BUNGY JUMPING!

Half of our class jumped from the Auckland Harbour Bridge 40 metres...

It was amazing. Auckland looks so beautiful upside-down.

We're in Auckland right now. It is very fun.

I am going bungy jumping tomorrow. I am very excited.

Yesterday we saw a Maori celebration and ate a lot of food and saw some Maori dancing including the infamous HAKA!

**Need 4 postcards

So it's been about, oh, a day since getting to New Zealand. After a 3-hour flight to LA, a 3-hour layover, a 12 1/2-hour flight to Auckland, NZ, a 1-hour layover, a 1-hour flight to Christchurch, we were all excited to finally be here.

(Mom, watch "The Queen." I saw it on the plane and I know you'll really like it.)

Here are some highlights so far:

1. Seahawks won! Our LA layover was dedicated to dinner and watching almost the entirety (all but the first quarter or so) of the game. Sucks to be #9.
2. It's me plus fifteen females.

We're leaving tomorrow, and I'm superexcited.

Jessica Roberts brought up the fact that I'd be going not only to a different country, but the other side of the world. The Southern Hemisphere. That's pretty awesome.

Anyway, we're not arriving until January 8th or something to our final destination (we skip a day!) so I'll see you in the future.

"I think that wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience -- and laughter."

- Susan M. Watkins

I'm basically packed. Unpacked for break, repacked for New Zealand. All at once. I'm ready. I've been ready. Sunscreen, shorts, Chacos. The necessary ingredients to studying Children's Literature in The Land of the Kiwis (not the fruit, not the bird... well, the bird, but mainly the people. Native New Zealanders are called Kiwis).

It's an early afternoon flight, January 6th, and it's sixteen hours long. We (two female Professors, thirteen female classmates and me, the solo male) have a three or four hour stretch break, in Las Angeles, so that'll be nice(?). Maybe we can go explore the streets of LA and, I don't know, find a library or something class-y.