I survived camping! and oh btw...SURFING!!!!

Yup, I Sandra Dzielak camped on a beach for my last night of spring break and it wasn't too shabby. But a lot happened in between so i'll back track a bit.
Last time I updated we were in Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world. I wanted to go white water rafting or something there but we instead stayed a night and shopped lol...very exciting i know :P although i did stop by an art gallery and I really want to find more paintings by John Reed they were amazing. Can't wait to get home and break out my new paint set! :) Lots of fun stuff to do this summer for me time. Queenstown was also my first of many starbucks stops during our break...it just wasn't the same as home or at the Convent...i missed my french pressed yummy coffee lol. And Starbucks always was available at like 10 or 11 when we would drive into towns and by that time my head and my physiological needs were being denied haha. (Bridget, one of the students from last fall semester is visiting Lisa Bond and she explaind to me last night why we actally need coffee, its a physiological need! haha) Anyway...yea or i'd make instant crappy coffee at the camp site...either way i was denied goodness and i was quite unpleasant in the mornings haha.
The drive from Queenstown to Milford Sound was probably one of the best parts of the trip, it was BEAUTIFUL, so was the drive from Mt. Cook to Queenstown...so fine, one of the highlights, the drives were amazing. My absolute favorite part though was the miles of alpine trees. The forest was thick enough that the sunlight would break through the tops of the canopy onto sporadic trees and the shadows and different shards of light throughout the trees was just absolutely breathtaking to me. There were miles of it at a time but I would just sit and watch from the car window and my heart would beat really fast and I'd get all excited on the inside. And because of us driving fast being at the angle we were on the road at times it reminded me of Lord of the Rings when they are running through the forest, or Twilight. It was heart pounding for me, God was taking my breathe away and knows what i love and what catches my eye. So it was pretty wicked. I stopped a few times to take pictures but it just wasn't the same because the parts of the road you could pull off to weren't as dense and the light wasn't the same...lol..but i'll remember it it's engraved in my head :) wow ok i just took up a paragraph about trees :) lol
Milford Sound kayaking trip was beautiful! I've never really kayaked before so that was a first for me, and it was so relaxing! We saw a set of little waterfalls that were from Hobbit town, LotR, and two huge waterfalls that are the only two permanent waterfalls in Milford Sound cuz the others only come with ice and snow melting or rain. We got to ride under one of the waterfalls and it pushed us out and it was so powerful you could barely breathe and got soaked. Then we saw a little misty waterfall with beautiful rainbows and a baby seal :)
Then we drove to Dunedin where we saw the Larnich Castle, Cadbury factory and Baldwin street-steepest street in the world. At Larnich Castle i was honestly not amused at taking normal touristy pictures and i tried to find good shots and interesting ones around the grounds...it makes me sound snotty, but i've seen cool buildings traveling with my family to Germany or CA and another building was really cool, i liked it a lot, however taking 'normal' pictures wasn't appealing to me, so a few cool ones that i got i was pretty proud of :)
Cadbury factory! YUMBO AS! Amazing. The tour we couldn't take any pictures, because we tour the actual factory and you have hairnets and wash your hands and stuff. And as you go through each stage they give you a piece of chocolate to put in your baggy that is unique to NZ Cadbury candy :) And we saw the world's largest chocolate waterfall and they poured one ton or chocolate for us. and after we got to taste warm delicious melted chocolate in a little cup...ommmmyyy. It was proly the best chocolate i have ever tasted in my whole life..and i've had a lot of chocolate, but melted like that...omy yumbo! Yum :) heaven in a cup is what i called it :) lol
Baldwin Street was cool to walk up...but we took like 3 breaks haha. And then drove up it and it wasn't that exciting but for our camper van to do it it was exciting cuz it was so rickety.
So after Dundein we visited the Maeroki Boulders (spelling proly wrong) and it was sweet as! The rocks are round, just these random round boulders on a beach in all different spots and some are cracked open and others are just cracked and look like turtles, its just sweet :)
We stayed in Timaru that night, slept in the camper one last time and stayed up playing Farkle (dice game) and cards. Next morning we had to clean out our van and pack.
Last stop KAIKOURA! We took a bus home and Lisa picked us up from the bus stop and we had fish and chips on the beach :) We were going to make smores and I discovered that NZ doesn't have graham crackers, or large marshmallows available so i found cookies that were similar to graham crackers, and baby marshmallows that were green pink and white and then Cadbury chocolate :) We made a fire, smores and chatted and watched the stars. And Alyssa and I took some sweet as night shots spelling things out in the air with our headlamps and the stars as our backdrop :) First night camping, it wasn't too bad, like i said :) Alyssa and I laughed a lot before bed, and when we woke up at 6 for the sunrise we laughed SO much we were very tired and silly.
So basically the best road trip ever (also my only road trip haha) and I really really enjoyed the scenery and on this trip I got to see the beautiful side of New Zealand that I dreamed of seeing before the trip, but even more. So i'm excited to go home and print out my pictures, however i have a lot of editing to do cuz i have spots on my mirror inside and all my pictures have black dots in them...so yea lol. However i will work on it when i get home :)
Yup so i'm back in Kaikoura, survived. Need prayer, tired, lots on my mind, new class this week, and next week we leave for the West Coast for terrestrial ecology.
I'll try to post pictures on facebook sometime this week when i go into town!

OH OH OH!!!! I almost forgot!!! I went surfing after church yesterday!! Basically one of the most awesome things i've ever done! I went with Rhonda and Marty, two friends from New Life church, and Brian, Lisa their fam and Deb and her fam were out there as well. Rhonda taught me and I kinda learned as i went so it was a lot harder for me to do it that way instead of getting all the info first then a step by step as a i went, so i was like ...ohh..thats what i was supposed to be doing lol. First i suited up and used a long white foam board and we paddled out and sat out to wait for waves, it took me a little while to figure out how to balance and paddle correctly on the board, then sit on it, but i got it :) And the ocean is kinda scary to me, i've never been a fan of being in the waves, ever since i was little, but i definitly conquered that fear! haha. So basically God had his arms wrapped around me during this whole experience. I tried to catch my first wave and totally wiped out haha. Note: the waves were "3 feet" aka they are like 5 feet high at times, taller than a person, and it was high tide. (later i was told it wasn't the best conditions to be taught in...lol...yea) and after that it was really weird being tossed under the water, i never really did that before...well maybe when i was like 3 and almost drown...but since then i haven't gotten close to that experience for a reason, and when i went under i just had faith that the wave would evenetually fade out and i could swim to the surface, so i did. lol. i kinda laughed after i got on my board, my hair was all askew and i got on and paddled over to Rhonda and Marty lol. I sat and tried to catch some but they were flat on the side we were on, and then i caught one, not standing but i caught it and it was one of the BEST feelings ever, wow it was soo cool :) And i saw Rhonda and gave her a huge smile and thumbs up and CRASH lol, and i was fine, but then i didn't know what to do, the waves were coming at me and i was in between the white crashing waves and the rocky shore, so i kept getting pummled and it was to hard to swim back in, which i didn't really know how to do properly at that point, and i tried to get out of the water but kept getting knocked down, so i got out kinda, tried to get back in and i was praying like God please help me i don't know what to do and i was too tired to paddle, and then this big wave knocked me over off my feet, Rhonda said from shore she could see my feet above the water and I had this like outer body experience where i could picture what was happening to me like in a movie, where my board and my body was being tossed forward in a summer sault and i was so close to the shore at that point and the way i went forward i should have hit my head, it looked bad to me and i was in the experience and Rhonda said it looked really bad from the shore when she finally got back to it and she ran over and she thought i must have hit my head, and i stood up finally and i couldn't hear much cuz my ears had water in them and i had so much water in my stomach and lungs and she said i looked so disoriented she thought i must have hit my head, but i was just trying to recover from what happened, and God DEFINITLY had his hedge of protection around me because i wasn't injured in any way, my arms, legs, and thankfully my head were all fine! It was amazing! totally God.
After that i sat on shore with Rhonda and we waited for the swell to go down so i could get back in lol, but when we did it was just so big that i got really panicky and was so tired i couldn't paddle back in, so we went back to shore. Then come to find out, late, that it was high tide and the waves were narly for the other surfers. So i didn't feel so bad lol. When they all came in for lunch they said it was proly best i didn't go in until high tide was down because it was hard to learn in that kind of condition. So i sat and watched and loved it, i watched how people paddled in and how they caught the waves and etc. And I thanked God for protecting me and for the experience of hanging out with everyone etc. :) Brian said Sandy is a good surfer name ;) haha. I think so too. Rhonda and Marty said they'll take me out again this week when the surf isn't high tide and the little waves seem like nothing now! I'm ready bring it on!! :) I was so excited when i got back, i was on such a high, now i know why the guys come back from surfing and are all smiley and giddy :) haha. It's great :) I'm doing a lot of firsts here in NZ, kayaking, camping, real hiking, swimming with seals, and SURFINGG:)