Since we have now been persuaded to stay in Wellington for the 7s, and the hostel we were paying to camp at was relatively expensive, we decided to drive up to Alice's auntie's friend's house for a couple of nights and then drive back down on Friday. She told us to come any time after 3, and so it took a while to figure out a plan to do until then. We ended up buying our fancy dress outfits for the weekend. I brought a sailors hat to wear with my hooked uniform, and Alice is going to wear a black outfit accessorised with a pirate hat, sword, eye patch and hook.

Then we drove to the town Lliana lives, with the intention of going to an internet cafe, but then got distracted by the idea of going to the beach. We missed the beach we were aiming for, and so the next turnoff lead us to 'the most amazing chocolate factory' which you could look at through a glass panel and get free samples (I helped myself to 3- a kiwi fruit filled one, a honey one and a banana one). Alice brought Lliana's children some chocolate, and we both tried coconut milk ice cream (mine was raw chocolate flavour). I liked reading the '10 reasons chocolate is good for you' poster, and the poster that made the statements that chocolate comes from a bean which is a vegetable and sugar comes from a cane which is a vegetable and deduced from this that chocolate is therefore a vegetable.

We carried on driving towards the beach, and once we got there decided to go back to the original plan of a cafe with Wi-Fi. I tried to listen to Tiki Taane, a guy who played at Raggamuffin, on YouTube and so my allowance got used up pretty quickly.

From there we went to Lliana's house, although she was at work, and so it was Pete and their two children who we met at first. We did a load of washing, checked out the beach at the bottom of the garden and then received 'The Hobbit' lessons from Ellie and Martha, Lliana's 8 year old and 12 year old daughters, until it was time for a dinner of chilli, corn tortillas, rice and salad. Me and Alice tried Afghan biscuits for pudding, which we had seen in the supermarket, and wondered what they were (basically chocolate covered chocolate biscuits).

We all helped do the washing/ drying/ putting away- the children get money by a points system where they receive points in return for doing household tasks. A certain number of points get them $15. Pete told us about his job working for WWF. He was saying some interesting stuff like how it's hard to get some countries to see certain views because of cultural differences, like for example we aren't used to eating horse like they do in some places of the world, but maybe we should as they produce no methane like cows do, and so it would be better for the environment to rear more horses than other animals. I think Tesco should hire him as their lawyer.

After the washing was done, we settled down too watching The Hobbit. It made me wonder why I go up at 6.30 on Sunday to go to Hobbiton even more- definitely not my sort of film, although proves the landscape of New Zealand is very beautiful. It got a few chuckles out of me.

When the film finished, and the kids went to bed, we got to chat to Lliana a bit. I'm in awe of her will power as she was talking about how she went on a 10 day meditation boot camp where they were in silence for 10 days, and for the first 4 days had to sit in the same position and concentrate on feeling the breath on their upper lip when they exhale- again definitely not for me!