Here I am, finally putting together a little something about my experiences so far. I've only just realized that I can use this blog to share my personal experiences in addition to my contributions to the New Thought News Service blog (www.newthoughtnewsservice.blogspot.com).
So. I came to Australia through New Zealand. For some reason it was less expensive to fly from LAX to NZ and then on to Melbourne. So I spent three days road trippin' through the ridiculously gorgeous country of New Zealand with my good friend Katie Dutcher. She got to drive, I being too young (still, but for another 6 months only) to drive a rental car. She adapted to the opposite-ness of their road rules quite well. Though we had a few close calls, a couple scares in which we were on the wrong side of the road. Nothing dangerous though. Even the indicator switch and the windshield wipers are on the opposite side. That was pretty funny, having the windshield wipers go off instead of the blinkers.
We were on the northern island, in the very north near Auckland on the Coromandel Peninsula. We spent the first night in a very small comfortable hostel with two German women, a guy from the UK and a woman from Portland, OR. That was in a medium sized, and very quiet town called Thames. We hadn't originally planned to stay in a hostel, we were supposed to meet Rev. Linda Reppond's foster son and his wife. But we never got a hold of them... Though we did have a great time trying to find them. We spent a good hour in United Video, a Blockbuster style chain video rental store. A few locals were hangin' with the employee. We had very little information to go by: two phone numbers, and a sparse geographical location (30 miles from here, twenty minutes south of here kinda thing). One phone number didn't work and she, our supposed host, never picked up the other one. Adventure.
Words fail in describing NZ's beauty. The flora is stunning; towering ferns in a deciduous forest. The landscape is extremely varied, densely forested mountains bordering beautiful coastlines give way to calmly rolling fertile pasture. So many cows. Wow.
I left NZ on the 1st, at 8pm. Watched "The Hurt Locker" and "500 Days of Summer" on the plane, both of which are very good and very different.
Arrived four hours later at 10pm. There's a time difference, I'm not crazy.
The Parliament opened on Thursday, in a three hour ceremony. It was beautiful and a little difficult to endure, to be completely honest.
I'll write more soon.
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