Bay of Islands...my future home

As awesome as Auckland is, we decided we wanted to get out of the city for a little bit before school starts next Monday. So a bunch of us girls from our AustraLearn group organized a trip up north to a place called the Bay of Islands. We heard there was a lot to do there and that the landscape was beautiful. We had a group of about 15 that took a bus on Tuesday morning, and another 6 ended up renting a van and met us up there. We stayed in a great backpackers hostel that was super cheap and I was in the big room with 7 other girls in our group. The first night, Rylee, Josh and I just went to the beach and walked around for a bit, and then on our way back to the hostel, we passed a bar that has "bar olympics" every Tuesday night. We asked about it, found out there wasn't any drinking involved, and that they give away a free skydive, so we signed up a team of us three and mike. Later, we all ended up at the bar and had pizza before the bar olympics began. The first event was the limbo and everyone on every team had to participate. The last two to make it under would win points for their team. I think there were 9 teams of 4, so I wasn't expecting to do well at all (especially w/ my back). Well by the end of it, it was just me and 2 other girls and people were chanting my name?? (cough, Kathy, cough) I was so jacked up, and I ended up taking 2nd and won a point for the team! Mike was next and he won us another point in a balloon popping competion, but everything was going so slow and we had to get up early in the morning, so we ended up forfeiting and going home. ha ooo well, we still had fun.

Day 2:
SKYDIVING!!! Yep, that's right. I fullfilled my lifelong dream of jumping out of a plane and living to tell about it. It was above and beyond what I expected it to be and I know I will be doing it again sometime in my life...if not MANY more times! I love love loved it!! We had to go up individually with the pilot, photographer, and tandem master that we were attached to. The photographer video taped the whole thing and took lots of pics, and on the way up I taught them "pound it" and they were very intrigued by it! Once all 6 of us girls had jumped, we popped a bottle of champaigne, and celebrated our accomplishment (and the fact that we were all still alive)

Day 3:
The plan was to go sailing and swim with dolphins. Well we did the all day sail, but no dolphins were found, unfortunately. However, it was all worth it when we sailed to this incredible island that was probably the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Words and pictures really don't do this place justice, but I'm pretty sure I decided I want to live as close to it as possible one day. When we were exploring this place, we ran into a bunch of the Wellington people that were in our AustraLearn Program Intro in Rotorua, which we all thought was crazy bizzare considering a) Wellington is a good 10ish hr. trip up north for them. and b) we all happened to meet at a tiny little, secluded island?? Cool, but really weird.

Day 4:
It was our last day in Bay of Islands, so we decided to go kayaking. Turns out I'm not a big fan, but it definitely didn't help that I had a crappy kayak that made it 10 times more difficult to move, and it was pretty windy today which made the water quite choppy. Brianna and I ended up coming back early, and she had it way rougher than me...aka she threw up in the ocean and then tipped over on shore. Ok, that's all i can write now. Bed time! Much LOVE!!!