Land of the Long White Cloud

Going to New Zealand was a very surreal experience. When I first arrived, our group came to a small town in the bush (forest) and it felt almost as if I were in pre-historic times. The trees and leaves are so much bigger than I was used to coming from the United States. It was absolutely gorgeous. Over the course of a month we were able to travel all over the north and the south island, to large cities like Wellington and to small towns like Rotoorangi. The first portion of our trip 35 of us planted over 4 thousand native trees which was to help return the land to it's natural habitat and rebuild the bird population. The next two weeks was packed full of adventure, from 8 hours of glacier hiking to 8 hours of glow worm cave exploration. The lay-out of the islands makes it easy to be close to water and the weather year around is great, staying around 55° even in the winter. Of course if you travel from the north to the south island you will find it gets much colder the closer you get to the southern Alpe mountains which are covered in lush white show that is often used by snowboarders and skiers. We were given a chance to visit a Maori house and church and to perform and be preformed for. It was a great experience to learn the culture and meet with naive Maori people. I also really enjoyed our instructors and our leaders. They all had great energy and were a lot if fun.