Greetings from Middle Earth

I have been having an amazing time in my homeland. I have forgotten how much it means to me and how relazed I feel when I am here.

My last few weeks have been fairly hectic (but absolutely amazing) which is why I have not been very good at keeping my blog uptodate.

In the time allowed on this internet site I will attempt to fill you in on some of the things that I have been doing.

My time here started off with a New Years party with about 25 of my friends who I have not seen in years. It was great. At 8am the next morning (after being away unitl 4am) Heather and I headed down to Rotorua where we did activities such as skyline and luge rides. The weather was overcast but I still managed to get a bit of colour. We also did the zorb ride which involves sitting in side a big plastic ball with water in it and being pushed down a 200m slope. It was awesome.

We then soaked for a while in the thermal pools before heading to Tauranga. While here wandered around the Mount and the beach. It was great. We then headed back up to Auckland.

We ventured into Auckland City on the Wednesday and wandered along Mission Bay and enjoyed some yummy fish n chips and L&P. I ran into an old school friend - I love small countries.
And then on the Friday Lorraine, Doug and I drove to Hamilton where we visited the factory shops (I'm well stocked now) and then went to visit some friends who unfortunately were not at home - oh well we still managed to have a look at their new house. On the way down we also munched on some yummy mussel fritters and I enjoyed the thickest of Kiwi thickshakes (my jaw is still recovering).

My original plan was to travel to Palmerston North on the Saturday and spend a week between there and Wellington. I soon discovered that I had way too much to do in Auckland so decided to do that part of the trip at the end. So on the Saturday Nathan (a friend from London) and I went to my favourite sports ground (Eden Park) to see NZ v Sri Lanka, let's just say it was a very short game.

On Sunday I spent the day with my little sister Nikki. We played mini golf (it turned out to be a hard fought out draw) and then travelled into Mission Bay where we sampled some Belgian beer before heading to the Sky City casino. Incidentally I won $12 on my first go - not bad really. We then met up with Alison and Leo (friends from South Africa) and Nathan and headed out for dinner at the Viaduct. It was great to see London friends in Auckland.