Catching up on the last few days...

We went back down to Ocean Grove on Monday. Jeanne's friends from the city came and met us there that evening. I read the Da Vinci Code that day and am planning to read Angels and Demons next. Dan Brown is coming out with another one in September too! On Tuesday I read the fourth Harry Potter..that is basically all I did, besides go on a run on the beach :) I am on the fifth now but have gotten a late start on it in preparation for the sixth movie coming out in two days!! Anyway, on Wednesday we drove back to Melbourne with Jeanne's friends that were visiting. Lana and I went to see Bruno that afternoon...oh man. It is vulgar! I would not let the boys go see it...it's super inappropriate! I was like covering my eyes for half of it haha. On Thursday morning we got up bright and early to catch our plane to Christchurch! On our way in the mountain views from the plane were amazing. We got to our hostel alright, and I spent the evening wandering around Christchurch by myself. That night I read The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime...I didn't like it very much. The next day was more wondering around in Christchurch. We didn't end up taking the cruise to Banks Penninsula because we liked the city so much on the first evening that we just wanted to explore. I had brunch at a cute little grunge cafe. That afternoon Lana and I went on the Christchurch gondola which gives you an amazing view of the city (for all these pictures see links following this post). That night we wandered around the city some more and ended up heading to bed early so we could get up at 7 for our bus to Dunedin. We set four alarms, just to make sure we would get up. Well....none of them went off. We woke up at 9:46, unfortunately. We made about 30 phone calls and inquiries through four different travel agents, including our hostel's front desk, and all of the rest of the transportation to Dunedin was booked through to Tuesday afternoon because all of the students at Otago Uni in Dunedin start class on Monday after a two week break and were heading home from Christchurch. We couldn't arrive on Tuesday because we were due to leave Dunedin on Tuesday morning for Queenstown and we had a lot of things we wanted to get done in Dunedin anyway so...we hitchhiked (sorry mama!) We took a bus to the edge of town to the road where all of the cars going to Dunedin would be headed, and took our chances. It is a lot harder to hitchhike here because there aren't freeways and really obvious places where people could pull over and pick you up, but we got picked up in about twenty minutes by three Dutch guys in a camper van. A lot less sketch than it sounds, I promise! They weren't going to the same place we were, but we got them to drop us about halfway between Chch and Dunedin. We stayed at a little hostel in that town, Timaru, and the owners of that hostel drove us to Dunedin in the morning! Once we got here we took a bus out the Otago Penninsula to Portobello to try and catch a bus to the Lanarch Castle, but it was too late. We explored the city center here in Dunedin for a bit and planned all of our activities for tomorrow. I'll post again tomorrow because we have a fun-filled day ahead of us! here are the links for the pictures...NZ: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=278211&id=759950467&l=85a0fba59b Aus: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=273982&id=759950467&l=ab33329ae2

love you guys!