Gulf Harbour & Fun Farm Stay!

Hi everyone!

Hope all is well and that you are enjoying the warm northern hemisphere weather! Down under, it is definitely becoming winter. The wind is strong, it has been raining a lot and unfortunately the buildings are not at all well insulated so it's been pretty chilly - nothing like a northeastern winter though! Anyways the semester is winding down. My last day at my internship is Friday which I am really sad about, and my exam is on Saturday. Then I am going on a roadtrip around the North Island: Whanganui National Park, Wellington (the capitol of NZ), Napier, Gisborne and Tauranga - so get excited to hear about that adventure in my next post!

Anyways, back to the present. The past few weeks have not been too exciting, just wrapping everything up. However, I did have two big weekend adventures which I will now tell you about!

Two weekends ago a friend and I took our bikes on the ferry to Gulf Harbour! It was about a 50 minute ferry ride and it was a beautiful day out! We got to Gulf Harbour and rode our bikes to Shakespear Regional Park (which is about 5 km). There was a really nice bay (Army Bay) right at the entrance to the park with a cool tree that we played around in. However, upon reaching the gates of Shakespear we found out that the park was CLOSED for pest control! There were tons of signs saying that we couldn't enter due to poison and shootings. Apparently they are re-doing the regional park to make it safe for more birds. After being bummed out for a while, we decided to hop back on our bikes and try to ride to the next regional park. We got directions from a bus driver and we were off! About an hour into our ride we decided to take a break for lunch at a pretty bay. While eating lunch we saw a HUGE RAINBOW! It started right by the bay and went all the way across the water to Rangitoto! Then we hopped back on our bikes and kept riding. After a while longer we decided to ask someone to see if we were going in the right direction still. Apparently we were still quite a while away! So we decided to just go to Big Manly Beach which was right near us. The beach was really beautiful! It had tons of awesome rock formations and cool stuff to look at - I was even able to scratch my name into a wall! We had fun just walking and exploring around there for a couple hours. Then we rode back to the ferry and had a nice ride back. Throughout the course of the day we saw 6 HUGE RAINBOWS though! It seems to be a frequent occurence in Auckland winters: while it rains a lot, there are tons of rainbows to make up for it!!

This past weekend three of my friends and I went to the Drury Fun Farm Stay! Drury is about 30 minutes outside of Auckland. The Fun Farm Stay is basically a bed and breakfast (plus lunch and dinner!) where you can go to a house and play around on their farm! They also provide all transportation which was great! So Sunday morning we got picked up at 11 and were at their house in time for lunch! After putting our stuff away, we relaxed in their family room area and played some cards. Then we had a delicious lunch filled with corn fritters, scones and salads. After lunch it was raining a little so they took us to the Hunua Ranges, which was about a 20 minute drive away. At the Ranges we went for a walk and saw a GIANT waterfall! It was so awesome! Apparently the waterfall is not usually that big, but because of the rain Auckland has been having, it was massive! We walked around a bit to get a cool view from above and then were able to walk right up to the falls! It was really great and I loved it. Then we headed back to the farm and went horseback riding! It was not a huge riding session, just around their farm area, but it was a lot of fun. The horse I rode was named Beevis. Then I got helped one of the guys feed the animals! We gave a grain feed to the horses and haystacks to the sheep and cow (Mooloo). Then we showered up and relaxed for a bit before dinner. Dinner was also really good: we had delicious vegetables, potatoes, kumara, mashed potatoes and an incredible fruit cobbler! After dinner we relaxed and watched two movies: Chocolat and Love Actually. It was really nice to just be in a house!! The next morning we had a great breakfast of fruit and yogurt and cereal. Then we walked the horses down the road to get some grass. The farm that they were eating the grass at has tons of cows right by the fence! So I was able to walk a horse and hang out with cows at the same time - lots of fun! Then we walked the horses back and fed the sheep! We fed the sheep grains straight from our hands which was a lot of fun and I got to pet them. Then we went horseback riding again. After cleaning up our stuff, we expected to go but they gave us lunch again! I had a similar delicious lunch to the day before except I also had rhubarb muffins which were so great!! Then we were driven back to Auckland. It was a really great time!

You may have noticed in my discussion of the farm stay that we were there from Sunday to Monday. This is because we had no school on Monday because they were celebrating the Queen's birthday. Other than being funny that they were celebrating the Queen of ENGLAND's birthday, it was also funny because her birthday is apparently in March - who knows! Either way it was nice to have a day off.

Work at Carlson has been going really well - I just can't believe it's almost over!! Last week the speech language therapist put my name on one of the kid's devices which was really exciting so now she can say my name!!! Today another one of the kids kind of said my name which was incredible! I'm really attached to the kids and think it's going to be really difficult to say goodbye to them.

In other news, today I just said goodbye to my bike. After serving me well for the psat few months, I sold it on TradeMe (NZ's version of ebay and craig's list) and just dropped it off today. The man who bought it is 60 and seems really nice, but I was pretty sad to part with my bike.

I think that's pretty much the update I have for now. As I said, my exam is in a couple days and I have a lot of studying to do before then!

Here are the pictures from gulf harbour and the farm stay. Also included in there are some pictures from Mission Bay! Hope you enjoy: http://picasaweb.google.com/LSOL817/GulfHarbourFunFarmStay?feat=directlink

Sending lots of love from the many NZ sheep!