This place is ROCKING (pun intended)

Well last night i had my first earthquake here last night at about 10:30. I was just about asleep when suddenly the bed shook a little and i just thought the cat had jumped up on it, but it didn't stop.  I couldn't figure out what was going on, and then everything started shaking like crazy! my dressers were wobbling against the wall and causing a huge noise.  So i jumped out of bed and ran down stairs as fast i could to find everyone downstairs.  It was a lot less intense downstairs then it was upstairs, but it was still a pretty good shake!  The whole thing lasted about 45 seconds, but it was very scary to have the whole ground just shaking beneath your feet.  They said it was a 7.0 magnitude quake about 30 miles south of the coast.  All my mates at school said it was the only one they had ever really felt, so i guess it was a good experience? Just not one i would want to go through again.  Well all that is over now though, and we are off to Aukland tomorrow since we are on school break for two weeks.  We will be in Aukland for until Monday, and then Monday night i'm going to stay at a friends house and early the next morning we are driving about 3 hours east to the center of the island for a snowboarding trip to Mt. Ruapehu.  I'm really looking forward to that, it will be heaps of fun. Well there isn't much else going on now, so i'll write about more later.