in the sky

The views over New Zealand are stunning - the South Island especially is quite hilly! The terrain here does change with our earthquakes though! These are of the South Island, as I was heading north back to the (yep!) North Island. It's an hour fifty minute flight from Dunedin to Auckland! Pretty fast really!

The view on the other side of the plane is probably more stunning, as it would have looked over the Southern Alps area.  

 This area is known as the Marlborough Sounds which is right at the top of the South Island - it's quite stunning.

 We're now way back up the country, heading into Auckland, my city. Auckland is a harbour city - 2 harbours actually. It is also pretty narrow and at one point you can actually walk from one side of the country to the other side of the country! I believe that walk takes about 4 hours. One day I'll have to do it! We also have both white sand beaches (on the east coast of Auckland) and black sand beaches (on the West Coast of Auckland). Lots of people find this really weird! it's pretty cool seeing a black sand beach - but ouch on your feet in summer!! Auckland is New Zealand's largest city with around 1.7 million people. And one of the most multicultural. We have the largest Polynesian population in the world. Auckland has many, many volcanoes - if one ever erupts, we're probably all stuffed as nobody could get out of the city due to the normal daily gridlock that our streets/city is! Oh well.....

Home sweet home. I *love* travel, but I equally like being back at home!

Mish mash of life

Hooray for Semester two grades. I've worked hard(ish) again - this semester thankfully was not as hard as the first. The C+ maths grade - I cried. Just bloody relieved it was a pass.

 These scooters are all the thing... teen has been having fun. 600 of them dropped onto the streets this week.

 Backyard blossoms.

 Went to the uni library the other night to make my own poetry resource books for next year. I love school journals, especially the older ones.

 A day at school.

 More backyard blossoms.

 Visiting my mum :(

 It's a mess when I'm planning!

 More books bought last weekend....

 In the city for a night.

 Little Unity in High Street is awesome - an entire childrens'/young adult book shop!

 Moi.... Diwlai 2018!

 Love my Uniqlo Marrimekko dress!

 The teen won Player of the Year for his soccer team.

 Another school day... loving it! Fridays really are awesome!

 Awh.... from my associate teacher. She is fab!

 Youngest took part in his NCEA theatre night. He's doing drama a year early. It was fabulous!

I feel like I'm running around like a headless chook! Yay for the weekend!!

Temuka and Waimate - road trip continuing!

I adore small towns - even more so when they have historic buildings in them! (Auckland has a tendency to bulldoze anything and replace it with a shiny tower....).

These two are small towns in the South Island with an awful lot of charm.

I'm not sure I could ever live in a really small town (and I consider Auckland to be small... even though it's the largest city in New Zealand!), but i love visiting them.

(One day we'd probably like to get out of this city - it's a traffic nightmare - that's the thing that drives me crazy! Houses are over $1 million for a truly ordinary house now, and my kids will never be able to afford to buy here and renting is going much the same way... ).

These small towns had pocket money houses to me - full of charm and delight. I'm not sure if there are many jobs though, though you do make of a place what it is I believe! I'm willing to live anywhere really and give it a go!

Great little op shops in both places. Wide streets, few cars, few people....

Fantastic to spend a couple of hours wondering around, before getting back in the car to continue the journey further south! It's always good to support little townships and their independent businesses too!

And neat to see more of New Zealand! There are just a few small pockets I haven't visited now! 

 This is Waimate below - I was totally blown away and took an awful lot of photos! The town is well known for a drifting race - i think this might be the event of the year for the town!

 These old grain silo murals were amazing!

 There wasn't a lot of action in the town, but it did have a decent proper harberdashery shop with Liberty fabric which impressed me! Never right small towns off!