I am 100% positive I speak English. I have done it my whole life. I have also grown up all over the Eastern seaboard and throughout the South. I consider myself to be quite a good speaker, and can almost always understand what people are saying. This trip has been a very interesting study in different speaking patterns and English dialects. Australians seem to like abbreviating everything, and we have learned different slang terms for very common parts of speech (like "breaky" for "breakfast"). One of our favorite New Zealand terms we've heard is what the Kiwis call shots, not the drink type, the vaccination type. These are simply called jabs. The advertising here is a lot less subtle than in the States. We learned this on a radio add for vaccinating your kids, "Just get them a jab! It is just that easy." Pretty funny stuff. On this trip, we've spent a lot of time in the car in order to maximize the things we saw. Today was no different in that respect, the direction we headed was, though. Up to this point, we had traveled South and East. Today, we went North to the Tāwharanui Regional Park and Marine Reserve. The good news is I was able to continue to push the minivan along the winding roads. Oh, New Zealand also does not really have guard rails. Makes for a super fun time for Melissa. The road we took today was so crooked she felt compelled to snap a photo of the GPS map.

This area of New Zealand is beautiful wine country, and we stopped at a nice winery for lunch. Elizabeth pointed out the fact we made this choice the day after she stared antibiotics, and thus was unable to join us in tasting the local wares. After lunch, we headed into the Marine Reserve.

The Tāwharanui Marine Reserve and Regional Park together form a sanctuary for native plants and animals, both on land and in the sea. It is a protected area, complete with a fence to keep out cats, possums, stoats, and dogs. The park is a peaceful place for recuperation, restoration, and recreation. Due to some scattered showers, we were essentially the only people there. I think I saw 4 or 5 other folks the whole time, including some road maintenance workers. We were able to see lots of birds including Little Weka, more Pukeko, and the endangered Dotterel. Since it was still daytime, we unfortunately did not see any wild Kiwi. The family walked on the beach, explored tide pools, collected shells (which we left there of course), and played around the interesting trees. It was so lovely we ended up canceling our dinner reservation in Auckland so we could spend more time in the park.

Once back in Auckland, it was another dinner at the home base and the start of the repacking process, since we only had one more day before the long trip back to Nashville.