http://ashleysamantha.com/blog/

It is a big change, but I've decided that I'm going to change blogs. I love this one and am not going to delete it or anything. If I go on any cool trips and need somewhere to document them I may resurrect it but from now on what posting I do will be on my website blog.

I just thought I'd mention it, just in case anyone still wanted to follow my blog even though I am no longer in New Zealand.

Here is one last picture of my brother and I in front of the pawn shop from Pawn Stars. We were in Vegas for the Mountain West Conference Basketball Championship.

some catching up

I guess I'll finally post some of our pictures from when we hiked Mordor. I will not be posting any pictures from when we saw Hobbiton because they have rebuilt it all for The Hobbit movie and they made us sign waivers. Feel bad though. The pictures are awesome. We even danced in front of the party tree. More fun than expected.

You know what is harder than expected? Backpacking for four days. We had the option to do a one day hike, but thought it would be fun to go for four days. It was fun, but hard. We did not train. We just rolled off the beach and thought it would be no big deal. 100 km winds were kind of a big deal. Now that I've been away from it for long enough, I remember it being fun. But I did decide backpacking was something I could only do maybe once every two years.

MT. DOOM!!!! (look how happy we are. This is before it got hard. So innocent):





Sunrise view from one of the cabins. That cabin in the top of the mountains was hard for us to hike to after having already hiked the mountain once that day:



Emerald Lakes:

change of circumstances

My parents have been visiting for the week which has been fun (for me at least, maybe a little boring for Amalia). We toured around Raglan, Mount Maunganui, and the Coromandel for a few days. The semi-unexpected thing that happened is my Grandma died while they were here. She got really sick right before they came so they were going to cancel their trip but she was very adamant that they come. So I am flying back to the United States with them. I'm totally ok with that, I have had a really great holiday in New Zealand. Amalia is going to go see the South Island with this guy Keaton who is also visiting from Utah. So that is the new plan. I still need to do some posts about our Mordor hike but after that my posts will all be cold and snowy. We have talked about Amalia being a "guest blogger" so she can still post what she is doing on my blog but we haven't decided, so if you are just reading to check on Amalia, I'll let you know where to look next. Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures of my parents and I fishing on the ocean for snapper. We had the best fish fry ever last night.

I wish I had taken this picture

Josh Kessie sent me the link to this photo. Thank you, thank you, thank you to him. My blog has been kitten free for way to long.

And to Sarah and others who think it has been too long since I've posted, I am not dead. We have been gone on a 4-day backpacking hike across Mordor braving 100km wind gusts, rain, sun, huts, and orcs, but sadly no sharks in the streets (thanks to Sarah for that link).

La Niña

I read in the NZ Herald that the flooding in Australia was caused by La Niña. The same weather pattern has been sending us some tropical cyclones. New Zealand never gets really bad storms (according to the paper) but the past two weekends we at Waikawau Bay have been flooded in. Not bad flooded. Just bad enough that all the roads are closed and we can't leave. Last week we couldn't make it to church. This weekend Amalia and I had planned to drive back down to hike Mordor, but we are stuck again. The people in the campsite are stuck camping until the roads open. So at least we are stuck at a house with internet and television, and if worse came to worse, we have a freezer of ice cream novelties from the shop to eat.

speedy delivery

My parents are coming to visit New Zealand during the first week of February for five days of summertime fun. This is the first draft of their itinerary:


I am excited to see them and have been buying a few necessities online and having them delivered to their house for them to bring to me. I just got back from my 3-hour shift at the shop to an email from my brother with the subject line "I found these and I think I'll keep them" and these 12 attachments. It seems my new sunglasses have arrived:

Ring Shells

I've been collecting ring shells to make into necklaces to give away as souvenirs when I get home. I accidentally collected way more than I could possibly need (Waikawau is FULL of them!). Everyone says they will be hard to get through customs, so I just washed them in soap and bleach then strung them all together, but they look so cool all together like that maybe I should just keep them. Any advice on getting them through customs?