Rotorua is smelly AND awesome!

Today was great!  All of us hung around today at the hotel room until around 2:30, then Brad drove my parents and I to the Polynesian Baths.  These are basically mineral pools that are heated by thermal activity under the city.  We went into the adult pools, so there were no little kids, and we could hang out in any of the seven pools.  Three of these pools were acidic and good for your bones and muscles, while the other four were alkaline and good for your skin.  The acidic ones were waaaay hotter and I could barely handle it!  So my parents and I went back to the coolest one of the alkaline pools after hanging out in the hot ones, and just hung out for an hour or something until Brad picked us up at 5:30.  We met Macy and Sean, this really cool couple from the New Plymouth area, and talked to them for about an hour.  Macy has a friend who's daughter lives in Christchurch, so I gave her my email.  Yay I have a contact down there now!  After the pools we went back to the hotel and were promptly picked up by this awesome guy who took us to the Hangi/Maori cultural experience for dinner.  All of that was great and we got to really learn about Maori culture, music, and food.  I tried doing the Poi dance, I suck, but I'll post the video later anyway.  Brad and my dad did the Haka, it was really funny but cool.  We all ate a lot of good food while visiting with some awesome people from Germany and New Zealand, then watched the cultural experience.  Oh and I finally got to try "hokey pokey" ice cream, which is seriously the best thing ever!  It's basically vanilla ice cream with little burnt sugar chunks, or something?  I'm not really sure but it's delicious!  Anyway, tomorrow we'll be leaving Rotorua after a nice, relaxing stay here, so I'll tell you all about our travels.  Best wishes for your week, and it's almost the weekend for you guys over there!  Much love....