Wow I haven't written on here for ages!!

Where do I start.

On my last weekend off at the beginning of the month I went to Taupo with a group of the au pairs, it was a disaster!!! It was really hard work trying to work out how to pick everyone up and where from as we all live so far apart and in the middle of nowhere! Eventually it was sorted and I was picking 3 girls up. So Saturday morning I set off to get them and we got to Taupo around 11 the time we said we were meeting everyone.... an hour later the others arrived! We went to Burger Fuel for some lunch which was yummy. I love Burger Fuel. I had only met a few of the group before so didn't really know what everyone was like! After a while we decided to head to Huka Falls and do a 2 hour walk then once we'd finished we went in to a hot spring and chilled out for ages! It was so nice and warm. It started to rain though but felt nice to be in the hot water! We had to head back to the hostel as there was another girl there waiting for us. We stopped by the supermarket and we were going to cook pasta together for dinner but it sounded more hassle then it was worth as there were so many of us so we went to dominos instead!!

It took forever though to get everyone to decide when we were going to eat and what we were doing in the evening. I sat in the hostel bar and had a few drinks then some of us went to a bar to watch the Rugby and we'd told everyone where we were going and a few others popped in. Once the Rugby had finished we went back to the hostel, for some silly reason me and one other person were the only ones to have keys for the room and someone had mine so we couldn't get in and we only had one girls number and she wasn't very helpful in telling us where they were! We found them eventually and we ended up staying out until about 3!! Everyone went back together and a few of us were trying to sleep so I asked if they could turn the light off in one end of the room but it turned all the lights off! Then a little bit later I asked if they could all be a little quiet as they were talking so loud and we were trying to sleep! I got laughed at and talked about in German! I was really not very impressed at all! They talked about me a few times in German!! Eventually they left and one girl apologised to me about how rude they were! Out of 15 of us 11 were German!!

Needless to say I was rude back to them the next day well I wasn't rude I just didn't talk to them! ha ha Again it took all morning to decide what we were doing, we decided to head to the lake then 10 minutes later everyone decided they wanted to go home!! I was like it's my weekend off I want to make the most of it so my car stayed and walked around the town for a bit then headed off.

One thing I learnt this weekend was not to go away with them all again!! Taupo was great but has changed so much from when I was there 5 years ago!

I didn't really do much in between that weekend and this weekend that I just had off! Hunter and I did some baking. We made some really nice biscuits!

Every day this month Au Pair Link have done a photo competition every day and I have entered every day and not won... well that was until yesterday! We finally won! It was for a picture of Hunter hovering in his dinosaur onesie! The theme was dramatic play/fun costumes! We won a set of wooden number and alphabet blocks!

Well... This weekend I went to Rotorua for the weekend with Bianca. We went to do the Tough Gal Challenge! Lots of the other au pairs went too and Michelle and her family. Bianca and I went on Friday night and stayed in a guest house and then Saturday we met everyone at mcdonalds near the challenge. We got the challenge and I was feeling really excited but scared there were so many people! The first obstacle was a huge steep hill!! I was worn out straight away!! We went through muddy swamps which were really deep. We had put tape around a trainners and I realised why we needed to do it as I'm surprised I didn't lose my shoe!! There was a lot more running and hills involved than I imagined! We had to crawl through muddy metal tunnels, climb over walls then got higher, step through barbed wire, crawl under barbed wire, crawl under electric wires! I got shocked twice! There were paramedics staying by that obstabcle!! One of the muddy swamps was so cold it literally took my breath away and I was finding it hard to breathe! I thought I was going to have to quit! We didn't get given any water either and it was a 6k race! we had to run through a foresty bit and run up a really steep hill there I could see a queue of people behind me! ha ha

We had signed up to do 12k which was twice around the course but you had to complete it within an 1hr and 15 minutes to be able to go round again. Bianca was a lot faster than me and I kept telling her to carry on as I knew she wanted to do it again but she stayed with me. There is no way I could have done it again without water! Had we had water I probably would have been ok!

We only made it round the once but out of 59 people that only managed to do the one lap I came 21st! so I was really pleased with myself! I was covered in mud! We showered when we got back to the guest house and had a shower and my knickers were black!!!!! I had to throw them! My legs were covered in mud under my trousers too!!

We met everyone at a pub after then we went to Pizza Hut it was so good. The buffet had chips and ice cream factory included!! I was in heaven! I had a bit of a cough and sore throat after the race and the ice cream helped soothe it! Ha ha

We went to the bottle shop to get some drink and I found vodka mudshakes so I got some! I've missed them!!

In the evening we went to a bar called Lava. It was really good in there but full of Indian's and Mauri's! Bianca got kicked out so we had to leave early!!

On Sunday we got up and went to Nandos for breakfast! It was really nice although the service was pretty slow! We then went on the Gondola and luge! the luge was so much fun. I went really slow at first then I got really fast by the end and couldn't stop! It started to rain but luckily we were almost ready to leave anyway!

I had a really good weekend and can't wait for my next weekend off... Skiing!! woo hoo

I'm not sure if I mentioned I've started horse riding! I'm riding a horse called Otter who is about 16.2 he is one of Tessa friends horses and I can ride him whenever I like! I rode around the farm the first time then the next time did a loop on the road which was really good, we didn't see any cars it was so peaceful. There are grass verges that we can walk on and even a few good spots to trot and canter.