Fernweh

So it's Monday, and I was supposed to do an interview for my study this morning. But it just seems to be jinxed, because after I had been sick on Friday, today the tape recorder didn't work… Oh well, time to catch up on email and journaling…

Despite not feeling well we left for Rotorua (the North Island's main tourist haunt) Friday evening, spending the night in a cabin by the lake, “enjoying” the sulphuric air. On Saturday Denise and Ross dropped me off at Whakarewarewa, the oldest thermal reserve with geysirs and hot mud pools, a Maori carving school and a Maori village for tourists. Despite all of this it was very interesting and I enjoyed myself a lot.

Then we headed to Matamata (where they filmed Hobbiton for the Lord of the Rings movies), only to find out that the tours to the field cost 50$ per person. That was just a bit much, so we decided to skip it, much to my regret. But we'll go to Wellington another weekend, and there I'll make up for my failing as a fan by going to all the places around there!
Instead we went to the coast to a beautiful beach (New Zealand isn't famous for its natural beauty for nothing), before heading over to spend the night with Denise's grandparents.

On Sunday we went to the North Island's other big tourist attraction, the Waitomo caves. That was really awesome – first we went to the Aranui caves, which were very impressive with their huge stalagtites and stalagmites (new words for little Ellie *g*), and then to the horribly touristy glowworm caves. But wow, were they awesome – the glowing worms on the cave's ceiling looked like stars and made you forget about the many people and bad guides (ours should have paid a fine for every time he said “folks” *g*)…

We weren't allowed to the pictures of the glowworm caves, because that disturbs the animals, but I did take a lot of pictures at Aranui, which I'll hopefully be able to share with you, together with the pictures from Rotorua and everywhere else. Ross said he'd try and upload them to this computer here, so maybe I can even share them with you before October. We'll see, I guess…

Okay, Denise and Ellie are back, so I need to get going. My stomach's growling, too, so back to family life!

Hope everyone reading this is doing fine – drop me a line to let me know! *hugs*

(Oh, and Michi – you can add Gosford Park, Riding in Cars with Boys, and Bend It Like Backham to our movie list. Most movies are horribly expensive, but these were on sale at Blockbusters. Oh, and you'll get The Two Towers in the mail any day now – amazon shipped it!)