Janet's+diary+example


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Hi, this is my diary of my trip from Dunedin to Wellington to watch our Irish Rugby team play in the quarter-finals against their old foe Wales. At the moment we are in Dunedin right near the bottom of the south Island. Dunedin has a very Scottish feel to it and was first settled by the Scots. But I will introduce myself and my family. I am Maureen and my husband is Rory and I have 2 children Patrick 10 and Mairead 13. We come from Dublin which is the capital of Ireland. Our city has many stone buildings and it is very old. I am amazed at the colour of the houses in New Zealand.

1 October 2011 Today we set off on a sunny day to visit the famous albatrosses at **Taiaroa Head**. It is quite a windy spot on the Peninsula just out of Dunedin. We arrived soon after the opening time of 10 am and booked the family in to the Unique Taiaroa tour which was set at 75 mins. The started off by talking to us in the information centre and then we went to view from the observatory. Wow what a sight. The birds were taking off in to the wind and looked very majestic as they swooped in. They are really huge seagulls, but clumsy to take off and land. The breeding birds are just starting to arrive now and build their nests in time to lay their eggs in November. All was going really well until Patrick decided to go exploring by himself and slipped down a steep bank. Fortunately the Ranger was nearby and lowered a rope to the naughty boy and managed to pull him up. His father gave him a stern talking to as we were told not to go beyond the roped off area for the protection of the birds as well as us. Perhaps he doesn’t really get the New Zealanders accent yet!

At Taiaroa Head there are also underground tunnels, established over 100 years ago to counter the threat of invasion from Tsarist Russia. Britain was not happy with Russia over their invasion of Afghanistan. Some things never change and history certainly does seem to repeat itself!

We had lunch in the cafeteria there and headed off back into town to get ready to go to the game at the new Otago Stadium. Ireland are playing Italy and we have good front row seats. At 4 pm we park near the ground and have a walk of about 10 minutes. There is already a big queue to buy the extra tickets. There are lots of people dressed up and we all have Irish flags. Patrick and Mairead go to have their faces painted in our colours of green, white and orange.

More to come.