Days 1-4

Day 1 - 3: June 8 - June 11 (skipped June 9)

Peace out H-town.

Upon arrival in Queenstown (on June 10 before driving to Te Anau), walking off the plane onto the tarmac, we saw the Remarkables. They were truly remarkable. No pun intended. In case you don’t know, the Remarkables are the mountain range that separates Mordor and Gondor in The Lord of the Rings. We were pretty excited. Despite the beauty of New Zealand, the beginning of this trip was not too fun for me. One word to describe the first few days: barf. I got sick. In New Zealand. Thousands of miles away from home. I’ll spare you the details. But thankfully, I’m feeling almost 100% better today. I took the day off to rest (on June 11) when everyone else (except Ms. Bottoms who stayed back with me) went on a boat ride to Milford Sound. I was sad to miss it, but I probably would not have enjoyed it too much if I did go. Since most of my time was spent either sleeping of hugging a toilet bowl so far, I don’t have anything else too interesting to say.

Day 4: June 12

When I got up today I was so excited that I was actually alive. I was so ready for this sickness crap to be over with. We went into the common room of our hotel and uploaded and selected our #1 picture and our top 10 pictures of yesterday, ate breakfast and left on a walk around Lake Te Anau. While walking we snapped some pics of ducks, trees and other plants, etc. At the end of our walk we went to a bird conservatory and later on watched an amazing film on the Fiordland National Park. I really want to go on a helicopter and film places now.  Then we ate dinner and I was super lame and ordered the “USA Club Sandwich” off the menu. Adventuresome much? I enjoyed how laid back the day was. But we were all exhausted from walking and having to stay up late to pick and edit our top 10 was rough. I thought I was going to fall asleep on my keyboard. As soon as I was finished, I crashed so that I could get up to back and go back to Queenstown.