The past few days

The weekend finally arrived after 4 hard days of: TAL= rugby & HSR= relaxing, reading and sleeping. Hard work for all. On Saturday, HSR and TAL walked about 5km to the town centre to check out the deal with Rotorua. Lots of stuff to do! Many shops, stores, people and sights to see. We mainly tired to get a feel of town and ventured into toursity shops and stores. We had one mission... get hangers. So we found a massive store called "Warehouse" which is basically like a HUGE Kmart. It was funny cause HSR and TAL realized that they hadn't spent a single kiwi cent since they've been here! And spending 3 odd dollars on hangers was hard. But we got through the pain and got hangers along with an assortment of other goodies (shaving cream, water, and some food). We then went to another store called 'Pak'N'Sav'. Oh BOY! Another awesome Costco type store. Imagine a store created like a huge maze wall-to-wall in meat, fruit, candy, and other food commidities. We were a bit overwealhmed to say the least. After quickly getting through there (in 15 minutes), we started our trek back.
On Sunday, we started slow reading in bed until 10 or so and then making our way out for some breaky. Instead of hiking another 10km (~5 miles) we decided to take a short hike around the Springfield area (our neighborhood). We found a small hiking trail and started walking. To our surprise, we found ourselves among herds of sheep! While many kiwis just laughed at us, we thought it was kinda neat (except for avoiding the tiny poops EVERYWHERE). HSR was a bit sad cause they were scared of us. You gotta figure that a sheep's life is simple. Eat, sleep, and then these humans come and shave your body and take your childern, then eat, sleep, eat, sleep. So we gave them the benefit of the doubt and left them alone. Occasionally they baaed at us and pretty much stared.
Moving back in time... Friday we walked to the redwood forest. Rotorua is the center for forest research. So they have a huge timber forest of mainly redwoods. It is awesome! Huge, massive, giantic redwoods (like the ones in Northern Cali) everywhere. Trails and bike paths galore! Time to sign off.