Visit from the Family

I'll keep this brief. The visit with my parents and Brittany was amazing. I was so glad to see them and had a lot of fun showing them my world.

They flew into Sydney and tried to see the city in the pouring rain. They caught the aquarium and a quick nap before flying into Christchurch.

After the airline lost their luggage, I picked them up and showed them a bit of Christchurch: University of Canterbury and my old flat at Ilam. Then we drove to Dunedin. On the way we saw:


Mazfield, NZ

Aviemore Dam

Elephant Rocks

Omarau Penguins

Moeraki Boulders

They met the flat and spent a few days in Dunedin. I had lab to go to so they saw Baldwin Street (steepest street in the world), the Botanical Gardens, and around campus. We went to St. Claire beach, and out to the Otago Peninsula. There we saw the Royal Albatross colony (where we actually saw an Albatross!) and Highcliff road.

The next day we took off down south for the Catlins with my friend Alex where get got to see the cool stuff Leener wanted to see:

Waterfalls

Caves

Coastlines

and other cool stuff

and we got back just in time for Taco Tuesday with the crew!

Britt came out with us to see the town (fail). Monday and Tuesday nights are totally dead. We ended up at a Karaoke bar both nights. Empty orchestra is the correct translation for our performance...

The next day we went to Queenstown, checking out the cool scenery on the way. We rode the gondola to the top to see the town at night, then ate at Fergburger and crashed in the hostel. The next day we took a coach bus to Milford Sound where we got on a scenic cruise of the fjord:

We drove to Aoraki late that night and stayed in a hostel. The next morning we went on a few short hikes to check out the glaciers and the mountains. Overcast say so we couldn't see Mt. Cook, but Tasmin glacier looked great:

We then drove to Tekapo to get food and saw the Church of the Good Shepherd and Lake Tekapo:

Then proceeded back to Christchurch Friday night. Britt wanted to get tattoos together, but with not a lot of planning time ended up bailing. I got the southern cross on my calf and my fern touched up.

We had dinner at the motel, and the next morning they took off.

The visit seemed so short, but we got A LOT in! I'm sure if you ask Kev he'll say we drove every inch of NZ.

I wish I could have shown them Mt. Cook in good weather, took my mom bungy jumping, and showed them the north end of the island, but it was so great to get what we got!

God rocks for giving them the opportunity to get out here. I'm so thankful.