Kaikoura, New Zealand...

What a unique and magical place! Greg and I went on a whale watching boat and saw 3 Sperm Whales and a pod of Dusky Dolphins. Then we wandered around the coast near the town and found seals, hermit crabs, star fish (like Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants), and the cutest little penguin!! I finally got to see one up close in the wild :) Here are some pictures of my adventures.

Animals of New Zealand

We've seen a lot of cool animals so far during our stay here! The bird with the large wing span is called an Albatross. They were flying around our boat when we took a cruise to a place called Doubtful Sound. We have found those seals on the cruise that were relaxing next to the Tasman Sea. Also, we've seen seals on the beach near the town of Dunedin. The funny looking bird on the ground is called a Kea, that liked to follow people around and get on top of cars :) There are more sheep than people in New Zealand, so we visited a sheep and deer farm. We got to watch the sheep being sheared so they can sell their wool. I haven't seen any penguins yet, but I hope I can later!

A hike to the top of Key Summit

We arrived in Te Anau which is right next to the Fiordland.  This is the area where Lord of the Rings was filmed.  It makes sense that movie directors would pick this place because it looks like we are on a different planet! 
Today we took a 2 hour drive to a place called Milford sound.  That was used in Lord of the Rings also.  There were tons of places to park your car and hike around.  We took a 1 and a half hour hike up to a lookout where we had a great view of the mountains!  Here are some pics from our journey!

Skyline Gondala

What a great view!  Greg and I took a gondala ride just outside of Queenstown.  We could see the whole town and surrounding areas.  There was a really fun racetrack that you could take a luge cart down, which is a small cart.  It was so fun, with sharp turns and little drop offs, that we rode down 6 times!

Just flew to Queenstown

We stepped off the plane in the southern town of Queenstown and were surrounded by enormous mountains!  The view from the plane was awesome.  The sun sets early here, at 5 or 6, so I'm looking forward to seeing the sites tomorrow.  I also included a picture of the rugby match we went to.

Auckland

Hey everyone! We are here in Auckland and loving it. The flight was 13 and a half hours and it took forever! It was worth it though. Auckland is a cool city with lots of pretty scenery. We've had a sports-filled weekend, with a soccer match and our first rugby game! Also, the food is really good. We've been eating good fish and something called meat pies. That probably sounds weird :) I have some good pictures from this weekend that I can upload later. I hope all of you are enjoying the summer!

New Zealand... Here we come!

Hey everyone! We are getting ready for another big trip when school is out and we could not be more excited for this one. I've been having so much fun planning this trip and researching all of the interesting places we'll get to see. New Zealand is going to be so beautiful!

The way this trip came about is that a few years ago, we hosted two guys from New Zealand, Matt and Kahn. They both loved Texas and especially the small town experience of Pampa! Since then, they have wanted us to visit them so we can experience their country. We couldn't be more thrilled to get to see them again and to explore the two islands that make up New Zealand!

Here is a world map to show especially my students where all of this is happening. Greg and I will be flying from Texas to Los Angeles, California. From there we will get on a plane straight to Auckland New Zealand.Here is a map of just New Zealand so you can see what towns we will be visiting.


To My Students: I hope all of you have a great summer! During my trip I am going to update this blog and let you know what we are up to. I will also be posting pictures of some of the things we've talked about, like penguins and the scenery of some movies you've seen. Feel free to ask questions on here if you'd like :)

Holiday Season

This year Greg and I went to Cedar Park for Thanksgiving. It was way too short, but we had a lot of fun with family and Katie hosted her first Thanksgiving meal. For Christmas, we just stayed in Pampa and some of the Easley family came to us. Greg and I were pretty lazy and had a lot of much needed relaxation. Now we are back in school and we've got 44 school days before Spring Break! But it's not like I'm counting or anything.


Greg with the kids :)
"Pardon me, would you mind passing the cranberry sauce?"



Tyler picked out this tree and being the Snoopy fan that I am, I kind of liked it too!

Across the Great Plains

Greg and I went on a great road trip to Kansas City, Missouri, last weekend. I really didn't know what to expect, but ended up loving it there. We stayed in a nice pedestrian-friendly part of the city and ate tons of good food! The main reason we went was to see one of our favorite musicians, Sufjan Stevens. Greg and I have been listening to him since around the time we met in college. He is one of my inspirations to keep working at the guitar, so it was a special trip for me.


Greg and I spent an afternoon at the Liberty Memorial and National World War 1 museum. We had a great view of the city.



The enormous tower commemorating the fallen soldiers of World War 1. This was built in 1921 after the war.



A glass bridge at the entrance of the museum brought my focus down to the thousands of poppies planted below. I found out later that each poppy represents 1,000 men who died during the war.




From the top of the tower.



Our concert was at a historic old theater that was built in the 1920's. I just learned that Bob Hope was one of the first acts there, before he was famous.



Sufjan Stevens!



This was about two hours after the concert was over. We hung around with about 20 people to get the chance to meet him. He finally came out for a 2:00am bike ride and we actually got a chance to chat with him and get this picture! And yes, I do realize we are a little crazy :)

A trip to the mountains

Right outside of Red River, NM, there is an awesome rock formation called the Palisades.





















We enjoyed this band, led by Dulcimer Dan. He played a lot of traditional instruments and explained the history of how they were brought out west.









I had to try horse shoes and calf roping... wasn't very good at either :)

A Week in South Padre

Everyone seemed to like this picture the best, so I thought I'd share it with you. Greg caught this the first night we were in South Padre. We went on a walk with Laura and had some fun trying to catch these.
My camera was fogging up, but I still think this is a cute picture of Dad, Greg and Luli playing in the sand.
One of my favorite things we got to see were all of the pelicans!
We got to go deep sea fishing, and even though I got pretty motion sick, it was still a fun experience. We caught a red snapper and had it for dinner that night!
Little Sofia just can't wait to eat crab legs like Erik did!

More Photos

This is the arena in Verona, Italy. The same type of things went on here as they did in the Colosseum in Rome.
This museum was inside of a castle in Verona. It had all sorts of examples of helmets, armor and weapons.
A beautiful castle in Lugano, Switzerland.


There were a lot of cool cars in Europe. I think I like that green one the best.

We're Home!

Well, we've been gone for a whole month and it feels pretty good to be back home in Texas. That was the best vacation that Greg and I have been on and we have so many fun memories! I'm going to keep this blog going so I can share a few more pictures from our trip and just because I've enjoyed blogging. We actually have a short vacation coming up next week with my family. We are all going to South Padre for a few days, so I will have one more vacation to share with you. Thanks for reading the blog and keeping up with me!