rugby tri Nations game

8-6-11

            Today we went to a Tri Nation’s rugby game in Auckland, New Zealand.  We got to the game a few hours early, but there was a lot of people still coming in and it took us a lot of time to get our tickets and get to our seats. Then we went to our seat and watched the big screen where they showed the earlier games that the All Blacks (New Zealand national team) played. This match was a really big game because it was between New Zealand and there rival nation, Australia. There were 60 thousand people coming to the game at Eden Park stadium. People started coming to the game really early and the security closed off parts of the road that are near to the stadium because there were so many people there. This would be a big match because it is one of the testing games before the world cup. 

            After the All blacks did the Hakka, (the Maori war dance), on the opposite side of the stadium big fire balls came up right in front of the crowd. When the game started there was lots of yelling. During the first half the All Blacks dominated scoring 2 tries and making all there kicks. The Australian team were crushed; they missed all but one kick that they got after scoring there first try.  One of my favourite things was the waves that the crowd would do. Sometimes people would through beer bottles in the air when the wave went through the. The All Blacks scored some tries until it was 30 to 7 and then the Wallabies (Australia) scored one more tries till it was 30-14. Then the game ended the final score was 30-14 and the All Blacks had won!!! Then, the all blacks captain was given a big trophy to hold in the air on the podium. The crowd cheered!!!

            Then my family and I walked through beer bottles and trash to the exit of the stadium and walked through the crowd to our car that was a mile away from the stadium. On the way back to our car I saw an Aston Martin.  There were lots of signs that said Rugby World cup official bar and they were all really packed. Plus every few minutes people would drive by screaming and all the fans would scream as they drove by too.  When we got to our car we planned to drive all the way down to Wellington, which was 8 hours away.

Zander Rolph

Parks in New Zealand

   In new Zealand there are tons of awesome parks. My mom and dad would drop us off at parks like every day because they were looking for houses. I liked when we did that because the parks had tons of obstacle courses, swings, spinney things and teeter-totters. Whenever Zander and I would go on the teeter totter Zander bounced really high and I would go flying. On the spinney things I would get sick because Zander spins them really fast even after I tell him to stop. On the obstacle courses I try to go through the whole thing without touching the ground. I would most of the time get through all of them without touching the ground and sometimes I wouldn’t. In the obstacle courses there are climbing ropes, monkey bars, nets that you walk across, and zip lines. They’re really fun because they are a bit hard. On the swings I go really high and jump off. They also have a lot of really long slides and some of them are metal so I go really fast on them. Parks in New Zealand are really different from ones in the US.

The End

-          Sarah

-          Typed by mia!!!

surfing blog

                8/5/2011

                Today we went surfing at Sandy Bay New Zealand. It was supposed to be the best surf spot around where we were staying in Whangerai. To do that we got up eat breakfast and got out of the house at 11:00 am and took a really long drive to the town of TutuKaKa where we found a surf shop that rented boards. But we had to go to the shop owner’s house to pick them up. We got two 8 foot epoxy boards because we don’t surf for the whole time so we just figured that we would share them. After we got the boards, we drove to the beach.

            Once we got to the beach I found out that the waves were really big so my sisters and I just got on our wet suits and bodysurfed, while we watched our parents get pounded by the waves. Once while I was watching my little sister who was closer to shore, a big wave snuck up on me and when I turned around it broke right on top of me. But I wasn’t the only one who got pounded.  My mom barely got past the break line to catch any waves. After we had an enough time in the water we got out and built a really big sand castle while watching our parents surf. Once everyone got hungry, we got out of our wet suits and ate lunch (sandwiches) while returning the boards. It was really fun to get back in the water again.

            After we returned the boards to the board rental shop, we drove to the other surf beach that was 1 hour away from the Hotel. We were pretty glad that we didn’t surf at that spot!! The waves looked like the waves at Pipe Line in Hawaii. They were humongous; they were so big that spray was flying of the top of them. Plus the wind was blowing really hard.
 I hated the wind because it blows the sand into your legs so hard that it burns while we took a really long walk on the sandy beach.  I had a really good day, except for the fact that I forgot a change of clothes so I had to where my wet and uncomfortable swim suit for the whole day.

Zander 

Awesome Caves!!!

Daddy’s weird plan also includes a bit about Zander and I planning days. My day was yesterday and I was supposed to find something to do at Tongariro Mountain (a.k.a. Mt Doom from Lord of the Rings) like ski or something but it turned out that it cost like $700 for us all to ski there so we obviously didn’t do that. Then momma suggested we go to the Waikomo Glowworm Caves instead. Then daddy went online and bought the tickets for us to see all three caves and drove us there the next morning. As you can see I had a lot of help planning this trip and I am not complaining.

The next morning we drove to Waikomo and ate lunch at the visitor’s center. The visitor’s center was really cool because it had a big wood frame with a plastic blow- up cover thing over it. After lunch we drove over to the mouth of the first cave. After a super short walk we went in the mouth. It was lit only by the guide’s flashlight which was really dim. Just as I was thinking holy crap that’s what we are going into a cave with she pushed a button and that cave go all lit up. They had wired it all that way through with lights illuminating the coolest formations. We walked through the cave on a metal walkway and saw a lot of stalactites, stalagmites and a bunch of other really cool formations. The guide told us about how the Maori thought it was good luck to have a stalactite drip on you. If that’s true my life just got good because my hair was soaked when I got out of that thing.

After that we went to the glow worm cave. The guide for that one was really stupid. In the beginning he was all ‘I understand not all of you speak English so I’ll speak slowly’ and from then on he talked to us like we were two. The cave its self was really cool. We walked through it for a little while and then we went to a platform thing above a river and the guide talked about how glow worms have sticky strings of mucus hanging down from their mouths that catches mosquitoes. Then he turned on a light so we could see them. It was pretty gross. Then we got on a boat on the river and looked at the glow worms on the ceiling while the guide pulled us along by a rope. The glow worms glowed green in clusters and patterns on the ceiling. The guide said that it takes about a month for them to eat a mosquito. Another guide later told us that if you yell really loud it makes them glow brighter but this guide said we had to be totally silent. I really didn’t like him at all.

When we got out we went back to the visitor’s center and waited a few minutes until a bus came to pick us up for the next one. The guide for that one was really cool and she showed Sarah how to magically open the doors to the cave by waving your hand over it and saying the magic word. It was really funny and she totally fell for it. The cave was cooler than the other ones because there were different formations called curtains and some cave coral. There were also stalactites, stalagmites, and a stalagpipe (ok, just kidding, that last one was actually an old metal pipe coming down through the cave ceiling through which they lowered materials and the workers’ lunches). We saw some glow worms up close and they look really nasty. We also saw their mucus “fishing lines” up close. It was cool how much mucus they could hang from the ceiling each. It was also really creepy to think that there was spit hanging from the ceiling.

Yesterday morning momma and daddy dropped us off at the beach for a long time. Before they left they took us on a walk on a small island hill that had a trail that came off the beach. The trail was gravel and Sarah and I didn’t have our shoes so our feet were hurting like crazy, so we stopped walking and sat on the dirt and waited for everyone to come back down. Soon after that Zander came trotting down the hill, after that mommy, daddy, and Mia came walking down the hill Sarah and I followed. Then we walked down to the beach  and momma and daddy went to the car to go look at some houses while us kids went along the beach to check on Sarah’s and my shells and play. We played there all morning. Once mommy and daddy stopped by and gave us a bag of apples and were off again. Mommy and daddy have been really stressed about renting a house and they drop us of a lot so they can run errands. This is not fun!!:( 

-Kayley  

Paning a day trip 8-2-11

Planning a trip is hard work. I experienced it when I planned a trip to Rotorua for one day and it was really hard because there was a lot of a place to see in Rotorua like the Maori villages that are there. There are lots of hot springs that makes the town smell like sulfur and rotten eggs. The first thing we did was go to the buried Maori village that was pretty impressive. There were lots of buildings and rubble because the volcano had destroyed most of it. But there were lots of houses that were still standing.

                Then we went to a lake that was supposed to have the best view of the volcano that buried the Maori village. After that we went to a park with lots of hot springs in them. Then we went to check in to a hotel and get dinner. We went to dinner at a Thai food restaurant. I ate chicken noodle soup. Then I had some dishes with rice. It was some of the best Thai food that I have ever had. Then we went back to the hotel room and went to sleep.

                The next day I had planned us to go visit a Maori village that hasn’t been buried with ashes. It was supposed to have lots of the Maori culture in it and cool buildings and show the crafts that the Maori people did in their time and still do. But we couldn’t do it because we had to go to the glow worm caves for the Tour at 1 pm. I was really disappointed because I really wanted to see the Maori Village.

Zander

The Weird Plan

Last night my parents came back from where ever they were with some Turkish delight and craziest, stupidest, and randomest plan ever made. I guess that’s what happens where they go out alone… they talk. Up until then we had been exploring the Mt. Maunganui area and we had a nice apartment that was ready to be moved in to the next afternoon. I was really happy about that place because it has pretty much the only mixed gender school in the entire country so I was feeling pretty darn lucky. It was pretty much perfect there, so that’s why I think daddy’s plan is really stupid. The plan is to drive around and explore the North Island for a week before ferrying across to the South Island to live in Christ Church. His reasoning for this is that there has recently been a few earthquakes so there will probably be work for him there (like rebuilding things that fell down and stuff). He also says that we need to be involved in the two biggest things that are happening in NZ right now, one being the Rugby World Cup and the other being the earthquakes in Christ Church. In my opinion those are some pretty lame reasons for leaving when put next to the reasons there are for staying, but there is really nothing anyone can do. The part of daddy’s brain the listens to reason seems to be having some technical difficulties.

~ mia!!!
(Yes, that is a random picture that really has nothing to do with the blog. Do I care? Nopee! its a nice picture)