Hm, its been 12 days since we came. Yay! Everything is going swell. The weather is crazy hot today, I hope travis doesn't get a sunburn..again. Living with Martha is great, the first day we were here we went out and bought ourselves a bunch of groceries so that we wouldn't have to eat Martha's and make her pay for the food. But, Martha used to run a Bed and Breakfast so I think that she really actually likes to feed and make people feel comfortable. Even though we bought our own groceries, we have had home-made meals from Martha everyday. Yesterday morning was a good ole Canadian breakfast; toast, bacon, eggs. It really was very good.
Anyway, travis has applied at Melbrook Resort. It is a fancy resort, with tennis courts, golf, swimming, and much more. The resort grounds are huge and so he is hoping to get a landscaping or driver position. It really is to bad, because trav was really looking forward to getting some guiding work to do before the season ends, and he now has to wait till November which is nine months away. He isn't happy about not being able to stay up to date with all of the techniques and information that he learned during his W.I.L.D. Course. It should all go well though.

Driving here is really different. We are on the right side of the car, and we drive on the left side of the road. Martha has let us drive her car, and travis is doing real good at driving. There are very many "round abouts, or traffic circles" here, when it is busy it can get quite confusing, but no accidents yet.
We have been looking for a vehicle today, NZ is definitley huge on selling cars privately, there are dozens of postings up everywhere. We just need to make sure that we pick one that is a good price and especially in good shape, and will not break down for a few years. I think tommorrow we will start to call people about there used cars.
Actually, tommorrow I am going with Martha to Invercargill, a city that is two and a half hours away. We are going to go looking for some clothing. Yay, shopping is always fun.
Travis is out Mountain Biking today again, he is really itching to go kayaking so he said he was going to go to this river to look for some good rapids. I feel sad for him because he doesn't have his kayak her,and can't practice on the rivers.
Martha also has four others that are staying with her in her house until this coming Friday, there is Jose, Patricia, Pedro and Junior. They all are from Brazil, and are really friendly. They play soccer, and also do Brazillian Jui-jitsu, so the guys like to hang with Travis, and me and Patricia like to do stuff too. We really haven't had a problem meeting new people here. The atmosphere in this area is really active, and people like to keep doing activities, so it isn't hard to go out and have fun.
C-ya. Sam.B.

New Zealand or bust...

Wow, we are actually in another country. It doesn't really seem as different as I thought it would be. I guess I am living loving and laughing still so that...that is good. Since we have arrived in New Zealand, I think if anything it has been an emotional rollercoaster ride. I find that we tried to think of how it would be before we left Canada, and yes we guessed quite accurately but, now that we have actually felt these various emotions, it is harder than we thought. You can only live in the moment though right?
Anyway, we left Edmonton at a 'blistering' or do I mean 'blizzarding' (LOL) -35C, or so. The flight to Los Angeles via Seattle was ok, your typically sit and wait game. I really can't remember, I was snoozing most of the time.
Los Angeles was good, we arrived in the night so not to much to see other than the millions of lights everywhere.
The next day we woke up nice and early to go to Universal Studios. The night before we booked a tour bus for a ride there, and on the way there we passed either Hilary Clinton, or that Obama guy, both who are running for the presidential election in the USA. Our bus driver said that he only had ever seen that much cop cars and limosines when somebody like the president or "runners-up" were inside. So that was neat to see.
Universal Studios was a blast, we went on the Universal Studios Tour, and were able to see where they create most of the movies in Hollywood. There were many different backdrops, and studios, that was definitely neat to see. Probably the best show that we were able to see was the "Waterworld" Show ( the Kevin Costner Movie) ...there was explosions, sea-doo's, and various stunts that the actors did. All of the actors were also from TV shows like CSI Miami, and others.
One of the more exciting parts to my day was doing a skydiving simulation. There is a place at the Universal Studios City walk, where you pay to be able to go into a 40 feet clear tunnel, that has a gigantic fan on the floor so you are able to be airbourne and pretty much skydive. That was such a blast! We have some funny pics of my cheeks (facial..lol) flappen around. So yeah, I loved that.
Then it was back to the airport..again.
The 13 hour flight to Auckland New Zealand was much better than what I thought it would be, it actually went by quite fast. Sleeping always does that.
I do think that the flight was definitely the moment when the big change of life hit me. I had a lot of sudden worries, and felt quite stressed. So before I went to sleep I prayed that God would take them away. My biggest worry I think was having doubts about meeting new people, and being able to phone someone when we needed direction or help. (Both me and trav have wonderful families who always have been a phone call or drive away, but not in this new situation. ) So, yes this was my biggest stress. But...God works in wonderful and mysterious ways....because within 20minutes of being at Auckland airport ...we met Martha. A fellow Christian, and a definite answer to prayer.
Martha was going through a tremendous amount of stress, she is from Queenstown, NZ, and the person that she was travelling with was postponed by the immigration officials, and she was told that he might have to immediately go back to Brazil. We were sitting at a coin/credit internet kiosk, and I had just used the internet and had like 15 minutes left. So Martha comes up and asks me to help her figure out how to get on this kiosk thing, so I just told her to forget about paying and just use the rest of my internet time. So she uses it, and finishes, then tells us what has happen to her. So a few minutes later, we both know eachothers stories of how we are there, and how we all are Christians. Anyway, we helped Martha out, and she offered us a place to stay at her brand new house in Queenstown. Later, her friend was let through to NZ, so another prayer was answered!
We knew that Queenstown was a huge tourism hub for NZ, and Travis would more than likely find work. So, we hitched another plane to Queenstown that afternoon. Arriving in Queenstown was wonderful, it is a town (actually a few together- spread out) that surrounds a lake, and is surrounded by mountains, and has +23 degree weather. We then found out that it would be a few days or a week until Martha could have us stay with her, so after an hour we found out that we could stay at Pinewood a hostel, which had a private room for us. So that was a relief.
So we stayed there for a week, we lived day to day for sure, we found that Queenstown is very expensive unless you know where to go. So, we knew that we needed to find proper accommodation and get to know more people.
Work for Trav, has definitely been the 'emotional' part of this journey. We called and emailed many people, and many of them took days to reply. So, trav def. was stressed out everytime he opened his email account to find nothing. Many times he has said sorry to me, for getting us into this situation, but I think that it is right where we need to be. This is making us rely on God more and more, and also more on eachother for support, and encouragement. I think when we are more settled and have things figured out, we will look back and think it definitely was worth it. Everything is already getting better for sure.

Anyway, I have this whole last week to catch up on, but I will do it in increments. So c-ya.
Oh, and I cannot forget the NZ goodbye ....Cheers Mates!