A couple weeks ago the whole Radnitzer clan booked it out here to New Zealand to visit me and travel around for spring break. It was one of our more interesting family vacations that's for sure. All my staff friends here when they found out my family was coming were really stoked and couldn't wait to meet them. They might've been more excited for them to come than I was. Jokes, of course. It was a normal monday morning when I got the text that they had arrived on campus and I went out the parking lot to the strange sight of my whole family climbing out of a compact car here in New Zealand. A pale version of my family too. Let it be known, I was much tanner than Hannah. They immediately wanted to go visit Hobbiton 45 minutes away so we went there. It was pretty cool, we saw all the little houses, the garden, and Bag End. We also got a free drink at the Green Dragon pub at the end of the tour. Mostly it was cool for the pictures, I'll be honest I'm not a massive LotR fan. Read Fellowship of the Ring once, every reading session ended with me asleep on the couch. Anyway, after our Hobbiton adventure we went back to Tauranga and I spent a couple days there showing them around the town, went to the beach, a small hike up the Mount, and thrift shopping, so everyone was happy.
After that we took a mini road trip around the North Island for 5 days and first went up to a place called Coromandel peninsula, hiked and hung out on the beach. One night we tried to go to a hot water beach nearby, and if you don't know what that is, it's basically a hot spring under the sand that you can get to when the tide is low enough and you can dig your own personal hot spring bath. The time to go we were told was 2 hours on either side of low tide, so we show up exactly 2 hours before low tide with our little shovels we rented. There were about 40 other touristy people on the beach too and we're all running around the beach digging shallow holes, sticking our feet in the to see if it's hot then running off to another spot. We did end up finding a hot spot, but since we had come so early it was really close to the water so waves would keep washing over us as we would try to dig our family hot spring. Let me paint this picture for you: we have my mom and dad attempting to furiously dig a hole in between waves coming in, only to have what they've accomplished be washed out, my brother commenting on the strategies of the wall building of the other people around us and trying to get us all to follow them, me down on my hands and knees in the sand scooping sand to make a seawall, and my sister standing nearby saying how cold she is. After a while we just chalked it up to a good experience and left to get dinner.
After a caving adventure similar to the one I had done before here, though less intense, we dropped Hannah and Isaac off at the airport and I spent two days with my parents in a town called Rotorua. In Rotorua I saw a real live kiwi bird, which look hilarious when they run by the way, and went to a farm tour thing and saw a sheep show which my dad was pretty excited about because he wants to get a couple sheep to raise. Then while my mom was at a museum, my dad and I did a quad adventure thing, I originally wanted to do a dirt bike one but my dad said no, where we basically rode four wheelers through fields and forest, with mud and all, which was super fun. Probably my favorite part of the whole trip. All in all, it was a lot of fun to see my family, but also kind of trippy that they were all here in New Zealand. Though, at the end of the trip, I was really glad to be back at the base and live with all my friends again.
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