Kia Ora!

I am here! And I already know that I am not going to leave. At least I will always have a place here in New Zealand. The people I am here with are beautiful. They all care deeply about the environment, and all got giddy when the ultra green hills rolled into view. I live in a blue beach house with two other girls. I open my door and am 30 minutes from the beach. I took a walk this morning to watch the sunrise (pictures soon), and everything about the moment was bliss. The air here smells even better than in bellingham. We have been going non stop since we got here, mostly orientation stuff, but we did take a drive to check out the local surroundings. We are about a 10 minute bike ride from a huge national park, and 10 minutes the other way from a cute little town that is home to the pub which I am sure we will frequent on the weekends. Today we got to learn some maori and I have decided that I love the language. We also learned two songs, one of which we are going to sing to the local Maori people when we visit them on monday. We are going into Thames tomorrow to do some shopping and take our swimming test, which is actually just a 'float' test to see if we can survive for a certain distance. And then this weekend we are going to take an overnight hike up into the mountains for our first 'tramping' experience. It is pretty cold around here, seeing as it is the end of winter. But it is absolutely beautiful and refreshing. It is going to be spring soon, and then we will begin to camp outside and spend almost every second of our days running around the country side. Ashton and I were talking about how weird it is to feel at home here, but still miss everything so much back at home. This place will become a part of my soul, and I think I will have a very very hard time leaving it.