kaiora!

it's 9:45 pm on 26 november here in rotorua, new zealand. i guess it's thanksgiving night in the states tonight. so that would make the maori "hangi" traditional feast that we just returned from my thanksgiving dinner. or something like that.

we spent some time in auckland on tuesday and wednesday. it's a neat city that kind of reminds me of seattle, in that it seems rather young and full of energy, as well as having lots of pacific rim influence. we explored the downtown area of the city a bit, had some coffee up in the sky tower (kinda like the space needle except taller and with more stuff in it, plus there were people jumping off the sky tower), and went into the maritime museum to see some maori and white-people boats. we checked out a few art museums as well; some of the modern art we saw was pretty fantastic.

on wednesday, we took the ferry over to this little island full of artists and wineries. there was a neat little modern art museum there that also housed the town's movie theater and this great little music museum. the music museum was run by this cute old couple who gave us a tour of their collection of antique spinets, harpsichords, pianos, accordions, player pianos, organs, and harmonicas, and played them all for us. the performances alone were worth the NZ$3 price of admission. we then wandered down to the beach and hung out there until it started to rain, then took the ferry back to auckland.

thursday, we took in the view of auckland from atop "one tree hill," one of the many volcanic-deposit hills scattered about the town. then we drove up to the coromandel peninsula, stopping at a couple of beaches along the way. the beaches were just fantastic. one of them has an underground heat source -- people dig into the sand at low tide to make little hot tubs. the other beach we went to was a bit farther off the road, and accessible after about a 40 minute hike through rainforests and ferns and whatnot. the hike was beautiful, and the beach at the end was just amazing.

today we're in rotorua. we got a room for 2 nights so that we can spend tomorrow at the "agro-dome" (that's "agro" for "agricultural" as well as "aggressive," or so i gather) doing all sorts of crazy things. which means i'd better go to bed now. g'night.