how i met my narcoleptic mother

greetings from New Zealand! what can i say (and i know i always do when i travel), but it's beautiful here. i almost feel the need to use expletives to make the "beautiful" that much better. so here, it's f-king beautiful here. i mean, fu-king, like the province in china. pretty there too ;)

it's now day 2 of our journey. we landed in Queenstown and with my mother's good sense and (poor) on-line booking skills, we managed to be staying at the "X-Base" hostel, the "x" being for X-tremely young. i can safely say that even I felt old there, and my mother seemed to take it all in stride. (sidebar- does putting the word "Adventure" in front of the sport make it that much more exciting? i mean, adventure jumping out of a plane-- don't really need the adjective, cause jumping out of a plane is pretty much enough for me to decide whether it's adventuresome or not. and no, i will not be...)

today, we drove to milford sound, and took a boat through the fiords, and although i'm not quite sure what the difference is between fiords, and mountains with rivers running through them (there is one, but i'm on vacation, so i'm refusing to learn anything!) they were pretty awesome. we saw real-life-in-the-wild penguins, dolphins and a seal. so cool! (ok seriously need to look into getting a thesaurus with more adjectives)

on our way back, we stopped and picked up some hitch-hikers. the thing is with hitch-hikers is that you can't really stop and NOT let them in the car, especially when it's freezing cold out and just about to get dark. oh, the guilt! so my mom's way of making sure they didn't kill us, was to ID them. yes that's right, she asked for their passports (or passaportes in Italian, as they were) and promised to give them back when we arrived. if they were going to kill us, i'm pretty sure us having their passports wasn't really going to stop them. but anyway, we let them in the car, and only then did we realize our mistake. they hadn't showered in the 20 days they had been hiking the south island. windows down, foot on the gas.

and apparently my mom has narcolepsy. we're on the plane, she asks me to order her some tea, i simply turn my head to get the tea from the flight attendant, and turn around-- she's passed out. same thing in the car, the boat, and at night. i hope it's not contagious or genetic.

okay, internet times up. some pictures to follow...

a bridge in singapore. i know it has no value except kinda looking cool. but that's what pictures are for, yes?

turtles on the island of kusu right off of singapore. worshipped and revered!
a sign in singapore i don't understand...maybe has something to do with colonialism and cows?


this is where we had the famous chili crab. somehow i didn't get a picture of the actual food, but the restaurant.
this is queenstown, which is right on a beautiful lake. actually this is the beautiful lake that queenstown is on. i'm feeling dizzy.

this was kind of cool, and i don't know why i had my camera with me in the bathroom. it was so cold that the water in the pipes froze. (did i mention it's winter here?)

this was at a train station on the way to milford sound, taken with a neat little camera trick i like to call, "put your camera on top of the car, and make it look like the mountains are being reflected off a pristine lake". except honestly, new zealand really doesn't need my help...


milford sound. i swear this is what it looks like in real life and that i didn't just scan a postcard.


dolphins! i wish i could post video...


waterfall up close. and personal. and cold.


dusk at the sound.