After two years of discussion and dreaming, it’s official: we’re going to New Zealand. I booked the tickets this morning. We’ll be flying Air New Zealand, departing from Los Angeles on December 2nd, and arriving back stateside on December 18th. We’re still working out some of the specific details such as housing and the places we want to see.

It’s hard to find the words to express how excited I am. New Zealand is one of the countries that I’ve always wanted to visit. I plan on taking a lot of pictures, and keeping a daily journal of our travels (although available Internet access will delay timely posting). I know that there are a number of Internet Cafe’s through the larger cities, but I don’t know how often we’ll be nearby.

It’s exciting to know that an adventure is on the horizon. Granted, it’s nearly nine months away, but that doesn’t change the feeling of excitement at the thought .

Our final day before the trip was spent doing all of those bothersome last minute things, like running to various stores and picking up last minute items that we had forgotten (voltage converter and toiletries), cleaning out the refrigerator, doing homework, packing, etcetera.
While we were out, we met Annie at the Apple store where she finally bought herself an iBook. Annie went up north to Wisconsin for the Thanksgiving holiday and her laptop died on the trip home and she just couldnÂ’t face the thought of going to New Zealand without one. I guess all the taunting Dena and I had done about how much we liked our Apple notebooks finally rubbed off on her.
Laptop in hand, we headed back home to prepare for our journey. We were all feeling the tingle of excitement. We chattered all afternoon while giving Annie tips and tricks for her iBook. We spent frantic hours running around checking and double-checking our baggage.
By the time we were satisfied that we hadnÂ’t forgotten anything major it was nearly midnight, and the limo was due to pick us up four hours later. We all crashed for a short three-hour nap before the busy day awaiting us.