Mt. Cook Mt. Cook was definitely one of the more enjoyable and scenic parts of Tisa and I's voyage. To anyone who is not familiar with it, Mt. Cook (or Aoraki in Maori) is the tallest peak in New Zealand with an summit of 3,754 meters or 12,316 feet. The water in the river was frigid and the shaky suspension bridge that towered over it was something out of an Indiana Jones movie. To say the very least, I loved the experience.

Kujda's 30th Birthday Party After such a fantastic job of planning the 2007 Ski Breckenridge trip, I told Kujda that I would happily come into town for his upcoming 30th birthday party. I wound up staying with Dave in the Heights and the two of us headed over to Jason's apartment later that night. The party didn't turn out to be quite as large as anticipated but it was still a great time. Oddly enough, I would up seeing countless friends from high school, many of whom I'd lost touch with over the years.

Out with the Duval Street Girls As an honorary member of the Duval Street girls club, I was invited out to Cedar Street with all of the girls when Alison was in town. It was great to see Lacey, Betty, and of course Al once again.

Headed Back to Texas After over a week in New Jersey and New York, with my family, and with the Zaveskys, I had to head back to Texas. As I've done for years, I took a bunch of photos of the clouds and such from the airplane window.

Night Out in NYC 2006 Although this was my last night in New York City for the summer, it didn't make the outing any less amusing. We started off at a bar near the ABCs area. It was a little pricey, but good drinks. We next moved over to a bar that had some live music at it and also met up with some of Amy's friends from San Francisco. In an effort to meet some girls, one of them took us to a bar that resembled more of a dungeon. It was in a basement downstairs, no air conditioning, and thus was damp with the sweat of people. We quickly left that bar and went to a better one where we could do some dancing. I'm not particularly fond of dancing, but after as much alcohol as I'd consumed, it came naturally. After all was said and done, we finally had some pizza around four in the morning and then started the long trek back to Amy and Eric's apartment on the upper west side. By the time we stepped out of the subway tunnel, the sun had already started to come up. We only got a few hours of sleep, but it was worth it.

Matisyahu at Stubbs This was a fairly interesting outing. I met a young lady named Tracy Kossler and asked her if she'd like to go to the show with me. The opening act, Balkin Beat Box, was fantastic and Matisyahu rocked the house too. Tracy wound up seeing Lance Armstrong at the concert and got to spend a few minutes chatting with him. Apparently she used to nanny for his kids.

Mala Mala Island Although Tisa and I didn't have much money left at this point in our time abroad, we did manage to find enough cash to take a nice day trip to some of the smaller islands in Fiji. This one particular island known as Mala Mala couldn't have taken but ten minutes to walk around in it's entirety. The group we were with had plenty for us to drink, and we even got to participate in a Kava ceremony (Kava is a type of pepper root that, when taken in excess, tends to make one hallucinate). I'd have to say that one of my highlights was getting to play guitar for a number of the local Fijians as well as traveling with our hotel neighbor, and our new German friend, Stefanie Fischer (Steffi).

Midtown in Houston Just a fun night out on the town with some old friends from Houston. Charlie and Brooke met up with Putt, Lisa and I at some bar in the midtown area.

Paraparaumu with Jas Toor One of our flatmates from our Vogel Street flat was headed into Paraparaumu (a bit north of Wellington) so that he could pickup a car that someone had been holding for him. I'm not entirely sure of the details as to why the car was there in the first place, but I took the train from the Wellington station up to Paraparaumu with Jas. On the way back to our flat, we stopped off at some scenic overlooks and even grabbed some fish and chips at a local restaurant outside of Paraparaumu.

Te Papa Museum With the family in Wellington, one of the likely places to visit (which Tisa and I had visited months before) was the Te Papa museum (that means "Our Land" in Maori). The museum was as interesting as it was the first time we'd been there. A bunch of worldly sort of artifacts mixed in with a large amount of Maori heritage.