Day Ten January 21, 2008 Monday

Today we woke up a little later than usual, seeing as we had nowhere we really needed to rush off to. I ended up waking up at about 8:45 in the morning and packing up my tent by myself because my tent-mates were on cooking duty. After I got done packing up my little campsite I headed over to the internet station and was able to talk to Alex on IM. It was so great to talk to him and so many other people the night before, I miss everyone, but I truly am having a blast. After we finally got breakfast around ten we loaded up the vans and drove the short distance to the Queen Charlotte Trek. I guess the trek is known world-wide and very long. We ended up only hiking about an hour up the trail and then back. The trek was beautiful and the lake below the trail had beautiful blue water and there was jungle and rainforest all around us. After we got back to the vans about two hours after we started we drove another hour back to Blenheim where we had church. While we were there we went to the grocery store and everyone bought a whole bunch of different New Zealand items. My van buddy Stephanie and I decided to get some foccacia bread that looked and smelled amazing! Finally we got back in the vans and drove another few hours south to the town of Kia Kora. The town is a little touristy, so we didn’t stop, but on the way there were some amazing beaches with thousands of seals sleeping on the rocks! It was really cool to see, like something straight from the Discovery channel. We also stopped on a black sand beach and played around a little as well. When we finally got to camp we set everything up and ate dinner, we had skipped lunch in the process of everything so everyone was starving! After dinner we went to the beach for a while, but there were huge waves and it was rocky and rainy, so we couldn’t really play ultimate Frisbee or go swimming. When we came back from the beach we decided to play three-minute murder, which is a hilarious charades game that you play when you have a huge group of people. After playing that for a while we all started to wind down and are getting ready to hit the sack. It is amazing how easy it is to go to bed at a decent time and wake up at a decent time when you fill your days with so much activity!