax).

Fun stuff we had decided on before leaving were:
~'indoor' out door ski diving (or freefalling)
~ zorbing
~and see a kiwi

Pretty basic stuff. Pretty fun stuff too. Or so I thought.

So, we left Sydney at some gosh forsaken hour, (the flight was at 7am, but with customs and stupid things like that minus 3 hours and that's when we had to be there). So sleepy.
Sister and I tried really hard to stay awake all night but failed...



We got a ginormous A380 and it was magnificent. You could choose from about 50 different movies to watch, free food, hot towels, 100 different games to play on your screen and free pillows!! Compared to jetstar (the basic airline I usually fly) it was like heaven. Downside was cause I had to get up so early, I slept through most of the flight. :(

Can I just interject here and say my older sister (who is almost 30) HAS NEVER BEEN ON A PLANE BEFORE?!? So going overseas for her first time even on a plane was quite funny. She was asking all these odd questions that I can't remember now, but they made me laugh.

We landed in Auckland, which looked pretty nice when we drove through it. Kinda like Sydney but with different shops. Nothing too unusual, although we don't have Wendy's.

Then on the way to Rotorua. Smelly was one description of it. So bad that you had to cover your face all the time. Cold was another.

While, yes, it did smell (like egg fart for those asking, or just like dirty boy if you have brothers), you totally got used to it. Even when we went to the mud pool things, it really wasn't hugely bad.
And cold, yeah, I guess, but I got away with wearing single tops under my normal jackets and wasn't overly cold. I think i wore my gloves once.
BUT it was beautiful.
So if any of you are thinking about going and people are talking you out of it, ignore them.

Now, onto the fun stuff.
Freefalling/'indoor' outdoor ski diving

Any mouth breathers reading? If so, you will die doing this.

The sister saw this on Kendra and thought it looked like amazing fun. Think about normal sky diving, only take away the plane and add in a wind machine from the ground. A giant wind machine. A grandpa giant wind machine. Now imagine being super afraid of heights and having to climb over netting that was about 10 metres above this giant wind machine. Scary.
Now imagine them turning the wind machine on and your face getting blown almost off and not being able to breathe out your mouth but your floating - somewhat. Seems like fun right?
The husband and the sister enjoyed it sorta. But the workers seemed like they were having fun on it, so I think it's the sorta thing you gotta get used to, but it's hard to get used in 3 mins.






We went on this other thing at the skydiving/freefall place. It was
called a shweeb and that was pretty fun, like and upside down bike, but not. The husband enjoyed it so much we went back there and he
ended up 3rd in his age group ever.







Another day we went to this awesome lion/animal park. There were signs all up everywhere, 'come play with loin cubs' and pictures of cute little baby lions. So we thought that would be cool. We were maybe thinking that the signs might have been not so truthful, cause really they
can't make the lions be knocked up all the time so they ALWAYS have cubs, so we were doubtful.
So we got there and went in search of the baby lions.
AND WE WERE IN LUCK!!
They had little baby Ella, who was 6 weeks old, and oh so cute. And Chase who was 6 months old and bigger then a Doberman. But both I wanted to take home. Too bad they wouldn't be allowed on the plane. :(

This is 6 month old Chase.


Ella trying to get up onto Sisters lap


Little Ella.



The husband and the sister were even able to hold little Ella but then
people came and I wasn't allowed.




Jerks.


Now onto another day...

ZORBING
THE BEST MOST FUN THING EVER!!

Ok, i could explain this in words, but rather then do that, i will just show you pictures.

But if i could explain it, i would say, the type of zorbing we did was like a water slide inside a big bubble. But check out the link for a better description.






























PS. You may notice that we are wearing different clothes in some of these photos. Thats because we had so much fun, we went back a second day.

PPS. Also, i know that one of the photos is doubled, but im stupid and can't work out which one from the HTML (?) junk that shows as photos. Dont judge me.


So that was some of the super fun stuff we did. The second week, the boy went skiing twice, and then we just hung out in Queenstown, which was pretty cool. But not too many photos.
We also did a bunch of other things in the first week, but i think that this post is long enough.



EDIT: Ok, so just re reading this, i realised that i made no mention of seeing Kiwis at all. We totally did, but because they were nocturnal, we weren't allowed to take pictures, so here are some i have found earlier.

I went on an awesome holiday but can't blog about it...

Not because it was secret or anything like that, but because my stupid computer broke two days before i went on it, and my work doesn't like me to not work at work, so i can't blog there.

So EVENTUALLY a great blog post about my super fun awesome holiday will be written, (that is kinda half written on my phone) and you will all enjoy it.

Meanwhile, this is the first chance that i have gotten to even READ blogs since before August started and i think im a little scared.