Happy Australia Day!!

So its Jan 26 today, (well, for me right now, anyway) which means it Australia Day for us. YAY!

I love Australia Day. I love Australia, so its a given that I LOVE Australia Day. (Greatest place on earth - just saying)

I had to work today, (SUCKS), so i didn't get to go celebrate out on the streets or anything fun like that, but living in the city - where people come to celebrate cause there is big festivities - i saw everyone coming in when i was leaving and hanging around when i came back in after work.

On my way to work it was great, loads of different people of different nationality's (is that what it is, if they are all Australian? Or is Cultures the right thing? They weren't all white Australians is all) all wearing the Australian flag, either as tattoos, shirts, hats or had flags.
It was a great feeling.

Then off to work....

Now my work has a dress code. No thongs. So sadly, even though they are iconic Aussie footwear, i didn't wear any. :(

BUT!
I did wear Jean shorts and a Bonds (wifebeater) singlet.
Iconic Australian Wear, i must say.
Sadly, i didn't wear a flag at all though. :(

Ive mentioned my work a few times here, basics are i work in a call centre, part of my job is to take calls from the offshore reps when they need help.
These are people in an Asian (i guess you would call it that?) country,that are trained to speak with an American accent to help Australian customers. Makes sense right?
Anyway, i no longer really notice the account, but today when they were wishing me a Happy Australia Day, and saying GoodDay (or i guess trying to say G'day) i noticed and it made me feel so much pride.
They aren't even in the country and the euthesium in their voices when they were saying it, was great. Just great.

Fast forward 6 hours or so......

I finish work and get home to find the husband has bought PRAWNS (NOT Shrimp) for tea. Yum!

....the only other acceptable thing to eat today is Lamb. Cooked on a barbeque, after being encouraged by these... Seriously watch them. I'll wait.

AND....
I managed to watch part of the fireworks in the reflection of buildings from my balcony.

So.

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY to you whereever you are. I hope your day is/was/will be fabulous.

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.

So i haven't died or anything.

I'm in the midst of writing a post.

It just is hard when i like sleep and catching up on awesome shows like this. And if you are serious about entertainment, this.
(you know its good when its made in NZ and I'm suggesting it.)

So when i finally finish that post, (which has me admitting something that i wouldn't normally) I'll put it up. AND it will even have pictures!!

Get excited.