So we arrive in Queenstown at about 20.00 and we had arranged to stay with Seems friend Kat, who has moved to Queenstown from Sydney. So we got dropped off in the centre of the town and went to meet Kat at work, where she was just finishing. We got to her house and spent the evening just chatting and catching up. On the morning of the 4th July we looked out the window of Kat's house and the view was spectacular, the mountains and lake were amazing. We then had a long walk into town with a walk down a very steep hill. We then met some of the guys from our bus and pottered around the town. We then decided that we were going to go the ice hockey that evening so some of the guys came up to Kat's where we had dinner and drinks and then we went to the match at the ice rink. Our friend Jo who is on the bus with us has a travelling Christmas tree teddy called Coquino, he came to the hockey with us as well and we were then able to go into the locker room and take loads of photos of him with all the players. We then went to a bar called Winnies for after drinks and danced the night away!!

The next morning was a very lazy one we chilled at Kat's and then met the guys and went up to one of the ski mountains as the winter festival was finishing. It turned out to be a waste of time as the festival finished early and we missed it!! We then got down the mountain and went for dinner and the Cow restaurant, which was recommended to us by a Kiwi we met in Brisbane. The Pizza was lovely it was a shame though cos the service was pants. We then went to buy ski gloves as we were starting our lessons the following day.

We were up bright and early the next day to start our week of skiing, since we had only skied once before for a week around 12 years ago we were having some lessons. So we went to The Remarkables mountains which are meant to be good for beginners, got out skies, boots, poles and clothing and headed off for our first lesson. It went really well, the both of us were picking it up quite quickly and easily which was good and by the time our lesson finished we were confident enough to go by ourselves for a bit before lunch. We went on a bigger slope than se had been going on in the lesson but we managed it fine which was good. After lunch we had another lesson but it was a bit of a waste because we ended up waiting around a lot for some of the group who couldn't quite grasp doing some turns and we ended up on a smaller slope than the one we had been on by ourselves. It wasn't too bad though, and we were having fun.

The following day we had another lesson in the morning and we were now in group 3 having totally skipped group 2 because we were confident enough that we could go up chair lifts and go onto bigger green slopes (the easiest ones). That class was really good, we were both making progress and learning to do parallel skiing in between turns. We went down a few times by ourselves after lunch and then managed to blag our way onto another lesson which was good. In this lesson we were concentrating on the parallel skiing, in between and then around the turns. Our instructor that afternoon was a bit pants and we didn't think he was in the mood to be teaching. We went even higher up the mountain still on the green runs and were coming down really well. There were only five if us in that group as well which meant there wasn't too much hanging around. Our aim for the rest of the afternoon was to parallel ski all the way down with controlled speed. We got to this point called the water bowl which was the steepest part we have been down, and we were going to follow the instructor down making quite big turns, no-one wanted to go first so Sheens volunteered and started the descend. The next think that was happening was Seems was zooming down the hill travelling about 100 kmph screaming, it was the funniest thing as she thought she wasn't going to stop but managed to right at the bottom before the edge. We went back up the chair lift and the same thing pretty much happened except Seems managed to make one turn. Woohoo!!

After the four lessons we had we were free to go wherever we felt we were comfortable, so on the 8th July Seems friend Kat and her friend Luarna met us at The Remarkables and we went for some fun skiing, Seems was still just flying down the slopes but managed to stop when she needed too. The next day we decided to visit a different mountain Coronet Peak. After getting kitted out Kat and Lu said we should try our first blue run as it was as steep as the green runs at The Remarkables, so up the chair left we went and did the run fantastically!! We were very impressed with ourselves, but Sheens had been given small equipment, so she had to go and change her boots and skies. After that we went up again and came down slope by slope. As Kat and Lu were quite good they were always waiting at the bottom of each slope for us. So we got to quite a steep one and Sheens was going quite slow down one slope and was in the middling of turning right when a snowboarder clipped the back of her skies and she fell over falling on her right knee. Seems flew straight past her not realising that it was Sheens that had fallen over. So luckily Sheens got a couple of people to take her skies to the bottom of that slope and slid down to meet them. A very nice lady took her poles and made a path for her to slide down. Once at the bottom she tried to stand up and could but was in a lot of pain. She then realised she wouldn't be able to ski down so Kat and Lu went to the bottom and got the ski patrol to come up and help her. So about four men turned up to where we were and they checked Sheens over to check for trauma anywhere else apart from her right leg, they asked what happened and then got her in a body bag to escort her to the medical centre. She was taken down her first black run and had to wait for about hour and a half to be seen by the doctor. The doctor did a lot of prodding about to make sure everything was ok, nothing was broken but her right quad had been pulled, so it hurt when her leg was extended but not bent. She was told that she couldn't ski for the rest of the trip and to rest it as much as possible. Which was a bit of a bummer as we only had one day left but the sliver lining was that she wasn't too badly injured. Lets jus say we were not amused with the snowboarder!! We met a few guys we did our Fraser Island tour with in our hostel so sat chatting with them for a while. Its always nice to see people and reminisce.

On Friday the 10th July we did nothing!! It was great Sheens had to rest her leg so it was fine. Well the reason why she wanted to rest was because there was a Michael Jackson tribute night on at Winnies, so Kat and Lu met us after work and the guys we had been on the bus with met us and we all went and danced the night away to MJ, there were some great look-a-likes!! Sheens had found somewhere to perch for most of the night and then she did some one legged dancing!!

The next day we had to check out the hostel (we were going back to Kat for three nights), so we left out bags there for the day and pottered around the town for a bit, then met the guys from our bus and went up the Gondola and went luging. This was the last day the six of us were going to be spending together so we had a lovely day. We then went for an Indian meal as we are really missing home cooked food (and we cant really cook curry in a hostel) we took Kat and Lu as well for saying thanks for letting us stay with them.

We spent the next two days pretty much attached to the sofa only getting up to do laundry and eat food. It was nice to have a chill time before we set off again.