Week in the sun and Oakhall reunion

After the Glenn road trips I used the time at Glenn's place in Palmy just to relax, read in the local park and use Glenn's bike to get round town. Played football Kiwi style, hockey and squash! Glenn does volunteer work for an organisation called Habitat for Humanity; basically they build houses for people who live in pretty bad living situations! So I had some free time in the day so I went and helped paint a few rooms.

At the weekend I headed down to Taupo ( pronounced toe-paw) with Glenn and Rochelle to our Oak Hall reunion! Oak Hall was a tour I went on in 2010 around Europe and I met a lot of Kiwis ( in fact Kiwis kind of dominated the tour) :) Anyway we had rented out a holiday home for the weekend 5 minutes walk from lake Taupo! On a good day it was absolutely beautiful! You could see Mount......! So for the Friday evening most people had arrived: David, Fiona and baby Emily ( the guys I stayed with in Auckland if you are following the rest of my blog), Miriam and Jaisha ( my next road trip companions) Mike, Rochelle, Glenn and myself! We had a BBQ and enjoyed catching up and reminiscing over our Oak Hall adventures. We played cards including Jungle Speed and Scum- which was our default card game on our Europe tour!
Next day it was a bit wet in the morning so most of us slept in apart from dave and Fiona who had a screaming baby to contend with and after a late breakfast two more Oak Hallers arrived: Hayden and Mike's other half Charlie!
It was great seeing everyone again and we played more Scum, chatted, ate lots of sweets (Minties and Pineapple Lumps) and when the sun came out in the afternoon a few of us kicked a ball around, I tried Kiwi dip (basically a less efficient way of eating cheese and onion crisps), then went for a wander down to the lake and then in the evening we had nachos and desserts.
Next day we went to Taupo hot springs which were these really hot but natural springs. These springs came out by the Waikato river and made it just the right temperature for a dip. Then me, Jaisha and Miriam had one more night before our my next kiwi road trip. Stay tuned!

Blitzy