Great guy and hopefully great ice

Hello,

I think i have met the coolest guy ever. My great uncle dan, my grandma's brother, is such a neat guy. He is good to the core of his being. I stayed three nights at his house and i wish i could have stayed another week. He told me stories about moving to new zealand when he was 18 (he's almost 80 now, so thats a good deal of new zealand history), about how he was a dozer driver (it was great, we went to some lakes with his neighbors and as we were coming back, he said "i made that...and that too" when we were making sharp corners through mountains), but the best part by far was stories about when he was in the british army during wwII. Yeah, there were stories about fighting and shooting kind of things, but the good ones were ones like how he shot a deer for food and had to hide it under his bed during an inspection (he would have gotten in a lot of trouble for using amunition). He just really enjoys life.

I have to thank my stomach for being way stronger than i have ever seen it. For the people that really know me, i've got problems in cars sometimes, but the worst is a bus. But for some reason today, i was able to handle a 9 hour bus ride...while people were number 3ing all around me. Good work, stomach, good work.

Today i'm at franz joseph glacier, tomorrow is a full day hike on the ice; ice boots and all. There are some cool people from the UK here, pauline and hayley. Hopefully i'll meet up with them tonight. But for now, its free soup (hostels here are the best)

have a good day,

chad