>>And between the games and new years eve, you can pop across the tasman sea and visit New Zealand. Then you will have visited 2 dramatically different (but both great) countries in one go. -- Sarah ;)
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>Sarah,
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>Thanks for the invite. My wife, our six kids, and our two very large dogs will arrive on 2 October, 2000 ;)
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>Seriously, though, I'd love to visit New Zealand some day. I'd be interested to know how the two countries differ (I'm pretty ignorant about the area). Here in the US we tend to lump the two countries together. Maybe it's the flags...

Note our flag features bloodshot stars which means we know how to party harder!

We have climates too. NZ is a funny place where if you drive for an hour you find yourself in dramatically different landscape. The South Island tends to get all the tourist attention but we have places like Rotorua which are amazing. My sister went to yellowstone where they were going on about the geysers and she felt that Rotorua could beat it handsdown - not so good for the people who have them popping up under their houses though!

We have skiing too which is a bonus because it's pretty limited in the Sthn hemisphere if you don't want to get stuck in the Sth American Andes. Check out some of the pages including www.accessnz.co.nz which is a search engine I like.

Hope to see you sometime.

Sarah