October 31, 2009 Reality Check

Happy Halloween everyone!!! We are a little ashamed to say we didn't dress up last night, but really I like to think of it that we were just adapting the Kiwi mentality...

We just checked into our first hostel (Jodie's first ever night in a hostel) and we realize now more then ever how spoiled we have been thanks to Jamie and his friends. They seriously blew us away with all their Kiwi hospitality and generosity... We seriously left a huge part of our heart in Wellington and NZ is already more than we could ever imagine... There's a part of us that are wondering why we ever plan to jump across the lake to Australia...But Here's to our first of many nights of hostels and backpacking!!!!!

For our last day yesterday, the weather warmed up and the wind died down just a bit. Jamie, Matt and Allie took us on a drive to see some gorgeous beaches (where Valena was the first of us to dip her foot in the ocean but that's it... haha.. not quite beach weather yet) and on the tour was also Peter Jackson's house and Miramar Studios (the Weta Cave) which is the home of all the genius artists behind designing Gimli, Golom, the orcs, Frodo, basically everything in LOTR and the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia and so many more!!!! Brittany was in her LOTR geek glory and the rest of us were equally amazed at everything we saw. We are all dying to watch LOTR again... Please feel free to send us a copy...

One of the reasons we stayed in Wellington was to experience the nightlife in town and it didn't disappoint! We got to tag-a-long to a triple 30th birthday at an amazing pub where we got to watch our first All-Blacks Rugby game where the All-Blacks walloped the wallabies over in Japan. Apparently, Japanese frown upon revealing tattoos in public and the All-Black players, who are typically heavily tattooed, were asked to cover up when they went swimming. Then, at the game the All-Blacks did their famous haka, but their shirts were on. We were earlier led to believe that hakas are usually performed shirtless. Our question is; Do the All-Blacks typically take off their shirt for their haka but just not in Japan?

The nightlife in Wellington is said to be the best in all of New Zealand, and Courtney St. in particular is quite famous for it's clubs. We were all amazed to find that the clubs were open till 6 a.m! Britt, Dan and Valena found this out first hand when we had our first all-nighter, getting home at 5 am with just enough time to warm up under the blankets before having to finish packing up, call a taxi and head off to start our bus tour. It was worth the lack of sleep because we finally convinced our N.Z friends to perform the haka for us!!!! The boys requested one thing first... We had to perform a Canadian Haka which, I am sure most of you know, does not exist but we were determined to see them do their haka so, we brilliantly improvised a quarter-cheer, quarter-anthem, lil bit of hula with hand-clamping threw in and BAM! we had our haka. The boys didn't seem impressed but if we go with the response of the other spectators we gathered, we did pretty darn good...