South Island!

We've been in school now for 6 weeks, about halfway, and now we're on "teaching recess."  It's a two week break from "teaching," but the teachers still have work; therefore, so do we.  I have two papers and a test right after the break, so I've been trying to get as much work done as I could before the end of this week.  My growing excitement didn't allow me to get much done, but I'm not too worried ... for now :) 
Tomorrow morning, we'll be heading up to Auckland for a couple days to officially complete our tour of the city.  We'll be going to a House of Shem concert, shark caging at Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World, and catching a ferry to Rangitoto Island and hiking up to the top.  We'll be staying with our friend Dani who's studying abroad from USF.  She's going to join us on our Auckland Adventures, so we're really excited!

Then we'll be catching a plane down to the Christchurch airport where the real adventure begins.  South Island is supposedly absolutely amazing, and I believe it!  Everywhere in New Zealand is amazing :)  Although, I was expecting to see a lot more sheep on the North Island, but I've heard that I'll definitely get my fair share of them on the South Island.  Yikes!
I've never been on a roadtrip before, but I've always wanted to.  Renting a campervan is really popular in NZ and surprisingly, the cheapest!  Logan did his homework on campervans- he found so many different companies, and everywhere we go, he points out someone driving by in one that he recognizes.  We had no problem finding options on different companies within a reasonable price range.  The problem we had was finding one that didn't have manual transmission.  Logan was convinced that he could learn to drive manual within a short amount of time, and I didn't doubt him.  But, there was another catch-  he had to learn how to drive manual WHILE learning to drive on the left side of the road!  A bit much? Yes.  So, he continued to do research and ended up finding the "perfect" campervan.  It was like it was made JUST for us.  It had everything we needed, automatic transmission, AND ended up being the cheapest!  Talk about a scoreeeee!  Another plus was the company was giving coupons and vouchers for some of the South Island attractions that we wanted to do!  Too good to be true? Sure hope not! 

We'll start off in Christchurch and then tour the island, basically! Wish us luck on our first roadtrip!  Hopefully, it's a success.  Either way, I'm sure I'll have lots of stories ... I always do :)

Miss you all & love you!  The time is flying by so fast.  I wish it would slow down.  But, it's natural to always want more of a good thing :)