First Adventures

Hello again!
Welcome back to the best use of your time!

The answer is, yes, Luke is still alive.

I have now been in New Zealand for three days, but it has felt like a week! We have managed to cram a ton of adventure into each day. But first, I will back up and recount my flight to Auckland a bit.
The flight was about 15 hours long, but the time passed by more quickly than I had anticipated. This may have been due to the fact that I slept for quite awhile. We were chasing the sun, but since we departed from Houston in the evening, it was actually dark out for the entirety of the trip. I also made some friends, both in the airport and on the plane. A couple from Nashua, NH recognized my Pawtuckaway State Park lanyard, which was cool because they had climbed there before. Another guy I talked to lived out at the end of Cape Cod, where he owns a restaurant and surfs... Kinda made me wonder what the heck I was doing with my life. Finally, I learned about how cool the life of an international flight attendant was, when I stuck up a conversation with one of them during take-off and landing. And that is just about as exciting as a 15 hour flight gets.

Now on the to fun stuff. Once the rest of my group had arrived at the airport and we had found our head honchos, we made our way to our first accommodation, the Kiwi International Hotel. There we had a crash course on learning each others' names and what to expect from the program. After some quick formalities, we set out to explore the city if Auckland, which is wicked cool. It was clean and energetic, and a cool mix of  cultures.

The next morning, we loaded up the van and set out for Rotorua, a more inland town. On the way, we saw a sheep shearing demonstration, which was absolutely hilarious, and I learned that sheep dogs will actually run across the backs of sheep to get to the leaders to motivate the whole herd. Cause nobody has time to run around the outside of a pack of 10,000 sheep, lets be real here. I'll put the video somewhere on the blog.
Then, we went to an animal conservatory for native endangered species, which pretty much includes every native bird in New Zealand. Endangered either because they cannot put up a fight to predators or because they aren't too bright. For example, the greatest enemy of the New Zealand pigeon is itself. This is because it loves to eat a particular fruit, which has an alcohol content far beyond what the bird can handle. Essentially, the bird would get itself wasted, fall out of a tree, and become fast food. Definitely not a great habit to pick up if you want to survive.
When we finally arrived in Rotorua, we had some time to explore this city too. The city is know for its natural hotsprings, but unfortunately can smell very strong of sulfer in some locations. We were able to go to a local geothermal park, home to one of the few remaining gsyer locations in the world.
I sit here writing, having just returned from zorbing. Now the process of zorbing is pretty scientific so bear with me. You hop in a giant plastic ball with some water and roll down a giant hill. Yup, that's about it. It was so fun, I would have kept riding it all day!
To close off the day, and my orientation. We will be attending a Maori welcome ritual. They are the native people of New Zealand, and they are honored to share their culure with guests. They are also going to prepare us a native meal, so I am looking forward to that.

Sorry this has been a long one. I haven't had much of a chance to sit down over the last couple days, but I'm sure once school starts, the posts will be a bit briefer.

I'll toss some pictures on a separate post.

Cheers!
Luke