Where Am I Anyway?

Gooday from New Zealand! Can you guess how long it took to get here?  1 hour?? 1 day?? No… almost 2 DAYS (35 hours)!! We rode 4 airplanes and visited 5 airports to get here.  We started in Baltimore, Maryland, flew to Houston, Texas, flew to Los Angeles, California, flew to Auckland, New Zealand and then FINALLY flew to Christchurch, New Zealand.  Whew! It sure was tiring! In Auckland the runway was very close to the bay.  It took 13 hours to fly over the Pacific Ocean when we left the United States.

I'm almost at the bottom of the world!

New Zealand is below the equator in the Southern Hemisphere.  It is one of the closest pieces of land to Antarctica.  New Zealand is a country that is made of two islands, the North Island and the South Island. We are living on the South Island.  It has a smaller human population then the North Island. I say human because it also has a whole lot of sheep, whole lot of cows and quite a few working dogs.

New Zealand is also known as Aeotearoa (Aya-Taya-Roa) which is the Maori (Mowry) word for “Land of the Long White Cloud”  The Maori are the people that were native or here on the island first before the British settlers arrived from England in the 1800’s. The tribe that lives here on the South Island are known as the Ngai Tahu (Nigh-ta-hoo).

Posts below this one are from our trip in 2011.