"They're singing, "Happy Birthday," You just wanna lay down and cry..." ~jonathan larson (tick, tick...boom!)

It just turned midnight here, so I'm officially 21 (well, I guess so, although it's not September 4th in the U.S. yet). I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow (or today I guess). Probably just work. I go back to school on Monday and I did nothing over the break. I said goodbye to my family awhile ago, and I miss them already. We celebrated my birthday tonight because their flight is early tomorrow morning so I won’t see them before they go. We had a great week, though. I want to try and write down everything we did, mostly for my own purposes (because I know I’ll forget and I want to remember). Perrine came with us on our vacation, and it was great to have her there. She’s my best friend here. I miss all my friends back home; everyone's back at Richmond now, and I wonder what I'm missing. To cheer myself up I'm recapping my week.
Saturday: We saw the All Blacks play South Africa in a rugby match. It was so much fun to watch, even if we all didn’t really understand everything. They do the wave here, except everyone throws beer cans in the air when it gets to them, and beer showers down over the crowd. It was gross, but sort of funny.
Sunday: We drove to Te Anau, a really cute little town. We stopped at the Lord of the Rings filming site for Fanghorn Forest. That night we went on a glowworm tour, which was cool. We took a boat inside a cave, and there were glowworms hanging from the ceiling. They looked like stars. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures, so you'll have to imagine it for yourself.
Monday: We took a ferry up Milford Sound. It was absolutely amazing. There are lots of Lord of the Rings filming sites there; I think they were Isengard, Rivendell, and some others that I don’t remember. We saw dolphins and seals and the most beautiful scenery.
Tuesday: We went to Queenstown, a beautiful town. I went bungy jumping, at the site of the first bungy jump ever, where it was invented. It was so much fun. I’m an adventurous person, I love doing stuff like that, but even I had butterflies as I looked over the edge before I jumped. It was scary. The jump was over the river that was used as the River Anduin in the Lord of the Rings. I asked to touch the water with my hands, but they miscalculated and I ended up being dunked from the waist up. And remember it’s winter here. The water was freezing, but I didn’t even feel it until after the jump. It was such an exhilarating experience. My mom and my brother jumped as well. My dad did paragliding instead.
Wednesday: Skiing! In August! On Brett’s 18th birthday. The snow wasn’t great. We’re all good skiers (we mostly stick to black diamonds; I’ve been skiing since I could walk) and there weren’t many good black diamond (expert) runs open. In the morning there was lots of ice and by afternoon it was mostly slush. But we skied a full day and it was still fun.
Thursday: Jet-boating up the Dart River, then funyaking down. The wind was incredibly strong and it blew dust on us the whole time. I’m still picking sand out of my ears. I had to close my eyes during most of the funyaking as I paddled. But it was absolutely beautiful. More Lord of the Rings sites there, and sites where they filmed the new The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe movie coming out in December. NZ is so amazingly beautiful, like nowhere else in the world, so it’s the perfect setting for those fantasy locations like Narnia.
Friday: Arrowtown then back to Dunedin. In Arrowtown we saw my favorite Lord of the Rings site, the Ford of Bruinen. That’s where Arwen (Liv Tyler) rode on horseback across the river carrying Frodo in the first film.
Saturday (today): the Otago Penninsula. We saw penguins! Yellow eyed penguins, the rarest kind in the world (only found here) and blue penguins, the smallest kind in the world. We got so incredibly close to them. We also saw seals.
Tomorrow I’ll post pictures. Now I’m tired.