Never in the over a year of planning and saving for this trip, never did I think it would end like this. It still doesn't even feel real sometimes that we have to leave only a short month after being here. I don't want to sound ungrateful for the time I have had here, but making the decision to leave has been the hardest decision I've ever had to make, and my friends and I have shed many tears over the past week. Unfortunately, I will be leaving on Thursday (NZ ...

Right now its 10 pm on Sunday March 15. This weekend has been so far from the weekend that we had originally planned its crazy. I am very tired and ready for bed, but I wanted to sit down and write this right now to capture the true emotion of this situation. I didn't want to talk about Corona virus at all, but it seems completely unavoidable at this point because of how much it is affecting our time here. Until last Thursday, we had been keeping up with the Cor...

Today is Sunday, March 8th, and I'm writing this post at 7pm. Reflecting on this past week, there were a lot of ups and downs as this was the first week of going to classes and the true start of trying to get into a comfortable routine here. The main thing that got me through this week was thinking of all the plans we made for this weekend, and they didn't disappoint! On Saturday we got up early and headed to a tour of the Waitomo Caves. The tour started just wal...

Today we visited Hobbiton, and this trip has definitely been my favorite by far. The set is an area of about 12 acres in the middle of a 1,250 acre working beef and sheep farm. New Zealand is experiencing a drought right now, so the massive hills and fields were all brown and dead, but it was still so beautiful there. This movie set only makes up 1% of the farm surrounding it, and was part of the reason this location was chosen (complete seclusion). Another reaso...

I am writing this entry on Friday the 27th after just returning from our second bus trip in two days. These trips are really nice because the school provides the bus transportation for free (only during orientation), and they also provide someone to act as "tour guide" for whatever area we're checking out. Yesterday we ventured back into Hamilton, so we were dropped off in the city and basically had free reign to walk/see whatever we wanted, with the help of a f...