April 1

On this day Laura and I headed south to Dunedin.  Our good friend Ed Sheeran was to play a show.  Laura’s other half didn’t want to attend the show so I purchased the ticket from him.  It was perfect since I got to spend some quality time with my girl!

Once we got into the city, we went straight to Baldwin Street which is supposedly the steepest street in the world.  I find this hard to believe compared to San Francisico streets, BUT I will say this street is very steep and gives you a good workout.  After Baldwin Street we grabbed some food and went back to a friends to get ready for the show.

Prior to going to the show, we had some time to tour around the city center and drink wine…  Classy Laura and Jenny went to a nearby alley and drank an entire bottle of (nice) red wine in five minutes.  We were sure drinking publicly, or at least an entire bottle of red wine, was frowned upon so we wanted to finish it quickly and stealthily hence the five minute alley detour.  After that, we were a little buzzed so we decided to walk around and head towards the glamorous Dunedin train station.  It’s New Zealand’s once busiest train stations out of the four stations it has.  It lost it’s steam (pun intended) after economic decline and reduced track infrastructure.  The only train that uses it’s tracks today is a tourist excursion train.  After the train station we walked around and viewed the Cadbury Chocolate Factory from afar and grabbed a couple more drinks.  By the time we were finished with our drinks, we were #readyforeddy.  Showtime ladies and gentlemen.

April 2

Surprisingly, Laura and I felt OK after all the drinks and wine.  Just tired.  It was a beautiful day so we got up and left to find some coffee and visit Tunnel Beach.

Tunnel Beach is special.  Why you ask?  Here is the story…  There once was a father who had a daughter whom he forbade to go to the cliffs by the ocean.  He built a tunnel through the rocks that led her directly and safely to the ocean instead.  She had a private beach all to herself!

If you look at Picture A, that’s where the girl was forbidden to go, Picture B is her private beach looking up at Picture A, and Picture C is me on Picture A.   You’re welcome for this math equation.

April 3

So Simon and Laura were pretty excited to get going on their adventure.  They were going to tour all around New Zealand for a couple weeks, then fly to Fiji and Vanuatu, and after fly to Australia where they would continue to work and eventually meet me in a few months.  Anyways, the week prior to leaving, they would do this goofy thing with their hands and fingers.  I have a video of them doing it.  I knew I was going to miss them, but I was looking forward to seeing them again in Australia.

April 5

Girls just want to have fun.  We did the random going out in Te Anau thing again… We hardly ever out.  The only time we would go out was when we were sitting at home, chatting after work, and someone would kiddingly mention The Ranch, and we would all look at one another… At that moment, someone would push the idea just a tiny bit further and a minute later we were in our rooms quickly getting ready.  We never went crazy, but it was always fun to do something random.

April 10

April 11

April 12

April 14

I am a thinker… Some might even say an overthinker.  For me, this means that I often think about my past, present, and future with similar thoughts of anxiousness, longing, and dreaming.  On April 14 at sometime in the afternoon, I put any feelings aside and took care of my benefit of traveling  (the views) and reflected for five minutes.  Today I knew that I would someday miss this exact view, but I had to believe how lucky I was to have the opportunity to take this picture.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  For some time I sought out pictures of New Zealand prior to making any moves, now all the pictures I saw on the internet were becoming my own.  How lucky I am.

April 15

April 16

April 25

April 28

Basically the staff house was everyone Fiordland Lodge employed so it was extremely rare to spend time with everyone at the same time during the day.  Today was a special occasion.  We all worked, but made it a point to get done early so we could go see a movie together and we did it.  The Avengers!  It was so much fun to have this day with these guys and the movie ended up being pretty good as well.  Both Tom and Raphi were really excited for this movie as they are nerds when it comes to the Avengers… Like me and Avatar.  I’m an Avanerd.

April 29

April 30