For all those who read this, just so you know, I'm not slacking on purpose right now with this blog thing. We ran out of internet (something I can't wait to not deal with when I'm back home!) therefore making it so we can't blog. I practically skipped blogging all of July too, but I am going to still blog about that when I get back home. So keep checking if you want to see more adventures that really happened a month ago! As for now, I can't wait to see you all soon!

New Zealand!

So we had one day to catch up in Sydney, then we were back to the airport again the next morning on our way to New Zealand. Luckily we got to bring a suitcase for this one!
Our hour long bus ride to the airport at like 5 in the morning. Way too many of these early-morning-airport trips.

We flew into Christchurch in New Zealand. This is the famous church right in the center of the town.

We stayed at this same motel 3 different times while in New Zealand and we loved it. It's called 'Hotel SO' and I wish I could put more pictures of it and explain it more because it really was SO cool, and cheap! But that would just get boring so if you want to know more, just ask me.

That night we ate at a chinese restaurant and Jayne got all this sick seafood that she cooked right there herself. I'm sure all you seafood lovers would have thought it was the greatest thing in the world, but it looked nasty to me! Brighton and I stuck to our usual sweet and sour chicken dish.

The next morning we took a 5 hour shuttle ride to Picton (at the top of the south island) where we were supposed to catch a ferry up to Wellington (the north island). This is a pretty view of Picton.

Unfortunately the swells on the ocean were worse than they've been in 50 years so our ferry was cancelled. We had to run find a motel in Picton for that night and book the next ferry tickets available for the next day. This is Kristi from Canada who Brighton befriended after we found out our ferry was cancelled. She stayed with us that night and she's way great!

The next morning we ran around trying to figure out flights and other options to get to the north island because the ferry's were still being cancelled so if ours was again, we wouldn't have been able to get on one for a few days. And we only had a few days so that wouldn't work! Apparently the luck was with us this day because the ferry we were scheduled for was the first one that got to go out. This picture is of us happily waiting to get on the ferry.

The ship we were on was like a cruise ship so you could walk around and they had cafe's and movies playing and all that fun stuff. The swells were still incredibly bad so it was really funny to walk around because everyone really was falling over from how bad the ship was rocking! A ton of people were getting sea sick and they had people walking around with ice and stuff to help. It was crazy! We went outside at the top of the ship to see the adventure, of course. It was so windy, as you can tell from my hair. I really had to hang on to the railing to stay up. It was so fun (and freezing) to play up there. When we were completely frozen we went back in and sat down and the sea sickness hit our dear little Jayne. Her face went white and it was not good. Luckily she was able to fall asleep so nothing too drastic happened.

When we got to Wellington, we rented a car and drove 3 hours to Wanganui, where we stayed with a family that Jayne's family met last time they were in New Zealand. This is Brett and Di.

The next day Di took us all around Wanganui. We went to a market and then to the beach where we saw someone she new who was out riding horses. We all took a turn riding this big guy for a second.

Then we went on a bush walk where we learned all about the New Zealand Kiwi bird. These big green hills full of sheep is what it looks like in so much of New Zealand that we saw.

The next day, Brett took us to the Wanganui museum.

Practicing my teaching skills. Jayne makes a great student! That night we watched the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team play the Wallabies, which is Australia's rugby team, at their house. It was a big game. They explained all the rules to rugby to us that night and I instantly became a fan of the sport!

We had a lot of fun with the family that weekend and were so sad to leave. This picture is the last night we were there, after playing some serious games of mafia! These are the 4 kids, Lochie, Angus, Chloe, and Bridget. They are all seriously so amazing at sports and everything they do and we swear they're going to be famous some day!

We drove back to Wellington and walked around there before catching the ferry back to Picton.

King James in Wellington.

We took the 3 hour ferry ride (after driving 3 hours in our car) then got right on the shuttle for a 5 hour ride back to Christchurch. Let's just say we got to see a lot of New Zealand! We always ended up on the crappy little van shuttles so I tried to focus on the beauty of New Zealand instead of the ride. We stayed in Christchurch that night then got up the next morning and took an 8 hour shuttle ride down to Queenstown. This picture is on the road right by our motel in Queenstown.

Brighton and Jayne decided it would be cool to go jump 440 feet with only a bungy attached to their feet. Crazy, I know. Ask them to see the video and they'll be happy to show you! It's sweet.

On the gondola on the way up to see a pretty view of Queenstown.

Queenstown. That mountain range in the back is called the Remarkables. It's the only other mountain range, along with the Rocky Mountains, that runs north and south. Pretty cool!

On Thursday, we went on this tour bus to Milford Sound. Jayne's face makes me laugh so hard in this picture! And it shows how pretty we look when we're traveling. As you can tell, we were freezing. It took us about 5 hours to get there, but we stopped a lot to look at things and take pictures so it wasn't bad. Not to mention that Bret from Flight of the Conchords was our tour guide! Okay, so it was just a look-a-like and sound-a-like, but that would have been cool if it was really him since we're slightly obsessed.

One of our stops. So pretty!

Snow in July? I know you're all jealous.

Milford Sound!

We took the ferry out to see everything. We were on it for 2 hours and it was 2 hours of pure beauty! We saw a lot of seals, but no dolphins or penguins like the group before us saw.

We took that tour bus back to Queenstown and spent a couple more days there. The whole time we were there, everyone kept telling us we needed to eat at 'Fergburger'. They forgot to mention that we should only get one burger for the 3 of us to share! They were ridiculously huge!

We had another 8 hour long shuttle ride back to Christchurch for our last night in New Zealand. It's a good thing this was our last shuttle ride because it was definitely the worst! I don't know if you could have got us on another one after this. Unfortunately we didn't snap a picture. It was insane at how crammed in there everyone was though. This is a picture of our last meal together (we really felt how we look, they gave us so much food!) because Brighton and I were flying back to Sydney early the next morning and Jayne was going up to Auckland and then back home to Utah. Sad!

Melbourne

Friday night (July 18th) we headed straight from the Gold Coast down to Melbourne. We didn't even fly in until after midnight so by the time we got to the hotel we were really tired. Laura flew in the next morning. She's a girl we met here in Sydney in our ward. She graduated from BYU and is here working for a year and really wanted to see Wicked so she came along with us.
The whole reason we went to Melbourne is to see the musical 'Wicked'. Jayne had just seen it in LA on her way out to Australia and Brighton and I have seen it in New York, but all 3 of us are slightly obsessed with it so of course we had to go! It's a new thing here in Australia, but I think it was just as good as the one I saw in New York. It was AMAZING!!

These smiles are fake in this picture because we were really all so depressed that it was over!

This is at a pancake restaurant that we ate at. We had way too much fun with the cool mirror on the way out. I think Laura was a little overwhelmed by us at this point? But who wouldn't be. We all knew it would happen despite our efforts.

Chillin in the hotel with our candy necklaces.

We walked around the Betanical Gardens, which was very beautiful of course.

If you know me, you know I sure do love spaghetti (as you can tell from me looking overly excited in this picture). It wasn't quite as good as my mom's, but still yummy.

Another picture of Jayne doing crazy random things. Brighton just loves when she does stuff like this to her. :) We were at the beach in this picture and it was freezing! Still really pretty though.

We love going to the top of the tallest buildings in every city. This is on top of the Eureka at night looking over Melbourne. We couldn't get a very good picture, but it's still so pretty.

The last day we were there we decided to go to a movie because it was too freezing to be outside. We paid the normal $13 that you have to pay to go to a movie anywhere in Australia. Such a rip off. We walked in and this is what it looked like. It was worse then the dollar theaters in Utah! We were so ticked! Luckily we had the whole theater to ourselves, which made it a little exciting. The chairs in my classrooms at school are more comfortable than these ones!

We flew back into Sydney early in the morning and this was the site from my window. It's such a pretty view of the Harbour Bridge and you can even see the Opera House right behind it.

We had that day (July 22) to do laundry and catch up on some sleep because we were leaving for New Zealand super early the next morning. That night our great friend Jess, who takes such good care of us, took us to Gavindas. It's a place in Sydney where you go eat a buffet with lots of yummy Indian food and then you go watch the movie that they have playing. This theater is a little different then the one we were at the night before in Melbourne. You actually have you own bed type thing to lie on while you watch the movie. I was really proud of myself for staying awake through the whole thing. I usually can't even stay awake standing through a movie! It was really fun and we just love hanging out with Jess!

The Gold Coast

Yes, I'm still alive. For the past 3 weeks we've been traveling, therefore leaving us with no computers or time to blog. (I'll be honest, I already wasn't very good at this whole blogging-on-time thing and this just made it a lot worse) So now that I have some time, hopefully there will be A LOT of blogging being done the next week or two. Sorry for the length.

We started our trip by going up to the Gold Coast in Australia. It's about an hour south of Brisbane and is an hour and a half flight from Sydney. We of course were trying to do everything the cheapest way so we didn't pay the extra money to check in baggage. And we were flying straight from the Gold Coast down to Melbourne (again trying to save money), which is at the bottom of Australia. This meant 2 different climates because the Gold Coast is hot and Melbourne is freezing this time of year! The point of all this is to explain that we fit 10 days worth of clothes for 2 different climates all into our own little backpacks that we could use as our carry-on. So the picture is showing all that 3 girls had for this 10 day trip. Pretty impressive?

On the airplane with our books, ready to go. We're big nerds and always have our books. Okay, so Brighton always has hers, but has never read it since we've been here. She has something against reading right now since that's all Jayne and I do any time we're sitting.
Our first car experience on the wrong side of the road. Jayne drove everytime we had a rental car for the whole 3 weeks. We only almost crashed a few times! Just kidding, it really would be so hard and Jayne did an amazing job at it. She's a natural!
Jayne knows a family in the Gold Coast that we stayed with so we drove right to their house. They're the greatest family ever and have such a nice house. We stayed there for 6 days and loved every second of it. This is Pauline Scallan in the picture with us.
All the theme parks are in the Gold Coast so we decided to go to one on Monday. We went to Warner Brothers Movie World. Loved it! It closed at 5 though (just like everything else does in Australia) so we got there right when it opened and stayed right till it closed. This is Brighton and Jayne posing in front of the Superman ride, which was definitely my favorite.
Is that Batman Jayne's eating lunch with? I think so...
Scared for the Batman ride.
One great thing about the Scallan family is they are obsessed with sports. Their favorite's of course are soccer, cricket, and rugby though, definitely not my most knowledgeable sports. Jayne was sure happy about it when she found out the family plays on an indoor soccer league every Monday night. So of course she played even when we found out she was the only girl for both teams. She did amazing though and even scored! She's our little soccer player :)

This is looking off the patio at the Scallan's home. Yes, that is a river in their backyard. It was so beautiful I could sit there and stare at it all day.

We had planned to take the boat (in their backyard) out one night and it ended up raining just at that time so they put the cover on it and we still went. We stayed completely dry and had a fun ride looking at all the million dollar homes surrounding us while eating biscuits and wine (water for us 3 of course)!

We made dinner and dessert for them on Tuesday night since they were feeding us so much. Our broccoli, chicken dish with crepes for dessert were a hit, but after the 5 or 6 hours of cooking and cleaning in the kitchen, we were ready to never do it again. It was actully pretty humorous!

This is Jayne in our room at the Scallan home. She's falling through the cracks of life? I'm not sure what that means either so you'll have to ask her. Just thought I'd throw in a few random pictures.

Ssurfers Paradise. This is the beach by their house.

What the IGA? All of you who lived in Strawberry Loop 12 years ago should appreciate this!

Thursday we drove to Byron Bay. No words or picture's can even describe it. We happened to be up on this hill by the lighthouse right at sunset. So pretty.

Byron Bay. We were completely surrounded by water and even saw a few whales out there.

Byron Bay also has the greatest little shopping area where we ate lunch and walked around. This town is full of hippie's, in real life! Peace.

The new Batman movie came out the night before so of course we had to go see it once we got home from Byron Bay. It came out a couple days earlier in Australia so we felt pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie.

Friday, the last day we were there, we spent the day at the beach again and also went to the top of the Q1 building. It's one of the tallest buildings in the world, or something like that. This picture kind of gives you an idea of what the Gold Coast is like. It's just never-ending beaches!