My first impressions of New Zealand when we got here was that it was absolutely beautiful. When walking through the city it was so much different than any city I’ve been to in the United States. I was a little nervous at first because it was raining when we got there and I had known it was supposed to be raining throughout our time being there and on the first day we did get rained on but other than that the weather was really beautiful. Overall, my first impressions of Auckland though were that it was a very clean city, and they really incorporated greenery throughout the city making it more tropical which is a beautiful touch. What I hope to gain from this experience is I want to know that I made the most of my experience abroad and that I utilized all of my time to the greatest extent. So far, I feel as if I have as our schedule, planned or not, has been pretty booked so far. I feel as if I’ve gotten to see a good amount of the part of the island we’ve seen so far, as we’ve been to the native grounds, Hobbiton, and a small group of us went to Cathedral cove, which may have been one of my favorite activities so far as I feel like I’ve never been to a beach in which the rainforest reaches the ocean. It was neat to get to see how the people are here as well, for the most part they were pretty nice to us even being such a big group. There were a fair number of similarities between New Zealand and the United States except here, things were definitely cheaper and of course comparatively to Texas, the landscape is so beautiful. I’ve had an amazing time in New Zealand and hope Australia will be just as great.
