I've officially begun my Contiki tour group and we are quite the crowd. My roommate, Jasmine, is from Orange County, CA and a forensic accountant for Deloitte, so immediately we bonded over it. We went downstairs to meet the rest of the group, which included three different tours. Jasmine and I are the only people doing the 4 day tour, everyone else is doing a 19 day all inclusive tour of New Zealand or just finishing up said tour. So far I've met a dozen Aussies, 1 Swiss woman, 3 Londoners, 1 Holland woman, and 1 Brazilian man named Bruno. I'll explain Bruno in a moment. There is one other American who happens to be from Chicago. Her name is Kristin and she lives in Southport Corridor, steps away from my favorite bars. Literally across the world and meet someone who lives 3 blocks from my sister...of course. We chatted about home and high schools, it'll be nice to have someone in Chicago who has shared this experience with me. After our meet up, a group of us grabbed dinner and learned about each other. My Australian counterparts were telling me about all the places I needed to visit when I went to their respective home towns, which is awesome for me because local recommendations are the best recommendations. Afterwards we met up with more people group the group and went to a bar. We chatted and that's where we met Bruno. The 24 year old from Rio who loves photography, giving back massages, and is a total goofball....so obviously we're now best friends. After calling it an early night Jasmine and I went home and got ready to leave for our trip.
Our next stop was Paihia pronounced pie-here, and no I'm not joking and sadly I have yet to see any pie. We made a few stops between Auckland and Paihia which included a trip to a grocery store for snacks, eating my first meat pie, and being shamelessly mocked for calling 'tomato paste' ketchup. Sorry but that's not tomato paste and I refuse to call it as such. We also picked the activities to do while we are here. Sadly the parasailing got cancelled due to the wind, but I am to go dolphin searching and swimming
tomorrow morning and then an afternoon of kayaking. Pretty excited about both. Today instead of the parasailing, Jasmine and I went to Russell island which involved another ferry! We climbed around looking for the mysterious flagpole battle, but apparently headed in the complete wrong direction. My sense of direction has actually gotten worse on this trip.
We had a traditional dinner of fish and chips at a supper club before heading out to the bars. The group I've been hanging out with decided we were going to make our own holiday sorority. We are the Chi Omega Nus, NZ chapter. Our 'secret' handshake is motorboating because Laura from London had never heard of such a thing. She is now affectionally nicknamed Motorboat Laura. The other members are Chicago Kristin, Jasmine, and Kimbo who is from San Fransisco and was a KKG member....clearly we did the All I Wanna Be is A KKG rap. At the bar I met a few lovely people who were from Canada and we discussed the weather back home and my love of all things Canadian. This resulted in new friendships and shots of Jäger and cheersing to Chicago! I wish I could have captured the moment. We then went home since we had to get up at 7 to go dolphin searching.
