Okay, so we were in Canada last episode, and so we're still in Canada now. Just back in Ontario. And...well...they're not going to Hawaii any more. No, they're going to a different kind of paradise. Or at least, what a former president called an "enchanted paradise".

Thanks for reviewing, OmniUIShaggyOverexaggerated (yes, and they're very different – Jemma's more girly and bubbly, while Amethyst is more serious and quieter), EeveeSweet777 and PrincessGumballWatterson777 (no, Jemma wasn't in them and it's all from her point of view, and besides, the first one would show absolutely nothing new).

When I got back to the airport in Ontario, I had a car waiting for me, that was meant to take me to the Total Drama Aftermath Studio. It was a short drive, but I felt nervous the whole time.

Waiting outside to greet me were two people, both unfamiliar. The woman looked sort of familiar, I guess – she was blonde, with a red dress and a fake smile. She was on some gossip show.

The guy I'd never seen before. He was about my age and very cute. His open shirt showed exactly how toned he was, and he had blue eyes and blonde hair, along with a wide grin that lit his whole face up. I liked him instantly.

"So you're Jemma, huh?" The guy said, grinning at me. "I'm Geoff, co-host of the Aftermath show."

I smiled shyly. "I've heard about you from Bridgette and some of the others. Are they here too?"

"Of course!" Geoff said. "Come on in. All of our Season One and Two contestants are with us."

"Ahem." The woman interrupted. She beamed her fake smile at me. "Hi, Jemma, I'm Blainley Stacey-"

"She doesn't need your full introduction." Geoff hissed at her, dropping his smile for a moment. "Anyway, now we don't need a roving reporter, the producers said you're fired as soon as Bridge gets back." He turned back to me. "Come on in! We've got a room where you can put all your stuff, and then you can come hang with the rest of us."

The acceptance letter I'd been sent had said I was allowed to bring an extra outfit that would stay in the studio until I lost, so I had that with me. It was spring, but still a bit cold, so I'd chosen skinny black jeans and a red FREE HUGS T-shirt. I even let my hair loose before I went to see everyone else, even though I knew I'd have to change back into my old outfit and braid my hair for the finale and Aftermath.

I felt a little bit like an outsider again when I first came into the room with all the others. There were several people I didn't recognize, and all of them seemed to know each other. The people I didn't know consisted of two girls with their hair in pigtails and dressed the same (despite one being Twiggy-thin and tanned, and the other being fair and overweight), a smaller girl with a mouse side ponytail, a scowling muscular girl, standing to the side (although Izzy was talking to her rapidly), a really really hot guy with blue eyes who immediately dazzled me for a second, and an even cuter guy with green eyes and a laid-back air to him (why were all the non-player guys so hot?).

Luckily, I didn't feel like an outsider for long, as Geoff pulled me into the centre of the action and introduced me to everyone I didn't know. The two girls dressed the same were called Katie and Sadie, the scowling girl was Eva, the hot guy was Justin, and the green-eyed cutie was Trent. And the girl with the mouse ponytail was Beth, Lindsay's Season Two BFF. She was the only contestant that was my height. Maybe even an inch shorter, although her ponytail was high enough to make her appear taller.

I went to talk to her first. "Hey. So you're Beth. Lindsay kept talking about you on the show. We even talked about having a sleepover at her house, all three of us. I'm really glad I've got the chance to meet you at last."

"Vice versa!" Beth said in a childish lisp. "Me and Lindsay got really close after the last season. I remember her saying on some of the footage that you two were BFFs of this season, so why shouldn't we all be friends?" She grinned, flashing perfectly straight teeth, and added "Plus, there's no reason why I shouldn't have as many friends as I can get!"

Beth was a bit dorky, really, but I still liked her. She made me feel at ease with her instantly, and despite her dorkiness, she could be really funny (sometimes intentionally and sometimes not), and she was open, too, willing to answer any questions and still asking me things and being a good listener, acting as if she really wanted to get to know me. I hadn't been sure if I'd get on with another girl who was close with Lindsay, but now I'd met her, I could see why Lindsay liked her so much and I liked her too.

Katie and Sadie were nice, too, but they were a bit girly. I had no problem with dressing up and looking cute and talking about boys, but all they did was talk about how cute Justin, Trent and Alejandro were and I didn't really want to hear a thing about Alejandro for the moment. To be fair, though, I could see the appeal of one of the other two...

Justin turned out to be nothing but a pretty face. He had a great smile and more than a six-pack, and his eyes were lovely, but he didn't talk about anything much apart from his modeling career and he freaked out if anything even looked like it might give him a minor scratch. I didn't see what the appeal was. He just had no personality beyond obsessed with his looks.

Trent really was pretty laid-back, and he was nice to everyone. I was especially surprised to discover that he and Gwen, his ex-girlfriend, actually still got on. I couldn't help flirting with him a little, especially when I found out he wrote songs and played the guitar, but I wasn't sure if I was his type. Oh well, it wasn't like I couldn't have a little fun now I was well and truly unattached, plus he felt the same way as I did about Duncan (and I totally believed it when he said it wasn't about Gwen, considering he still seemed friendly with her, but didn't act as if he was still sad about their breakup). I begged him to play a song for me at one point, and I discovered that he sang well, too. He admitted that the song he played that I begged for (a cute song about summer love) was actually a song he sang at the talent show in the first season. He wouldn't say who it was directed at, but I guessed it was probably Gwen.

I didn't talk to Eva much at all, because I was a little afraid of her. The only person who really seemed to talk to her was Izzy, and we hadn't been particularly close, either, so there was no point. Eva scowled all the time, and a few others told me she had anger issues, so I left her alone.

My first instincts about Geoff were totally right. He was the life and soul of the party, seemed to be friends with everyone, and didn't let anything get him down. He definitely didn't like Blaineley, but she mostly didn't hang out with the rest of us.

Bridgette was absent. Apparently, Beth told me, while Blaineley was supposed to be doing her roving reporter job, she managed to kidnap her to Siberia and make her be the roving reporter instead so she could co-host. Bridgette was due to our final destination when we filmed the next Aftermath episode there, but until then, we wouldn't get to see her. I wouldn't be able to ask her exactly what Alejandro did to her yet, but then, I didn't have to ask her. I could just wait to see the episode from the Yukon when it came out.

Everyone else was fine, though. I was happy to see the rest of Team Victory back, including Ezekiel. He actually grinned at me and said "I have never been so glad to miss a take-off in my life, eh. You gave me some major good advice to not stick around. I had a blast in Japan, and it's been great hanging out here." He didn't say whether he'd missed take-off on purpose, but I didn't ask. He'd apparently come back to Canada with Harold.

Courtney was still angry and hurt. She ignored Duncan completely, but I'd seen Gwen trying to talk to her, and while Courtney didn't greet her with enthusiasm, she at least didn't push her away completely. She'd give proper replies and she'd make eye contact, but that was about it. But when I asked Gwen later, she said it was progress. "It's just, I didn't want to hurt Courtney, but I did hurt her. And she knows that I didn't mean to, but she thinks Duncan just used me to hurt her, and she doesn't understand why I won't dump him. The thing is, I know that he really does care about me, and she doesn't get that. And I'm starting to think I'll have to choose one over the other, and Duncan means more to me. Apart from anything else, we were friends before the season began."

And he did seem to care. Every time I saw Duncan with Gwen, they were always laughing together, joking around and being casually affectionate. Everything looked so easy, like they didn't mind how things happened or what anyone thought. Most people just treated them neutrally, apart from Sierra, who was compiling as much information as she could for her upcoming "Gwuncan" blog once she was home and had technology back. She'd been bugging me for information about my elimination, too, wanting to put me on her character blogs. All I'd told her was that it was a "last one to finish goes home" challenge. No need to talk about Alejandro betraying me yet. Of course, they got all the footage here, but I would rather wait until he got here to talk about it.

Then, four days after I reached the studio, Geoff announced that we were all booked to go to our final destination. "We'll be filming in two days, so we have one day to sightsee first!" he told everyone else, excitement written all over his face. "And I'm pretty sure none of us have been there before."
"So tell us where it is!" Leshawna called out impatiently.

"Well," Geoff said, still smiling, "Our flight is to Auckland, New Zealand, but the challenge will be...on Rangitoto Island, with the volcano! It's a ferry ride away from Auckland, so we'll have a night in a hotel, one day to have some fun times, and then we'll be staying on Rangitoto until the finalists arrive!"

As it was, none of us knew much about Auckland...or New Zealand, for that matter. While on the plane (Air New Zealand, no less!), we at least got to find videos that told us a bit about both New Zealand itself, and Auckland, which was known as the "City Of Sails", because it was surrounded by the ocean, even though it was the biggest city in New Zealand. Oh, and Blaineley wasn't coming, since her part of the show was finished and Bridgette would arrive in Rangitoto in time for the last Aftermath to co-host.

There were so many places to visit! There was the theme park Rainbow's End, MOTAT or the Museum of Technology and Transport, Auckland Zoo, which included the famous kiwis as well as red pandas, a tunnel with glass bubbles under the meerkat enclosure so you could get up really close with them and a Tasmanian devil (the Amazon had been amazing, but it didn't have all of those), and loads of shopping destinations. It was a shame I couldn't bring Lindsay with me. Oh well, I could take Beth instead, and Katie and Sadie liked shopping, so they could tag along if they wanted.

Auckland wasn't huge, per se, but it was big enough. Everyone had their own ideas about what they wanted to do when we got to Central Auckland – an area called Sky City, just above the shopping strip Queen St. Owen wanted to go to the Irish pub he'd seen just above Queen St, Cody wanted to visit the Skytower (the tallest building in Auckland), Eva said she wanted to try skydiving off it (and I wasn't sure if she was serious or not), and the rest of us wanted to check into our hotel, sleep and leave the sightseeing until the next day, when we didn't have to leave for Rangitoto until seven pm.

We had dinner in the city, though. We all split up along Queen St. There were two or three Burger Kings, two Burger Fuels and several McDonalds', as well as a Wendy's and a Nando's, but there were a lot of better places.

I ended up with my old teammates sans Ezekiel, so it was just the four of us – me, Harold, Leshawna and DJ – in a place called Sal's Pizza, which boasted a real New York-style bake. We ended up splitting two pizzas – a vegetarian one (since DJ wouldn't eat meat) and a pepperoni one. We even bought cheesecake for dessert and ordered soft drinks (Coke for Leshawna, Coke Zero for Harold, something New Zealand called L&P for DJ and Sprite for me).

The pizza was thin and cheesy, very New York-style. So was the cheesecake.

"I am loving Auckland!" I declared as I took my last bite of pepperoni. "I'm so glad we didn't come here on the tour and didn't have a chance to sightsee. What are you guys planning to do tomorrow?"

"I want to visit the War Memorial Museum." Harold declared. "There's supposed to be some really interesting history of New Zealand's native people and an exhibit that shows what it's like when Mt Rangitoto erupted years ago. Plus I really want to visit the Wild Child exhibit and see what it was like for kids around here."

Leshawna sighed. "Ginger babycakes, I love you and all, but I'm not spending tomorrow studying. I thought maybe an hour at a karaoke bar down here and then some serious shopping would be fun."

DJ shrugged. "I was thinking about the Kelly Tarlton's aquarium? They have penguins and lots of stingrays and things there. I'd really like to see them."

Everyone had different ideas about what they were doing tomorrow. Owen still wanted to try out a few more places in the city to eat, and a lot of the girls wanted to go shopping. Gwen wasn't shopping, though – she and Duncan had already decided to spend the day at Rainbow's End and were talking about booking a trip to Spookers, a horror experience they said would be lame, but thought they might have fun anyway (they didn't do it in the end because they wouldn't get back in time for the ferry, but were already talking about doing it after the show was over). Courtney was planning on getting a mani-pedi while she still could. Oh, and we all put our competition clothes in the hotel launderette, so they'd be clean and fragrant when we got to Rangitoto.

As for me? Well, I asked Beth if she wanted to go shopping up at Newmarket, which was supposed to be the place for designer shops. Katie and Sadie came with us, just as I suspected. They broke off by themselves when we got there, but we met up in Two Double Seven, the mainstream mall, for lunch. We all had cheapo Chinese, and it was actually gorgeous. For later that night, we stopped in at an artisan cupcake place called Petal, and all clubbed together to buy a box of cupcakes, one for each member of the cast.

As for shopping? The BFF twins left Glassons, a mainstream shop, with bags, and they were plastered with makeup that they'd tested from Smith and Caughey's Broadway branch, but Beth and I didn't buy anythng, although we both tried on some of the stuff in the Allanah Hill store and we both spent ages picking out the artistan cosmetics from Lush that we liked best.

One good thing about Auckland was that Total Drama didn't seem that well-known. At least, I hadn't seen anyone give a double take at whoever I was with and say "Hey, aren't you _ from Total Drama?" Maybe someone had been recognized (probably Owen or Duncan), but I hadn't heard about it. Despite Beth being a finalist, no one had seemed to notice her in Newmarket. And while I had seen a few people staring at Katie and Sadie, I guessed it was because there had never been such an obvious attempt to imitate twins by two girls who looked so unalike. It was weird to see girls who dressed, styled their hair and did their makeup the same, but couldn't do a thing to change their skin tones or weight so drastically.

And then, after another dinner (this time we all met in a Japanese restaurant called Tanuki's Cave – apparently the producers wanted to give us a little treat before we were back to business), we all had to pile into a ferry to Rangitoto, which would be private from when we got there to the end of the show.

We'd been warned about the volcano on the island. It was usually dormant, but the producers had used a chemical to make it temporarily appear active and whatever was in it, it was hot and could cause a minor eruption (one that would only affect the island, not Auckland) if it was disturbed. As it was, everyone was happy to stay at the foot of the volcano.

And tomorrow, it would be back to business.

A bit of a breather chapter before Total Drama came back. I wanted Jemma to meet Beth in particular, and I had a lot of fun describing the places in Auckland – even having DJ drink Lemon & Paeroa, a New Zealand exclusive soft drink based on the fresh spring in Paeroa (it's a few hours' drive from Auckland) basically a more lemony Sprite. I tried to keep most of it to 2010, but places like the Chinese place in Two Double Seven (the mall has been extended and revamped since, so that place is no longer there) and the Tasmanian devil enclosure in the zoo came a bit later. I'm also not sure that the Tasmanian devil is still in the zoo, actually, since last time I was there its old enclosure had been changed to the meerkat exhibit. But I didn't manage to get around the whole zoo (I do know the hippos are gone now – the last one, a girl called Faith, died two years ago). The "Wild Child" exhibit in the museum, sadly, has been taken away (it was my favourite part of the museum). It showed typical things in a Kiwi child's life, including a Nineties exhibit with bunk beds and Goosebumps books (lying on one of the beds was one of the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" books, basically a CYOA version of the books, although often more disturbing). The other places do still exist. The cupcakes at Petal are giant, and Sal's Pizza is pretty good. Glassons is a mainstream New Zealand and Australian clothes chainstore, while Allanah Hill is one of my favourite designers. Her stuff's pretty elaborately girly, but gorgeous. Lush is another Australian/New Zealand chain that sells artisan bath and shower products as well as cleansing creams and such – I used to buy bath bombs all the time when I was younger, and I usually buy the soap, since they have one made with eucalyptus and peppermint (two of my favourite scents). Smith & Caughey, the place Katie and Sadie test makeup at is an Auckland department store. The main one is right next to Sal's Pizza on Queen St, but there's a smaller branch in Newmarket. Kelly Tarltons and Rainbow's End have been pretty much the same all my life, apart from a mishap where Rainbow's End had to take out one of the cars on their Corkscrew Coaster after an accident. And Tanuki's Cave is a pretty good place to eat, especially if you book for the authentic Japanese experience where you have to take your shoes off and sit on tatami mats, or even the snack bar underneath the restaurant area – it's near the top of Queen St, quite near a little place called the Q Theatre, where I've seen a few shows, including Little Shop Of Horrors and Jesus Christ Superstar. I mainly used the restaurant because it's a little callback to the Japan episode where Jemma mentions the Japanese folklore about the tanuki (raccoons).