Shannon and I got back to the States on Friday and I've been back at work now for two days. It was so weird getting back to my old life but with Shannon a permanent in-person fixture now. Weird in a fantastically wonderful way, lol. Being able to interact with her in person instead of on camera is awesome! I was bad about not posting the account of my last trip so I took notes this time so I could write a good blog about it all. There's several days worth so it'll be several posts. I suppose I'll just start at the beginning.

My flight to New Zealand was tortuous! It was 13 hours long. I couldn't sleep at all and my tail bone hurt so bad. I was sitting by the window but there was another woman next to me who was about my size so we didn't give each other much room. I didn't want to drink too much because then I'd have to pee and crawling over the two people sitting between me and the aisle was a pain. So I was very dehydrated by the time I got there, lol. Two good things about the flight were they fed us pretty good food and the entertainment system is awesome. They have tons of movies and TV shows so I at least had a lot to occupy my time while my butt hurt. Once I landed, I had to wait about 45 minutes to get through customs because they only had about 10 agents for over 200 people. I got quizzed on why I was coming back so soon, lol. At the baggage carousel, I stood for 20 minutes waiting for my luggage only to then discover it was the wrong carousel, lol. I was really tired.

Shannon was waiting for me outside and it was so wonderful to see her. She'd been waiting for over an hour. Her flatmate had let her borrow her car so we took advantage of being mobile to go to Mt. Eden and take some pictures. It has a really pretty view of the city up there.

Back at the house, we just hung out for a while, napping and talking, until it was time to head in for Phantom of the Opera. Shannon had gotten seats just three rows from the stage! At the show in Seattle, we'd been way up in the mezzanine and I'd had a hard time hearing the words of the songs. At this show, we were so close I could hear everything. It was just amazing. Everything about it was just wonderful. We both had a really good time.

The next morning, we headed in to the university to meet up with a few of Shannon's classmates since they weren't going to make it to the party at the house on Saturday. We hung out with Geoff who's from the US and Steffan and Andreas who are both from Germany. They are all GIS students just like Shannon. We chatted with them for a while and then took the bus back to the house. We headed out for Bethell's Beach a bit after 6pm for the ceremony. The road out there is so curvy and the directions we had weren't the best. We got a bit lost and were about 10 minutes late getting out there. The woman who did the ceremony, Trude, has a bunch of cottages up on a bluff overlooking the beach. We were to meet her up at her house and then go down to the beach. When we got up there, her husband told us she had driven down to the beach thinking she had missed us. We ended up walking quite a ways down on this dirt path to try to meet up with her. When we did, she was a bit pissed that we were late. It was 7:30 by this time. It was a bit disconcerting that she was angry at us but she eventually got over it. Mostly she was just put out because she had another shindig going on at the cottages, she'd had to dash off and leave her husband to attend to those guests. She also had driven around for 20 minutes looking for us. She had been unsure what to wear because she'd not met us before and she had to handwrite on the papers when she normally types it all on there. So it was a bunch of little things added up to get her irritated. I probably would have been too. In hindsight, we should have left the house much earlier and met at her house a good half hour before the ceremony was supposed to start. But it all worked out. Once I started talking to her about how excited we were and she saw that we really had come all the way from the States just to have our ceremony on this beach, she was okay.

The ceremony itself was lovely. Shannon and I had created it from various sources a while back. We had Brendon, Dillie, and Graeme (her flatmates) out there with us as witnesses and to take pictures. The sun was going down over the ocean during the ceremony and it was spectacularly beautiful. The only thing that was a bit of a bummer was that the rings I had worked hard on for the last couple of months didn't fit either of us. Mine fits but is a bit too tight. Shannon's didn't fit at all. I had to put it on her pinky. We'll get them sized now that we're back in the US.

After the ceremony, we hung out on the beach for a while taking pictures and such. Shannon, Dillie, and I got our shoes and pants drenched by an errant wave from the incoming tide. I think I squealed the loudest, lol. After that, we hiked back up to the cars and Shannon and I headed to the hotel. We had booked a night at a swanky hotel down by the beach on the east side. When we got there, we were told that our room had been given away because they were double booked. They said we didn't book with a credit card even though we did. Oh well. They booked us a room at another hotel down the street for the same price so we headed down there. It was definitely not as swanky as the first place. Kind of the difference between a Hilton room and a Motel 6 room. But, it had a jacuzzi tub big enough to fit three people and a shower with four jets on the walls as well as the one overhead. :D Needless to say, we were in heaven. We decided it didn't much matter if the room was nicer or not. That bathroom made up for all of it. We drove down to a local pizza place and then sat in the jacuzzi tub for an hour and half eating pizza.

The next day, we actually got up at sunset so we could go see it on the beach. The new hotel we ended up in was even closer to the beach so another plus. It was really beautiful out there. The sand looked like pre-cooked oatmeal. It was so full of brown sand and crushed up shells. Really cool. They have the neatest varieties of sands here. After Shannon took a few photos, we headed back to the hotel to get ready to go on another excursion. We went back out to Bethell's Beach but instead of going to the actual beach, we walked inland a bit to Lake Wainamu. This was also where they did a lot of filming for Xena. There were a lot of lake scenes in the show. We hiked up the stream quite a bit before we finally hit the lake. The coolest feature out there though is the sand dunes. It's enormous. It is this huge area of sand dumped smack in the middle of green pastures and forest. It's quite bizarre. When you're up on top of the dune, you can't really see anything else except in the distance so it gives this real desert illusion. Very cool. They did some filming up there too for the desert scenes. We ended up doing more hiking than we expected before making it back to the car. Sand is a pain to walk in, lol. We overshot the car and ended up having to backtrack a bit to find it. That has turned into a theme for us, lol.

Back at the flat that night, we had a big party. It was the last week for Shannon's flatmates to all be living together since they are moving out too. It was fun but Shannon and I were exhausted so we pooped out early.

The next day, we took the ferry over to an island called Waiheke. It was about a 40 minute ride. We were going to do this hike that was supposed to be about two hours. Well, true to form, we took a wrong turn and ended up hiking for about four hours. The little part of the island we saw was spectacular. I was completely whipped by the time we made it back to the ferry. Shannon is in such better shape than I am.

There was one more day of hanging out and then we took off for South Island.