Auckland afternoon.

Today I took a ten hour long bus ride almost all the way across the North Island. Generally, it wouldn't take 10 hours to drive this distance, but we stopped in every single small town in the countryside. And there are a whole lot of small towns in this part of the world.

Only two more nights until I catch the long flight home. Feeling a little anxious. I knew I would, so I left all of my Christmas shopping to the very last minute. Hopefully I'll be able to distract myself for the day. I get a little grumpy trying to find my way around places like LAX, one of the busiest airports in the world, after being squished into an airplane seat for 14 hours and missing a night's worth of sleep. Even after 3 hours on a plane I can be pretty out of it. I'll try to take a before and after picture for you, but not promises I'm posting it.

O! And I found a fantastic souvenier for myself! One of the local clothing chains made a series of locally-designed made-in-NZ organic cotton t-shirts with proceeds going to the Make a Wish NZ Foundation. And one of the designs just happens to be based on the work of Ernst Haeckel, the biologist and artist who drew the prints I used in the header of this blog. Luckily, I found one in my size in the Wellington store because there isn't a store here in Auckland. I almost waited too. Pictures to come, soon!

Morning tea.

I flew into Wellington airport this morning. It was the most horrible flight I have ever been on. The plane was really tiny so all of the turbulence felt much worse than it actually was, I think. A lot of the airports in New Zealand are difficult to land at because of the crazy weather patterns and constantly changing winds, but Wellington is known to be the worst. The airport's slogan is Wild at Heart. It doesn't even say Welcome to Wellington when you land it just has a huge Wild at Heart sign. Also, the runway is out on a peninsula into the ocean, which passengers can't see out the side windows. This makes it feel like you are going to land on the water. And when the plane is jerking all around and blowing sideways you actually think you are going to crash into the water.

The pilot apologized about 5 times for the flight attendants not being able to come through the cabin and serve hot drinks. That was the least of my concerns. O, but Mom, don't be worried about me flying around on airplanes.

Lemon & Paeroa.

The thing about New Zealand is you can be just about anywhere doing just about anything, driving, hiking, strolling along, and you end up looking down into these valleys of rolling green hills. The fields are generally designed by sheep, so they aren't really square patchwork pieces on the landscape, they are tiers of ancient footpaths carefully balanced along ridges between dark green forests and golden yellow broome and gore (it's called something like that, at least). The clouds are bright white and thick and they sit at the tops of the hills. The sheep are absolutely everywhere like little cotton fluffs. You can see so far away that the sheep are very very small sometimes. The rivers are either so clear you can barely tell they're there, or opaque and turquoise, you'd never find the bottom. The family here laughed when one of the other girls asked why the water was so blue. But, I knew exactly what she meant. I've never seen anything like it either. And, if you're luckly, wheverer you are you'll be able to see the top of Mt. Cook, always with snow, or the ocean in the distance, grey, blue, doesn't matter, still so beautiful. It can be a perfect spring day, a rainy, foggy morning, or the water can be coming down in buckets, it doesn't even matter.

O, and I know I mentioned that I purchased three hanks of wool from the lovely farm I've been staying at. We all know I sort of don't tell the entire story, sometimes, maybe, when it comes to wool shopping. And at that time I had already planned on buying 2 more hanks, so really I had 5 from this place. And then I bought 5 more (I couldn't have done it without your encouragement, Chris....just kidding, nothing really has an effect on my consistent, constant, yarn-buying habits).

Tomorrow I fly back to windy Wellington and the North Island for a bit.

See you soon! Cass

p.s. L&P is my favourite Kiwi pop. It's delicious and Kiwi As. And "world famous in New Zealand since ages ago!"

Just booked my last flight!

YYZ-YVR
YVR-AKL-PER
PER-ASP
CNS-BNE-SYD
SYD-AKL
DUD-WLG
AKL-LAX-YYZ

That's where I went, and where I'll be going, just in airport codes. There have been many more stops in between!

November Day.

This morning I left Bondi Junction bright and early at 6:30 am. I caught my train to the International Airport. Sydney has fantastic public transport. It only took me about half an hour ot travel all the way from the eastern suburbs on the coast to the airport in the west. Plenty of time to go through customs, immigration, biosecurity, regular security (where I had nothing confiscated, for once), duty free, a million miles of airport, and spend my last ten Aussie dollars on tea and a muffin at Gloria Jeans (Australia's equivalent to Second Cup, I'd say. I used to always think there were just a lot of women's clothing stores around when people would mention it, but I've got it all figured out now, just in time to leave). Once I got through all of that, I boarded my Air NZ flight and headed across the ditch to New Zealand!

On the plane I watched 500 days of Summer. It was okay, but I wouldn't really recommend it. Maybe if you have a long flight and nothing better to do, try it out, but I ended up reading my travel guide for most of the flight (which was only three hours long, anyway). To eat, I was served a mini shepherd's pie with tomato sauce (pseudo-ketchup), a little salad of sweet potato, feta, sundried tomato, and orzo. That was nice. There was also a really tasty apricot cake for dessert. I wanted that lemon pop that they have everywhere (it's called Lift, but I couldn't remember the name) so I requested pop and the stewardess asked me what that was. The landing in Auckland was the worst flying experience I have had so far. It seemed to take so long for them to descend. And it was windy and rough. I distracted myself by looking out the window. As you land, you can see both coasts of NZ because it's so narrow at this part of the country. I thought that was really cool. I also felt so excited to be here because dry, red Australia was sort of making me miss Canada a bit and NZ looks so much like home.

At the Auckland airport I had to go through immigration, duty-free twice (I hate that because they just constantly squirt perfumes and it's so hard to breathe), customs, security, baggage claim, biohazard control (my boots needed to be cleaned properly and I saw a little sniffer beagle carrying a bag of brussel sprouts back to his security officer. That was so cute.), baggage x-ray, and finally out into the airport where my cousin, Jonathan, had been waiting for an hour. He said he'd never seen Auckland International so busy. It was absolutely packed for some reason.

We drove back to his townhouse and I met Liz and Oliver. Oliver is the cutest little thing. He has a sore tummy right now because he has reflux (his was born on September 14, so he can't really deal with these things). But, I rocked him for about an hour and he was so smiley and happy. Such a sweet little guy.

Once he was all ready to go and we had chatted for awhile, we all went out to a nearby village and had thai food. It was great. I was stuffed because Liz and Jonathan had also bought a bunch of Halloween treats, but nobody had come to their door. Trick or Treating isn't really a tradition over here, but it's starting to become more popular so they were hoping to get at least a few kids.

Tomorrow I'm going to hang out with Liz and Oliver and plan the rest of my trip. I'm not tired tonight because of the time difference, so I'm sure I'll sleep in a bit tomorrow. I'll let you know what I've planned once I figure it all out!