The Birthday Present

I have successfully turned 24, I think that may be a bit of a problem considering I still can't get over the fact that I ever turned 21...Oh the curse of time! I recently watched Bridget Jones and feel as though I should mimic her yearly summary's:

Age:24
Pounds lost:0
Pounds gained due to recent AUS/NZ excursion: 10
Number of boyfriends: 1
Number of prison stays: 0
Number of countries I have been in: 3
Number of personal items lost (aka stolen by Tirol): 5
Number of near death experiences: 1 (skydiving!)
Number of times Tirol has made a complete fool of herself which results in me and Hayley laughing hysterically: priceless!

I will soon be adding another near death experience to my list! Since Brian and Rosanna have had wind of my skydiving antics and my adventurous nature, they have decided to add another death defying feat to my resume. For my birthday present I am allowed to choose between two options, "there is no third option"-Brian. I can either jump off the Sky Tower or jump off the Harbor Bridge. Now when one first glances at the two the first instinct would be to chose the Sky Tower because it is much taller, but the Sky Tower is a tethered fall which means i will be jumping feet first and be in controlled fall the entire way down. The Harbor Bridge is an actual bungee jump head first. Now if I was thinking of going for a less dangerous option I might choose the Sky Tower, but if i really wanted to test my fear of heights and jumping off things the bridge might be a better option. So since I cannot decide for myself I am putting it to a vote. Majority wins. Choose my death! Now please consider every possible extreme. If my strapping were to break I would rather just be done with it than live as a vegetable. The Sky Tower would be a sure thing on putting me out of my misery, but the bridge could leave me alive...but not kicking. So think about it, choose wisely, and remember my life is in your hands!

http://www.skyjump.co.nz/
http://www.tikitouring.co.nz/auckland-bridge-bungy.htm

Harbor Bridge




Sky Tower

NZ/AUS TRIP!

So the past couple weeks I have been traveling around the pacific area. My parents were in Australia so I went over to spend a week with them and then we all planned to go trip around NZ South Island the following week. Looking back at the past couple of weeks, I must say the trip was a complete success...minus a couple bumps. I will try to summarize the best parts of our adventure.

The first week was spent in Melbourne which was really an amazing city. I have always heard it referred to as being home to the best food in the world so I did some taste testing. We went to a different place every night, the coolest one was a place called the Stone Grill. All you do is order a raw slab a meat and then they give it to you on a personal grilling stone cook your meat to perfection your own way. We also went to a place called Movida. This was famous for its Tappas and I have never tasted or seen food anywhere as creative and delicious. Japanese, Indian, and Italian were also must haves. Everything was perfect. I couldn't chose a favorite, you really can't pick just one. I am such a foodie and this was my paradise! Along with the excellent meals, we also heard the Wicked was playing and decided to try out luck at the lottery for tickets. I was thinking it would be much like the lottery in NY with hundreds of people, but apparently they only average about 50 entries so the chances were really really good. My mother won and we got little pins that said "I won Wicked lottery". So cute! The show was really really really good. I wasn't expecting it to be comparable to the NY one, but I was blown away. I also found it interesting that this Aussie cast put on American accents for the show. I must say that there was something funky with Fierro's face, some kind of scaring that probably would not have been noticeable from a distance, but from the front row it was a bit distracting. The next thing we did was the Great Ocean Road drive. This was a trip driving along the coast of Southeastern Australia. It was famous for being extremely scenic and also contained the 12 pillars of rocks called the Twelve Apostles. I was really excited for the drive and to see everything, but about an hour in i got a bit sick. The Great Ocean Road turned out to be the smallest windiest road known to man. A couple hours in I was on my death bed..or car seat. We finally made it to the twelve apostles and right when we parked I threw up. I was able to hold off all that time, but I failed. When we drove back to Melbourne we took a different route with straighter roads. All in all the week was great!











Now when we got to the airport my mother told me that when i travel with then that I don't need to worry about keeping track of anything because she or my dad always do it. So of course I instantly checked out of keeping track of things...Big mistake. We got a couple cute Aussie T-shirts and I gave the bag to my dad who put everything in the compartment above our seats on the plane. We were late for our connection to Auckland and were in a huge hurry to get off the plane. My dad grabbed the bags and we ran. It wasn't until we were in the next terminal that I realized the T-shirt's were left on the plane. We tried to send in a report or get them back but no one would help. We were not able to report it until 2 days later because Qantas was so difficult to deal with. I was a bit gutted cause I had spent a lot of time looking for the perfect T-shirt. So anyways, we had one night in Auckland and then straight on to Queenstown. The flight in was very very very bumpy. It also didn't help the we were scaling mountains getting a bit too close in my opinion. My parents have sworn never to fly into Queenstown again for fear of death. I thought it was a bit hilarious. Went drove to Milford Sound and Mt Cook and all through Lord of The Rings country. It was spectacular...more than that...so amazing! I took loads of pictures, but nothing was doing it justice. We didn't understand how a person would want to spend so much time at a lake or a mountain until we actually got there and saw it. We could have easily spent weeks at these places. My parents have been all over the world and have seen everything and it was nice to hear that they had never seen anything that compared to this.





































So now it is back to normal for 30 days and then I am off to Texas. I can't believe it is that close. I definitely know i will be coming back, there is still so much to do and see.