It’s Been a While…

Hello friends, family, and strangers.


   I am writing to you from a little city called Rotorua. It is situated slightly inland from the Bay of Plenty. Rotorua is renowned as the heartland of the Maori culture. The city itself it situated among an array of lakes that all formed inside of the craters of extinct volcanoes. Lake Rotorua is the lake nearest where we are staying right now.  The volcano’s last eruption was some 240,000 years ago. But that hasn’t stopped this land from being extremely active. We have been told that every so often there will be a new eruption from the ground of boiling hot mud. This surfacing of mud creates a small mud pool, the texture of quicksand. Needless to say they tend to block any new mud formations off quickly so no one boils to death. Along with boiling mud sand there are also a bunch of beautiful hot lakes and rivers surrounding us. Imagine the geyser lakes of Yellowstone park, but all around you. There are small areas you can walk around these formations and let yourself be completely engulfed in breathing, moving earth.  We have decided the settle down in Rotorua for the next 3-4 months for a couple of reasons; I am really interested in learning more about the Maori culture/language and the city is just central enough to make transportation to other places easy/cheap.

      However,  we don’t need to worry about  taking buses or trains anymore. While walking around the block of the first hostel we stayed at we saw that a little red car for sale in the lot of a local auto repair shop. We had been talked about buying a car for a little while now. New Zealand is quite small but, there are a lot of things to see-and places to explore (Most of which wouldn’t be accessible by bus or train). Franny ( the granny) is  a 1989 Honda Concerto. At first, the idea of buying a car that is older than I am felt like it might be a bad choice. However, after some research, advice from a car savvy brother and a test drive we knew she was the one. Buying cars for one year of traveling is a lot different than buying cars for years of use back home. After a year we will be able to sell this car for as much, or more than what we bought it at( depending on what kind of upgrades happen to it along the way).

            But enough about cars, let’s talk about the trip thus far. We have been in New Zealand for nearly two months now.  The trip out here was the longest I have ever spent in transit-nearly 48 hours -2/3rd of which was spent scrunched up in a tiny seat swaying in and out of a melatonin haze.  Once we landed in Auckland the details get a bit vague for me. I know that we got a hostel room in Mount Eden, just outside Auckland centre. We slept for a couple days, waking only for hunger or bathrooms. After the 2-day- fugue  we finally started to adventure around the city.  Auckland isn’t huge, but it is quite hilly. Every corner we turned it was either a battle against gravity as we climbed the steep and endless hills to our hostel, or a fight for footing as we coreened down the other side after fresh rainfall.

      After Auckland we spent a week in Mount Maunganui -which is about 3 hours South East of Auckland- to  re unite with an old friend of mine from Australia. She is a Canadian lady who did her two years in Australia and then went straight to New Zealand and is now working on her residencey/citizenship.  She opened up her home to us and let us use her address to set up bank accounts so we could get an IRD number from the government.   After a week working out everything we needed to start our journey she drove us to Rotorua-where we still are.

   So many things have happened since we set foot in Rotorua, however I’ll make this post a little shorter. There truly is too much to explain in a single post about what has been going on since we left the states.  But I want to let all of you know that we are safe, ( no one has kidnapped us- they haven’t even tried…) we have been doing some fun things, and we are starting to settle into a life over here- however brief this chapter of the journey will be. Stay tuned for my pictures of Rangitoto island, Te Pua Quarry Park, Wai-o-Tapu, and The Buried Village. Our experience working in NZ, our current living situation, loads of prevalent history lessons as well as my battle with C-PTSD and ED while finding my footing in a new place. Don’t worry I will be more regular, I might even annoy.

Thank you for your patience
Thank you for being here
Thank you for listening.