now starts our tour of the north island....
Day 9 - July 8th -- Auckland to Rotorua
woke up, lounged around the house, did all my laundry and headed out late afternoon to pick up our rental car. haha what a car, our radio didn't work and the gps was quite ancient but it was great! pretty much took our time getting to Rotorua and found our way to our base hostel of course. here's the thing about Rotorua, it is on top of a volcano so there is hot sulfur steam coming out of the ground everyone, and even creating some thermal pools in places. this makes everything smell pretty awful, all the time. its a cool thing but ew the smell was gross. we settled in, met our roomies who were from germany and china. we loved our roommate from China - Didi. haha he was great, couldn't understand him much but he came out with us (to the hostel bar) and had the time of his life. we all had a great night making our own fun!

Day 10 - July 9th -- Rotorua
today was a great day. slept in a little bit and had an easy lazy start. then danielle, macie and I had the boys drop us off at Paradise Valley, which is a wildlife park. best part about this park 1) you get to pet a lion cub! 2) you get to feed the animals 3) you get to watch lions being fed 4) its a beautiful walk with a river running through and a jungle like feel. we immediately found the lion cubs as this is what had attracted us here in the first place. loved loved loved it. there were twin girls and they were precious and so sweet! i just wanted to cuddle with them. then we made our way through the rest of the park, saw lots of birds and there were ducks everywhere. then we got to feed deer, pigs, goats, alpaca's (which are like lamas and some other animals). we also drank water fresh from a stream! then we went to hang out with the lions, the big lions. it was fun just sitting there watching them. there was one male and five females. they were being so lazy, just laying around soaking up the sun. although at one point (close to feeding time i guess) the male started roaring at us. how cool? i will say i fell in love with lions this day, and i felt like a little kid in awe at the zoo. they really are beautiful animals. i was sad to leave, had the best time hanging out with all the little creatures and walking through the beautiful forest.

how precious?!?!

 wallabies chillen.

alpaca haha what a funny guy.

 my favorite little duckling.

 roarrrrring.

 how beautiful are they?

was excited though to get back and have a brief rest before heading to the Maori village for our "Maori Experience." we got picked up on the bus by Sonny, our awesome bus driver and were told kind of the traditions and things we may see when we arrived. we were greeted in the traditional way that visitors were greeted when entering a village. basically men with lots of tattoos and weird outfits screaming a different language and doing things with their weapons. it was cool. we walked around the village and heard things about how they used to live, and certain traditions they had. best one -- when women are in labor their husband goes and gets a tattoo at the same time, but the thing about their tattoos is they used a bone thing and would tap all the way down into the bone so that your bone would forever be marked as well, ouch painful! but it was neat because women are so respected in their communities. we then saw a performance with lots of different songs and dance, i can't remember all of them but they were beautiful. and then we ate! we had tons and tons of food we were all dying at the end but it was all pretty tasty. it was a great night and i felt like i was able to get a glimpse into the Maori culture which is especially helpful with Maori language week coming up in school.