The last two weeks at college went pretty quickly and it was a case of just getting my head down and studying for the big final exam. It all went well and i passed without any drama's. I also qualified with a gold card for the annual fitness test.
The fitness test over here is a bit like an army assault course with loads of obstacles such as climbing through windows, Dragging a body, doing a tyre carry, climbing walls and fences and a run. It was good fun really and if you beat your target time by more than 30 seconds you get a gold card pass as you are considered as highly fit! My target time was 2:36 minutes. I managed to get round in 1:59 minutes, which was the 2nd best time in the group. Not bad for an old git!
The last night at the college was really nice as we had a formal dinner. The quality of the food was first class and we were treated really well. I left the college on the Thursday afternoon and drove up through the heart of the North Island to Taupo. I had a hotel booked for the night and i started to get a bit worried when i heard on the radio on the drive up that there was twenty centimetres of snow forecast on the road over the mountains at Tongariro national park!
I was glad i had the four wheel drive, as the snow was laying thickly on the road over the mountains. I got to Taupo after a five hour drive and when i booked in, the receptionist informed me that i had been lucky to get through as the mountain road had just been closed due to the snow! Taupo seemed like a very beautiful place and certainly somewhere we will be visiting in the future.
A view over Taupo
I headed up to Pukekohe on the Friday to pick up the keys to our new house. I had a week on my own before Hayley and Charlie would arrive on 26th October. Things did not start well when i found out our Furniture container had been moved onto another ship and was now nearly two weeks behind schedule. It was now going to land in Tauranga and get railed up to Auckland. This would mean that i was in the house for a week with no furniture at all! I picked up the keys to the house and headed up to find out what it looked like now that it was all finished. Unfortunately the house was not quite finished and i found that none of the locks worked, there were no blinds anywhere and the fence had been smashed over by a lorry delivering soil to our as yet unlandscaped garden. Great!
After a few choice words to the estate agent the blinds and locks were sorted and the garden was booked to be completed during the next week. I also managed to book us all into a holiday cottage (or bach as they are known here) in Clarks beach. This is a really quiet holiday village about half an hour from Pukekohe.
At 5:45am on 26th October i was sat in the arrivals terminal, waiting for Hayley and Charlie to arrive. We had been apart for twelve weeks, so it was great to be back together again. We spent the week chilling out and letting Hayley and Charlie recover from their jet lag. They also had the pleasure of being sat next to a screaming baby all the way from Los Angeles for twelve hours and thus getting no sleep!
Life's a Beach!
Charlie at the finish line after the freestyle race
Lunchtime entertainment!
One of the Nitro funny cars
Charlie with his new car!
Hayley with her Veggie nosh
Lord Muck!
A nice cold beer to wsh down the burgers
Overlooking a reservoir 
At the top of the ski Tow
Lots of nice snow!
