Adventure of the Year

I think anyone that's followed this blog can agree that I've had some pretty epic adventures in the last 13 months since we moved here. But the one I'm about to share may have trumped them all :D

Last month my little brother, Oak, and I left on a weekend trip all by ourselves... to Tonga! I had to leave New Zealand to renew my driver's license, and Oak was just along for the ride. Danny had to miss out because he was practicing for a concerto concert the next week, and had a basketball tournament :/

Me, parked in the NZ temple parking lot for a 1hr nap halfway to the airport

We drove all night to get to the airport for our flight, and we knew once we got there that we'd be picked up by the family of some friends in our branch. But after that we had nothing planned, only adventure!  The hardest thing about posts like this is picking which pictures to share, but I've tried to narrow it down to some of the most unique and fun things we did :D

 We traveled by bus, hitch-hiking, and in the back of our host family's truck...

 Local rugby finals, it was a super good match!

   

We picked and ate wild coconuts :D

 Because we were staying with a local family, we actually spent a good portion of our time just hanging out at their street stand or meeting relatives and friends. I really appreciated being able to get a taste for the real Tonga, not the one on the travel guides.

Oak and I fashioned a chess set out of random rubbish and scratches on the asphalt :D

It went by so fast, I didn't want to go home! When we got home it was right back into school and life :P I spent the whole first day back shivering in my school uniform because it was so much colder here in NZ

Cheap Fun

During our school break in July we decided to explore a new section of New Zealand, Rotorua!
Rotorua is known for different things depending on who you ask. Tourists would tell you about the alpine slide, the "Zorb" (a big inflated hamster ball that you can roll down hills in), other various adrenaline activities, or the thermal pools and geysers. Most of my friends would focus on the forest full of world-famous mountain bike trails.
      
Any New Zealander you ask will tell you that Rotorua stinks. Yes, stinks. The whole area is so full of thermal pools, hot pots, geysers etc, that you can smell that rotten-egg-sulfury smell pretty much everywhere. Still, it's such an amazing place that people go anyway.

Although we did some of the classic things, many of the best moments of our trip weren't on the major attractions:

An awesome waterfall hike...

    

  

I took the pic on the right after climbing over a barbwire fence and a bunch of thistles to lay right on the edge of the falls :D it was soooo worth it!

 Playing volleyball every time we stopped anywhere...


Playing a lot of VERY competitive family Boggle :)

Getting up at 6:30am to watch Germany's soccer world cup win over Argentina in McDonald's :D

 

And many other random moments.

 

Sagie fell asleep in the overhead compartment of our van during a late night family card game :D