Hello once again!

Well, here I am - another load of time gone and rushing headlong into lots of busy stuff!

My final essay is done for the first year of TESSOL yayyyyy!

Still have reports to write though - booooooooo!

Anyhoo, last weekend was great - it was a bank holiday here last Monday and we made the most of the long weekend by visiting Taupo and its stupendous lake (which took us more than two hours to drive around)!

It's the biggest lake in the Southern Hemisphere apparently.

We left Friday night around 4 and arrived about 8 in the evening. After unloading our stuff into the hotel room, we made for the local pub (an English one incidentally) and partook of a lovely evening meal - yum! Kev was in heaven due to the fact that they had Boddingtons and Tetleys! Guess who drove back!

The next morning was very exciting because of this:


Yep that's us at the front of the boat riding out at top speed towards the Huka Falls!

It was a bit of a chilly morning and I had 5 layers of clothing on! Taupo is much cooler than Auckland.

I'm sat next to Dave the driver - who fell into his seat and slurred his words a lot when he first arrived!

The ride was COOL! We did 360 degree turns, narrowly missed trees and cliff faces and I nearly got a face full of surprised duck as we turned one corner! All I could see were two duck feet and panicking wings before I did what it was and ducked!

The next day was spent in Napier - home of many Art Deco buildings due to a wipe out of original buildings by first an earthquake and then a fire on the 3rd of February 1931 - the earthquake measured 7.8 on the richter scale.

http://www.artdeconapier.com/Art_Deco_Style_Buildings_28.aspx

See the above web site for piccies of some of those Art Deco buildings we saw!

The drive to Napier from Taupo was beautiful - lots of snow topped mountains and waterfalls and rivers. Kev says it was a bit like the scenery in Austria or Northern Germany. I did take lots of piccies - but we have a new computer and I need to reinstall the camera stuff etc - so I will sort it at some point folks!

The temperature was much higher in Napier too! We ate lunch outside in our t-shirts and shades and then spent the afternoon swimming in the outdoor pools trying not to get sunburnt! Lovely!

Well - it's down to earth with a bump right now and work, work, work!

However, we are going back to Taupo on the weekend of the the 17th Nov due to Kev leaving his watch behind by mistake and us having to pick it up and also because it's our 23rd wedding anniversary!

There's so much to see and do there - there's also lots of thermal activity there as in Rotorua - some of the hills we drove past around the lake had steam coming out of them! The Waikato River (where we rode the jet boat) was also very warm in parts too!

Well - just a quick one today - really gotta go now and plan for school - poo!

See ya!

x Sue