Bye For Now!

Well, today's the day! It's outreach time. These 2 months have flown by so quickly, and it seems like this is the end of the program, but really I've still got 2 months to go. A team left for Korea/Japan at 4 this morning, so we all said goodbye to them last night. Everyone was up until 1 hanging out or watching Despicable Me (I love movie nights here). My team leaves today at 12 for the airport to go to the Middle East so we have quite a bit of time to hang out this morning. We're flying on Emirates which I hear has awesome service and food, and they even give us unlimited free chocolate (big win). I'll be stuffing my bag with that ish all day. So anyway, because of circumstances I can't blog or Facebook while I'm in the Middle East, but fear not, I will return to both when I get back to New Zealand in early December. Plus, I can still Skype and text, so hit me up. I believe I will be 8 hours ahead this time.
Luv yhu giys,
Abby

Bungee Jumping

Time before I leave for outreach is just ticking down. Less than a week already! It's been kind of sad going through all the "lasts", even though we will come back for a week before I return to the US. The transition to living with the guys actually has been suprisingly good, other than a more crowded kitchen, it's been nice having everyone around the house. It's near impossible to keep track of your own personal food though, so I've taken to stashing mine in my sock drawer. This past weekend was our last adventure outing, and they left the most extreme, craziest, and scariest for last: bungee jumping. I was quite nervous all week about it, I'm not the biggest fan of heights, but I couldn't just not do it. I mean, it was already paid for and how often do you get to go bungee jumping in New Zealand? Answer: almost never. Therefore I was determined to go through with it. The bungee jumping place was in Taupo, so we had to drive like 3 hours to get to it, but it was good because we got Vs to get us pumped and we just listened to music on the way up. 

It was kind of windy and cloudy when we arrived in Taupo, and since we were somehow half an hour late, they said they could let half the group jump before their lunch break and then half after. The bungee place was really beautiful even though the weather wasn't that great. The bungee platform was over a beautiful turquoise lake that I heard someone say was in an old volcano crater which is pretty cool. The jump was 47m and you could choose to either just touch the water with your finger tips or plunge in up to your waist and then be pulled back out. Only one guy chose the second option, it was scary enough as it was. We all got weighed  first thing so they could calibrate the bungee cords so we didn't plummet to our death, and then we signed some waivers and were ready to go. They had an option to do tandem bungee jumping which is where two people are strapped in and go together, and since it seemed more comforting to jump off with someone else, I decided to do a tandem jump with the staffer Madeline. We were hoping to go in the first group and get it over with so we could eat our lunch during the break, since I definatey didn't want to feel sick. We were placed in the second group which turned out to be better because after lunch the weather got a lot nicer. We were the first to jump after lunch though which was good. We got our harnesses on and were sitting on a bench on the platform as the guys that worked the checked through all of our equipment. The bungee cords looked like they were just a cluster of a bunch of those tiny elastic strings tied together which wasn't very comforting.

 I was completely terrified the whole time, but I had watched the first group go and it looked pretty sweet so I just kept telling myself it would be awesome. They had us grab onto these loops on each others harnesses and then step up to the edge of the platform with put toes on the edge. On three we were to lean out and drop. We slowly leaned out and went off the edge and after about 2 seconds I closed my eyes. The whole thing was kind of a blur really. I remember looking down at the water then getting to scared and closing my eyes, then reopening them and seeing something hit the water, which I soon realized was one of my shoes so I start freaking out and pointing down at it. Then I closed my eyes again unil we started to slow down. Pretty much the entire time I was screaming and it was a really good thing I had someone else to go with because when I got super freaked out I just grabbed onto them. We finally slowed enough to grab the pole that the boat that would take us to land was offering then they slowly lowered us into the boat and got us unhooked, amd I got my shoe back which was really good, though it was soaking. So crazy, I can't imagine who ever thought up such a concept, but hey. I bungee jumped for the first, and probably last, time. 

Soapy Slides and White Waters

There's only 2 weeks left in my program before we all leave for outreach, and although that's crazy enough in its self, there's also going to be some big changes for the last 2 weeks of lecture phase. There's an internship starting at the Tauranga House of Prayer, and so the director of our program decided to give the guys house to them to house their interns and staff, so they decided that the boys would be moved into the girls house basement, and the staff that were living there will move to the guys house. So basically all of the students in my program will be living in one house with no staff living with us. It's going to be a pretty crazy and trying 2 weeks. The director also announced that for the last two weeks we would be partnering with a couple other bases in Tauranga, and something called Circuit Riders is coming in, and instead of regular casses we will be working with Circuit Riders. I don't really know what that means or what the Circuit Riders do, but I guess I'll find out. The main thing that I got from that announcement is that we'll have to have classes with I think 50 more students which kind of sucks because I hate interacting with people I don't know/small talk. So yay. I also still have to get clothes for outreach. I predict it will be a stressful couple of weeks.

On Saturday, everyone had to help clean the boys house to get it ready for the interns coming in. Not just a light clean, but a full blown scrub down. I volunteered with a couple other girls to clean the kitchen area, which turned out to be an excellent decision because that involved going through all the food in the pantry and we got first pick at any food without names or food that the cook didn't want to use. I was the big winner of the day (well, in my opinion at least. I don't think the other people I was working with were as enthusiastic about the free food as I was.), going home with a packet of Uncle Ben's ready rice. We also got a container full of nuts and dried fruits so we took that back to the girls house, but it turned out to be one of the internship staff's so we had to return it. It was quite sad. I was almost going to be healthy. After a long morning of making the house spotless and a lunch of spicy leftovers, I headed back to the girl's house (now I guess it's everyone's house). I was planning on making some caramel slice, which is a delicious treat that I shall make and share with all of you at home, when I looked out the window to the back yard and saw several of the guys and they motioned for me and one of the other girls that was in the kitchen to "come go on the slide". 

Intrigued, we stepped outside and beheld a monster of a slip n' slide that the boys had set up in the back yard, using large black tarps, which I have no idea where they got, and they had put a 2 ft. ramp in the middle of it. All the guys were soaping up then sprinting down the slip n' slide and flying off the ramp. It looked awesome, but the other girl and I waited until they had worked out all of the kinks with the ramp before we joined in, since there was a lot of thunking to be heard when someone would hit the ramp. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon slathering soapy water all over our bodies then sprinting down the slide, and after recovering from the ramp, sprinting back up the hill to get in line again. People were getting pretty fancy with it after a while, doing twists in the air and flipping from going on your back to on your stomach which I wasn't nearly coordinated enough to do, I tried but it strained my hip a bit (I'm such an old lady) and ended up just landing on my knees. It was a completely awesome time, but my body was aching for days after. One of the other girls and I were planning on having a final "girls night" before the guys moved in and we wanted to watch The Emperor's New Groove, but since it's such an awesome movie, a lot of the guys wanted to watch it so we just had a house movie night in the living room. I had snagged 3 packets of jello from the free food box so I made that to share at the movie night, and the girl who lives in the house next to us brought over these delicious biscuits to share. Once again, I. Love. Saturdays.

On Sunday, we did our adventure activity for the week, and for that we went white water rafting. It was my first time going since it's not like there's many places in Champaign County to do that, so I was stoked. It was a level 5 with a 21ft. waterfall in it that we go down. That made me a tad nervous, but still stoked. We got suited up and headed down to the river, and I got put in a raft with 6 other students and a guide, who was super nice. It was a short course, but so much fun. We did this thing called "surfing" where after we had gone over a waterfall, we turned around and paddle straight into it and the water would crash into the front of the raft and push the raft outward. We ended the day with a trip to KFC and I got a free kitkat milkshake because the workers there were so overwhelmed with all the customers and accidentally made an extra. Choice.

Narnia!

After delaying our big backpacking trip into the mountains for two weeks because of storms, we finally got to go this past weekend. The place we were going to was called Pinnacle Huts up in some mountains, and the trip definitely did not go as expected. We had to pack an overnight bag with a sleeping bag, as well as any clothes we would need, so I stuffed my pink Jansport ridiculously full. I felt like a turtle with it on. As usual, everyone showed up at the guys house to make sandwiches in the morning and we then loaded up to go. After about five minutes of driving, the drivers realized they forgot the map at the house so we had to turn around and go get it. They couldn't find it anywhere so they decided to go off and buy a new map and left us all at the house, so we helped ourselves to a second breakfast. An hour later than we had planned, we were on our way. My van was pretty fun; we all were passing around bags of chips and other snacks, and one girl gave me a can of V which is kind of similar to Red Bull but it tastes fruitier, and I was jammin' to music on my iPod the whole way up. I was pretty pumped for this.

We got to the site and headed down some trail, which eventually took us to a river that we had to cross. We all had to take off our shoes and be crreative with our packs so nothing would get wet as we walked/bear crawled across the river in the cold water on the slippery rocks that kind of hurt your feet. When everyone finally got across, we determined that we weren't quite sure where we were supposed to go so we waited on a hill while one of the staff members headed up the path a ways to make sure we were on the right path. About 10 minutes later, he comes back with two hunters and their dogs. As they got closer, we realized tnhat one of the hunters was giving a piggy back ride to big, black, furry, dead boar that they had shot. Only in New Zealand. Don't worry, I got a picture of the thing. The hunters told us that it would take us too long to go up the trail that way if we wanted to reach the Pinnacle Huts by nightfall, so we decided to head back to the vans and drive a bit furthur up the road to another path. Of course, that meant re-crossing the cold, rocky river.

Eventually, we did get on the right path up, even if it was like 2 hours later than planned, and trekked up the mountains. It started out pretty light with some fun river crossings (this time on bridges), but then we hit the "Rock Staircase" which was basically an hour of climbing up this big, uneven steps that were carved into the rock in the mountains. Since we were trying to beat the sun, we had to book it, which meant no time for pictures and less breaks, which really kind of sucked. It also started to rain a bit about halfway up. I tried my hardest not to stoop to my XC complaining level. We finally reached the top, shaving like an hour off the estimated time, though I can't say it was entirely worth it, and discovered that Pinnacle Huts was more like Pinnacle Hut. It was a big building with two rooms  that were stacked with bunk beds that had room for 80 people, a grill on the porch, and an inclosed dining room. It was nice and all, we brought hamburgers for dinner and Monopoly Deal to play, but it was pretty unfortnate that it was a communal sleeping area, especially since some people were crazy enough to bring their kids on this treacherous hike.

After a not-so-satisfying night's sleep, we woke up to more cold and rain. Luckily it only took an hour and a half to come down the mountain. We were all super hungry, so we stopped at a little mall with a food court and ate there. I walked around the mall a bit with another girl and felt so out of place. I hadn't showered in like 2 days and I was dressed like I rolled out of bed and into a mud puddle. I didn't know anyone there so I wasn't super concerned. Now we get to the title of this post, to Narnia. Well, at least where they filmed a scene in Prince Caspian We went to Cathedral Cove which was a beautiful beach with huge rocks, a stone archway, and torquoise waters ( I'm sure you all saw the pics on facebook). They shot the part in Prince Caspian where they arrive in Narnia and find themselves on the beach, and the stone archway is in the shot. I am loving it here in New Zealand, and I leave for outreach in only two weeks!

Hoppin to the Op Shops

Recently its been a lot colder here, something about getting the tail end of an arctic wind. In the South Island they even got snow. Some of the girls have take to sleeping in the living room where the fire is, but my sleeping bag keeps me nice and warm so I stay in my bed. The problem is, last night all my roommates slept in the living room, and since they are my alarm clock, I woke up and thinking I was late, jumped out of bed and ran to go eat breakfast but it was 7am. I missed out on half an hour more of sleep. #whitepeopleproblems. We found out yesterday that even though we aren't even halfway through September, we have already used up 80% of our Internet allotment, and if that goes out we all know what happens. Dial up. Which basically translates to everyone being frustrated and no one actually getting anything done. When we found out we were burning through our onternet too fast, one girl was like "oh sorry guys, I video Skyped my parents for like an hour yesterday. I figured it would be okay since I haven't gotten to video Skype them yet." Several others admitted to doing the same. I admitted that I had downloaded a TV episode the other day (more like 3 episodes, but they were small files so why make it sound more like my fault?). So we solved that little mystery pretty fast, and now we all have to be more conscientious of our Internet time.

On Wednesday during free time, I decided to walk down to the op shop nearby and invited one of the other girls to come along. Some of the boys had been there recently and they came back with all these weird sweaters, and apparently everything was a dollar so I decided I needed to get on that. Also, since it will be winter on outreach, an aspect I overlooked a bit, so all the tank tops, shorts, and T-shirts I brought aren't going to do me much good. Therefore, I needed to load up on the sweaters, long sleeves, and some kind of heavy(ish) coat since the most I brought was a light jacket I found on the side of the road (marathon cleanup holla).. So we walked a couple blocks down to that op shop, which was a really small one, and I found a hat, a makeup bag, and a colorful sweater that I am 90% positive one of the other girls has. And it's not some plain sweater, it's patterned and kind of hipsterish so it's not like I can just pretend I didn't know she has the exact same one. I'll probably just hide it until outreach (she's not on my team thankfully). Or maybe we can be twins one day (loljk).

When we got back from the op shop, as I was making myself some tea, I learned that one of the Kiwis who had a car here was going to drive a couple of the girls to Savemart, which is a giant op shop that I've really been wanting to go to but it's too far to walk to, so I joined them for that too. Savemart really was quite huge. It was like the size of 3 Plato's Closets (for those of you that don't know that's like the size of TJMaxx. If you don't know what that would be then I can't help you. I've done all I can do). I didn't even know where to start browsing. We spent about an hour or so there, and I got some warmer stuff but still no coat. I browsed through a section looking for New Zealand shirts and really hoping for an All Blacks jersey so I wouldn't have to buy my brother a new one because they were expensive, but no luck. They had all kinds of random jerseys, like South Africa, Netherlands, and American stuff, though. It was still a successful trip, and hopefully I'll get to go back in a couple weeks.

Well, I better go before I burn up any more Internet. 

The Joys of Weekends

Friday and Saturday were just excellent this week. On Friday, we had a barbecue on the beach, and even though it was kind of cloudy, it was a lot of fun climbing all over the rocks and paying soccer in the sand. Some people brought swimsuits, though I was not one of them, and they were swimming in the ocean and hunted for crabs. I waded out the and joined them for a bit, and in the process drenched my jeans, not as much from the wading out there, more from jumping around in the waves trying to avoid crabs by my feet. After two burgers and a sausage, I was ready to go home so I hitched a ride from a staff member and went back home. I played some cards with people as they started to arrive, and it went from UNO, to Egygptian rat screw, to BS, to playing poker using cornflakes as poker chips. It was a pretty interesting game since people were betting all over because they were only cornflakes, and one guy kept breaking his in half and betting crumbs. I had an impressive pile of cornflakes at the end.

Saturday morning I was really excited because Tuesday I had to idea of making frenchtoast, since we have plenty of bread and we're allowed eggs on the weekend, so I had been looking forward to this breakfast all week. I even brought an apple from the boys house and cooked it in butter and cinnamon sugar. So good. Late morning, some staff members decided to take a group to Gideon (another suburb of Tauranga) to visit the Marine Reach YWAM that were stationed there. We don't have a whole lot of interaction with them normally, every now and then we'll see them on Friday, but they invited us to come and visit them, so we took them up on that. Their base was about 20 minutes away from ours, and was a lot more isolated than ours was, but shit they had a nice base. Their building is only a couple years old and as soon as we walked in the door there was a big, flat screen TV on the wall. If we want to watch movies we have to lug this little one up from the basement. Ridiculous. Their entire house was like a mansion. They had a classroom right in their building, a huge kitchen, leather couches, and dryers! We were really jealous that they had dryers. 

This was only the start, they took us down a path to see their waterfall, and I was like okay, cute, they have a waterfall, but this thing was massive. Giant, roaring, awesome waterfall. The river was gorgeous too and they had all these paths you could take above the waterfall and down by the river. After sandwiches for lunch, we all hung out by the river. Some of our guys are really into slack lining, so they stretched a slack line across the river and were trying to cross it, but it was so windy that they kept falling in. It was funny to watch. I learned how to throw a rugby ball and me and some other people played catch. Eventually we headed back up to their house, and we started a soccer game, our DTS versus theirs, game to five. We killed them 5-1. We left their base around 3 to go back home. I decided even though they have a super awesome house and a waterfall and river at their disposal, I'm glad I'm on the DTS I'm on. We get out a lot more and can go to restaurants and shopping and stuff while their mostly stuck in that one area. Mostly I'm glad because our students and staff are way cooler than theirs. No competition (just like the soccer game). 

Saturday night, there was a rugby game on, New Zealand All Blacks vs Argentina Pumas, so one of our neighbors who's a friend of YWAM invited us over to their house to watch, and we pooled our money and bought a bunch of fries to share. I kind of like rugby. I sort of get it now, and it's more fun to watch than football because the game doesn't stop every 5 seconds. New Zealand won by the way, 14-5. I think Saturdays are my new favorite day.

Love Feast

This past Monday, it was announced that on Thursday we would be having a Love Feast, which they described as a five course meal catered by a chef, and it would be a time to share things, perform if you wanted, and dress up. Food, okay, but dress up? Damn it. Most of the girls were really excited for it, so about 6 of them decided to choreograph a dance and perform it for the Love Feast. Remembering the attempts at following the Britney Spears video for the talent show, I stayed out of it. It was kind of fun to watch them practice, though. They'd all be out in the field behind the house going crazy, and a couple of the other girls and I would drink hot Milo (like hot chocolate but not really. It's technically malted barley, but it tastes better than it sounds) and watch them from the kitchen window and be like "man I'm glad I'm not doing that."

The week passed by as normal, nothing too noteworthy really happens during the week. Thursday night after class, we had until 6:30 to get ready. Some of the girls, I kid you not, started getting ready like 2 hours before that. Crazy. This isn't prom, people. I sat around and played Bejeweled until like 6, then I decided to get ready. My straightener for some reason wasn't heating up at all, which was kind of a crisis for me as you can imagine, so I had to borrow one of the other girls'. We all got ready, and the vans arrived to pick us up and took us down to a church down the road where the Love Feast was being held. Everyone looked really nice, but it was kind of weird seeing the guys in vests and ties, especially the staff. I had a pretty great table, and we had a a lot of fun playing with the candles on the table and chatting.

It turns out, it was actually a 3 course meal, but that was fine, I didnt want to waste stomach space on soup and salad anyway. The appetizer was this really delicious creamy, crab stuffed pastry thing. It kind of tasted like it could be a Patrick's Pie. The main course was pretty interesting. They lay the plates in front of us and I see bacon wrapping on little nuggets, and there's rice and sauce and stuff. Turns out the bacon was concealing either a date or a prune. It still tasted good, but it was kind of odd. Dessert was this amazing chocolate cake (still warm) with a buttery caramel sauce and peaches. Okay, I'm done ranting about the food. But seriously, it was delicious.

In between the courses they would do "acts" of sorts, and people would read poetry or just talk. After dessert the girls did their dance, and not gonna lie, it was pretty legit. At one point they did the worm. I'm kind of still glad I didn't do it though because I'd be worried I'd just mess it up anyway. Then as we were cleaning up, we accidentally set off the alarm to one of the church rooms and no one knew the code, so we had to have someone from the church come and type in the code. It was a lot of fun and really good food. I slept beautifully that night.

Spelunkering

This past Saturday the Adventure DTS got to go spelunking in Waitomo Caves. We did the Black Abyss adventure which is a 5 hour trip down in the caves. It was an absolutely amazing time. We were split into two groups to make traveling in the caves easier, so one group had to be ready to go at 6:45am and the other at 7:45. I was put in the 7:45 group, and the only girls in it were me, one of my roomates, and the staffer Madeline. I didn't have to get up any earlier than usual so I took my sweet time and thoroughly enjoyed my eggs for breakfast. It took about an hour and a half to get there, and once we signed forms that we wouldn't sue in case of injury and such, we headed down to these tents to get suited up. We were told to wear our swimsuits underneath, and then everyone was given these thermal tops and a long sleeved and long pants wet suit. It was quite a struggle to get into. I felt like a seal.

After we were all suited up, we hopped in a van to go to the cave entrance. Two guys were leading us and they were pretty entertaining, the entire trip they'd make all kinds of suggestive jokes (such as telling us to tighten our helmets so they don't wobble, otherwise we'll look like a dick. Not even kidding.) and would poke fun at people in the group. I thought they were pretty funny, but not everyone in my group enjoyed them. We had a brief equipment/safety lesson before we all lined up to go abseiling (lowering ourselves with a rope) into the cave. It looked like a pretty wide entrance at first, but there was one point on the way down where I had to wedge myself through this super narrow opening. If I was claustrophobic I probably would've had a panic attack. Once everyone got to the bottom of the shaft, we all turned on our head lamps and followed our guides down a passageway. It wasnt terribly cold in the cave, though it was really damp and there were glow worms all over the cave ceiling, which was cool. After a while we came to a zip line in the cave. They had us all turn off our head lamps so the person whose turn it was to zipline couldn't see ahead of them. Randomly while someone was ziplining we would hear a loud bang, which I never really found out what that was, but the guides wouldn't tell us so it was probably just them messing with us.

Once we had all ziplined, they took our harnesses and had us sit on a rock as they passed out these delicious cookies (which I got the recipe for) and hot chocolate. After snack time, we were led to this ledge near the river tht ran though the cave system and everyone grabbed a innertube to jump in. It was such a shock to the system as the cold water rushed over me, but the wetsuits worked really well, and soon I felt comfortable. We paddled down the river a bit and got a little lesson on the glow worms that inhabited the caves then made a chain with our innertubes as our guide pulled us through the water, so we all relaxed and looked at the glow worms on he ceiling. It was like looking at the stars. We soon ditched our innertubes and then began trekking/swimming through the river in the cave. That was my favorite part. The caves were so pretty and we weren't even that cold. At about this point, I had to pee really badly since I forgot to pee before I got my wetsuit on, and luckily enough, the guide said we could have a break now for that, only catch is we had to go to the bathroom in the cave. Well, I can now say I peed in a cave 65m underground in New Zealand.

After the bathroom break, we went down this passage called "the staggering drunk" because it's so uneven that people are aways tripping and falling all over themselves, and there was definitely a lot of that happening. When we finally got through that, it was the for another snack this time choose and this hot Kool-Aid type of drink they called tang. Then we headed down a narrow passage towards the last track that would take us out, and while waiting for everyone, one if the guides spotted an eel in the water and he was trying to catch it. I saw it briefly, and after that just tried not think about there being more in the caves. The track out was pretty intense, it had some tight areas and three waterfalls we had to get coached on how to climb over. When we climbed the last waterfall, we found ourselves in the woods at a stream that goes into the crevice we were climbing out of. Looking at it, you'd  never guess it led where we came from. Then we all had to slosh up a short trail to get ack to the vans, but it was so tiring and I had so much water in my boots that it wasn't a very fun trek.

Afterwards, we got a hot shower and free bagels and soup. They really know how to treat their customers. There was a couple that went with our group, and they were going to buy the pictures that were taken by the guides (since you really can't bring one of your own cameras unless its waterproof, and they had one of those) and they said they would email those to us, so hopefully they do. and that night we had a girls sleepover/movie night and we ate popcorn and watched The Lorax. 

I'm in New Zealand, Trick II

I have lived in New Zealand for about a month, which is pretty crazy now that I think about it.  Since my last post on New Zealand culture I have learned so much more, so I thought I would impart my newfound knowledge on all of you.

New Zealand is much more chill than America and not wearing shoes, even in public places and while driving, is completely acceptable. We see kids walking to school all the time barefoot. The students in my program have been taking full advantage of it and have been coming to class shoe-less. I went barefoot when we gave out fruit for the city outreach, which was a lot of fun, but I'm going to wait until it gets warmer to make it a habit. Another oddity is that roundabouts are everywhere. They're practically a replacement for intersections here. I find them stressful, and it seems like it would just cause more accidents because it all hinges on yielding and people being defensive drivers. I've only seen a couple of traffic lights, and absolutely no stop signs. 

A fun fact about New Zealand, the ozone layer above the country is really thin, a lot thinner than most places in the world. It's kind of strange since there's only 4.5 million people in New Zealand and they really don't create that much pollution, but apparently for some reason unknown to me it's thinner, which just means its a lot easier to get sunburned. Another fun fact that I was excited about, is there are no snakes in New Zealand because, other than the birds, all the animals that are here were brought into the country, and really, who would want to bring snakes. 

And now for some more Kiwi lingo. Though first of all, I would like to offer a correction. I know I said Vegemite was the New Zealand equivalent of Nutella, but that's not true. They told us that to trick us. Apparently it's a yeast-based spread, so it's actually salty not sweet, even though it looks kind of like Nutella. Quite disappointing.
Anyway, here are some more:
Telly- TV
Hotties- hot water bottle
Stubbies- short shorts that men wear
Boot- trunk of a car
Car park- parking lot
P- meth (somehow this came up, don't ask)
Drink bottle- water bottle
Trolley- shopping cart
Bum bag- fanny pack
Good on ya- nice job/good for you

Sweet as- awesome

Choice- cool/really good 

Feel free to adopt any of these sayings and incorporate them into your everyday lives. I know I am. 

Rotorua

For the adventure activity this weekend we went to Rotorua, which is about and hour away, to go luging and mountain biking. We all met at the guys house in the morning and made bag lunches (I felt like I was back in school) then packed into two vans and headed out.

We went luging first, and took this big ski lift type thing, the "gondola" as it was called, up a mountain to the luging tracks above. We all picked our helmets then got our tickets and got in line. There were three tracks you could take: intermediate, advanced, and scenic. The luges look a lot like a cart from Super Mario Kart, specifically the little one that Toad drives, though all it has is wheels, brake, and handles since you just let gravity do the work. We all started out on the intermediate track, and I only crashed into the wall a couple times though it didn't hurt at all. Then we get on a ski lift that takes us back to the top. The second time down I took the intermediate again because I wanted to get the  hang of it, and in the process I learned that I had been braking wrong and instead of pulling back, I had been pushing forward which creates a scratchy noise and probably damages the luge (whoops). That time went much better down and the next three times we went on the advanced track which was a lot steeper, and at one point you get a little bit of air. We didn't even bother with the scenic route. Me and this one girl for the last two rides on the ski lift entertained ourselves by spitting on people that would go on the track below. We got one guy pretty good.

After eating our sack lunches in a grassy patch, we drove to a mountain bike rental/guide place. After getting all of us outfitted with helmets and the appropriate bike, and after a couple warm up laps around the parking lot we headed down the road towards the Whirinaki Forest Trails. From what I hear, the mountain biking tails in the Rotorua area are some of the best, so we were all excited. Unfortunately, the first part was basically all uphill. I hung in the back and in several parts had to push myself along with my feet, or just straight up walked. It sucked and I was exhausted. I suppose it's to be expected, can't ride down a mountain if you don't go up it first. When we finally reached the top, the first track we went down was called "Be Rude Not To". Funny name, but it was essentially a thin down hill path with moguls and sharp turns, and surrounded by heaps (literal heaps, not just the Kiwi term) of broken sticks and dirt. It was a lot of fun even though I felt like I was going to hurtle off the edge several times. We then took another path in the woods up to another track, and I don't know the name of this one, but it was pretty similar to the first in terms of obstacles and steepness, and we went down it like 3 times.

It was good fun, though I was pretty tired toward then end. Aftere one final excursion though the woods, we had the option of doing another track that appeared to be up a steep hill, or taking the road, which was a coast downhill, back to the bike rental place. I, along with all the girls and a few guys, took the downhill path back to the rental place. When we were turning in our bikes, the rental shop owner's wife shared her chocolate covered marshmallow candy with us, which was really nice of her. Then we went to Burger King and I got fries before going home. Every good day ends with Burger King.

Outreach Announced!

The time came for us all to learn where we were going to go on Outreach in October. We all piled into the classroom and took our seats, and everyone was anxious and excited. The leaders decided to start off with a game, probably to lighten the mood, so pieces of paper were passed around and everyone had to write down something interesting about themselves on it and then pass them to the front. My tablemates and I were kind struggling with what to say about ourselves, so after watching people come up with their paper for a while, I quickly jotted down "I had surgery on my hip when I was 10 and I have a pin in it." and handed mine up front. Once they were all in, the game was for each thing read, people raise their hand and guess who they think wrote it and people got points for how many they correctly guess. I didn't get any points, but there were some pretty interesting/funny ones. One guy drove a golf cart into a lake. My  roommate went to Disneyland once a week for a year. Another guy had wet his bed within the last year (he said later he was on meds after surgery, but the director who was reading it kept laughing so he had someone else tell us what was on the card).

After the fun was had, it was time to get down to business. The director got up and told us that they had a really difficult time choosing the outreach teams, so he picked up the garbage can next to him and told us that everyone was going to pull a card from the bucket, and whatever one you chose that was where you were going. What. Here I was assuming that they had taken a great deal of time to choose these teams and I wasn't that nervous before, but I sure was now. They called one girl up, and she reached in and pulled out Middle East which she was relieved about, since she was on the ANZAC group which aims at helping the Middle East. The director then said "no I'm just kidding, we're not doing it this way. We already picked your teams." as he threw the garbage can aside. Relief swept the room, and everyone was laughing. It was a good trick, a tad cruel (he said he's had people cry when he's done it before), but still really funny. I probably should've realized it was a joke when he chose an ANZAC-er to come up first, since everyone knows they're going to The Middle East since their whole program is set around that.

The director then called out all the teams while a staff member wrote it on the board. For outreach I will be going to.... The Middle East! Yay!  I am quite excited, though a little bit nervous. My team looks like it will be good, it's one of the larger teams with about 10 students and 3 staff (including Simon which should be really fun),  though they might split the group up smaller for traveling around because a big group of white people traveling may not be so inconspicuous. One of my roommates is on ANZACs so she's in my group too, as well as one other adventure group girl. I think it'll be a lot of fun, though it'll be winter while we're there so I'll need to get more warm clothes. There are a couple of the girls that I wish were in my group since I've gotten to know them pretty well, but I'm excited to get to know the people in my group as well. So, on October 15, I will be leaving the beautiful New Zealand springtime and heading into winter. I just hope the AC adapter I bought has a setting so I can keep blogging while I'm there.

Legality

Monday night was community night again, and we have yet to see Ethan at one. One of the girls who has been keeping in contact with him via Facebook said that she thought he said something about joining the army, so it looks like we may not get to see him again. After dinner I slipped back to the girls house to shower, as was my custom, and when I got back people were all like "oh there's Abby" and my roommate said "we tried to call the girls house but no one answered." Oops. People started saying "Happy Birthday Abby" and my first thought was they were kidding, and I just kind of gave them a suprised look and mumbled that today wasn't my birthday. Apparently, since they had three birthdays in a row (a staffer, one if the guys, and mine) they just made one big cake for us and gave it to us on Monday. They put an American flag on my part of the cake since the other two were Irish and Indonesian. I missed the singing which I am kind of relieved of since I don't really like it when people sing me "Happy Birthday" because you just kind of have to stand there. The cake was delicious, though.

I am quite excited about turning 18. Especially since my birthday comes a day earlier here (woohoo, cheated the system!). Plus, since I'm out of the country for this glorious day, I can literally do whatever I want without my parents finding out for 4 months. I could get a tattoo and as many piercings as I want. I could get them just to get them then take them out later. Not saying that I will go crazy with tattoos and piercings, mind you, just that it's nice to know I can. I would like to get my nose pierced though, just a small stud on the left side. I Skyped my mom today and told her I was planning on getting my nose pierced and it was absolutely impossible to keep the smugness/giddiness/"you cant tell me what to do anymore"-ness out of my voice. As predicted she did that thing where she tries to talk me out of it without telling me what to do because she knows that will just increase the chances of me getting it. "How long does it take to close up", "wouldn't it be cheaper to do that in the states" and "I don't know if that'd look good on you". Noble effort, but no. So many years of being told "sure, when you're 18 you can do that" and it seeming ages away. (Heehee ages. I feel so British. I've been reading Black Swan Green and am loving all the British insults. I'm going to have to jot them down to use on future foster children. I wouldn't be charged for foreign insults, and plus I'd sound smart.)

When you're 18 in New Zealand, there's a lot you can do. You can vote, though not me since I'm American. One of the guys got some thing set up beforehand where he can vote in the US even though he's overseas. Too much effort. You can buy cigarettes, though they are 15 NZD so I'm not sure why you would want to. You can drink, but not buy bottled alcohol. I think you have to be 21 to do that; an odd rule. Plus the program forbids all substances, so I couldn't anyway. Though on the plane home I'm riding Air New Zealand, so holla! Don't worry, I won't turn into that trashy drunk girl I rode next to on my way to Texas. (Two Jack Daniels on a connecting flight, really?). You can get a tattoo. You can get piercings. You can buy scratchies, which is what they call lottery scratch cards (everything has so much cuter names here). I'll probably get a scratchy while I'm here. Even if I didn't win it'd be a cool souvenir to have.

Anyway, I am missing you all terribly, and wish I could celebrate my legal-ness with you all American style (aka lots of food). I'm thoroughly enjoying seeing all of your college photos and posts, and look forward to hearing more about it!
Cheers.

Best Day Ever

Saturday was straight up awesome. We had another free weekend, and I kind of just assumed that we'd all just sit around and I'd have to find ways to burn time. I thought maybe I'd go for a run or something. We all woke up pretty late. I got up at 9, and was one of the first up. On weekends we are allowed to have eggs for breakfast, so I took the opportunity while I had the stove to myself and had a delectable breakfast of eggs, 2 of the pancakes I bought, tea, and a slice of toast. One of the girls had the idea that we should go and climb the Mount later in the morning. I was going to meet with my small group leader at 11 so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to go, and I didn't really feel like calling to reschedule, but she called the house like 10 minutes after so I got that moved and saved my place in the van along with 6 other girls and a staff member driving us that was going to the Mount.

It was a gorgeous day, blue sky and warm. We started our trek, and with all the stairs I started to get tired pretty quick. Luckily we stopped many times to get pictures while going up. It was so gorgeous when we got to the top. We could see all of the Strand, Leisure Island coming off of the beach, and the Pacific as far as the eye could see (sea. Ha). I took tons of pictures, and hopefully my package from home will arrive soon so I can actually show you, since I really can't do New Zealand justice. At one point, the other girls had the idea to make a music/dance video at the top of the Mount, so they did that. The staff member held the camera, and I took care of the music since I didn't want to dance. It was a funny video though. We then headed down the Mount to go on to explore Leisure Island (I keep wanting to call it treasure island for some reason). We all took off our shoes and walked on the beach towards the island, attempting to jump over waves as we went. The shells on the beach were really pretty, they looked like ones you would buy. This one girl has small gauges, so she broke off these shell pieces and put them through her ears.

Leisure Island was probably my favorite part of the day. It's not actually an island, since it is connected to the beach by a thin strip, but it has all these big rocks on either side and grass and trees in the middle. We spent around 20 minutes leaping and climbing all over the rocks looking at starfish, sea anemones, and whatever else we could find in the tide-pool-esqe crevices ( they weren't quite as cool as tide pools, they mostly had kelp growing in them, though I did see a dead crab in one. The guys claimed they found an octopus under a rock, but we didn't come across any of those.) Then we headed down the path towards the tip of Leisure Island. They had these big, steep rock formations all around the tip of the island, and waves were crashing in. Naturally, we climbed down them too and explored the rocks there, well, at least 3 of us did. It was really fun, but also kind of dangerous. The rocks are sturdy and all, but it would've been easy to slip and fall to the rocks and waves below. Surprisingly, I wasn't that scared, even though I normally hate rock climbing and heights. The staffer was kind of worried, but no one even came close to getting hurt, and it was a blast.

By the time we climbed back up to the tip of Leisure Island, we were all pretty hungry so we went and got fish and chips (which they just wrap in a bunch of newspaper), ice cream, and the staffer bought us 2 deep fried Moro bars (kind of like a Milky Way) to split amongst ourselves and it was delicious. Deeply satisfied, we headed back to the house around 4. After dinner, they announced that there would be a movie night at the classroom if we wanted to go. The movie was (wait for it) How To Train Your Dragon. I was ecstatic. We had time to go to the grocery store and buy snacks for the movie too, so people were passing around chocolate and popcorn, and I brought a ginger beer for myself. It was excellent. The perfect ending to the perfect day.

Bagles, Bagles, Bagles

So I am in fact quite behind on my blogging, I guess that's okay because most days aren't terribly noteworthy. It's mainly a lot of food, hanging around, and class time. I had around $176 cash that I just used the last of today, and I can say quite confidently that about 2/3 of that has gone to some sort of food that I bought. Just yesterday I spent $14 on milk, a little package of pancakes, and a case of ginger beer (similar to ginger ale but way better). Anyway, enough with the numbers. One exciting piece of news is that a cute little gray cat followed one of the boys home and has been living under the boys' house porch for the past couple days. They named it Leonidas and it's really cute. It has slightly snakelike eyes, and it's unsettling to come across it at night but it's adorable and very friendly. The staff have been trying to dissuade us from feeding it because the people who own the houses don't allow pets. We feed it a little bit anyway.

A couple days ago we had Outreach prep and they had us give our top 2 choices and the reason we chose those. Along with the Middle East, Singapore/Phillipines, and S.Korea/Japan options there was also a team that will stay in New Zealand and travel around there. Apparently the options they had discussed before were just to give us an idea. They gave us like 20 minutes since they wanted us to pray about it, and they said we could wander around downstairs or go to the Coffee Club or somewhere quiet if we wanted, so I headed down to the Countdown grocery store and bought a snack then sat in the hallway outside the classroom. I wrote down all the options and tried pulling them out of a pocket in my bag, and I kept getting Middle East and New Zealand. I put the Middle East as one of my options with the reason "I kept drawing it's name out", and for number 2 I decided to go with the Singapore/Phillipines option, with the reason "It's someplace I would like to go".  They told us that we may not get our first or even second option, but whatever, at least I didn't make it sound like I wanted to stay in New Zealand or something, so they at least would consider putting me in my choices.

I am really enjoying my small group  here. We meet every Thursday morning and we'll just hang out and get to know each other. This past Thursday we went to this bagel shop (I think the only one of it's kind in Tauranga) called Wholly Bagels. They had a pretty sweet deal where you could get a drink, a bagel, and cream cheese for $6 which is super cheap for New Zealand. I got the cinnamon raisin bagel with the honey, nuts, and raisin cream cheese and a chai tea latte.  They were quite good. Maddie had the idea of playing "friendship circle" which I guess is the name of the game where everyone writes down questions and puts them in the center and someone draws one and we go around and everyone answers it. It was a lot of fun; we had questions like "what's your love language", "have you ever had a near death experience", "what's your favorite movie" (that was mine) and "what's your favorite childhood memory". I think we're going to try to play friendship circle for every small group for at least part of it. I'm definately looking forward to it.

Oh, and I did finish My Sister's Keeper a week or so ago, and Jodi Piccoult can go kill herself. (I promise no spoilers). Honestly, if you're having trouble coming up with a good way to wrap things up in a story, then just ask someone for help. You don't have to do it all on your own. Especially when you come up with a shit ending. Granted, it was on where you couldn't really hate anyone of the characters for the outcome, but that just means I hate the author for it. Shoddy work, Jodi. Shoddy work.

High Ropes

Every Friday we have city outreach, and I decided to sign up for the Friday Night Evangelism, which is where we go down to the strand around 9 at night and try to talk to people about God. Friday was a really nice day, blue skies and around 65F which is rare for New Zealand winter, but it was so cold that night. We all meet in front of the Starbucks and shivered for a while before we broke into groups. It was me, Maddie (the girl who looks like Jennifer Lawrence), this tall Samoan guy, a girl from Texas who I liked  hanging out with, and this other staffer named Nathan. I planned on just tagging along, observing, and trying to stay warm. There was a paint party that night at some club, so we ran into a lot of drunk people dressed in white and heading to that. Actually, pretty much everyone we ran into was drunk. We headed down to the bus station to see if there were people there. As we passed the public restroom behind the bus stop there was a cop car there, and it looked like the bathroom was some kind of crime scene.  The Texan girl said she thought it looked like the bathroom was covered in blood. We hurriedly shuffled past that, and Nathan started talking to this one homeless guy across the street, while the rest of us stood around on the other side.

After a couple minutes of standing around, we look down the street and  we see this guy stumbling hardcore, and then he just kind of stops and crumples onto the sidewalk. The Samoan guy really wanted to go and help him, so me and the Texan girl decided to tag along. We approach this guy and he is just completely passed out. His pants are like half off, though he's wearing sport shorts underneath, and he's shivering pretty hard. The Samoan guy felt really bad for the drunk guy and he had only one glove with him and he wanted to try to put it on the passed out guy, but we convinced him not to, it was only one glove. Since the guy was too far gone we walked back to the bus station, and ran in to the cook Thomas, who was with another group, and we told him about the guy, so he went and told the police officer that was near the bathrooms that this guy was passed out. We proceeded to pace at the bus stop in a feeble attempt to keep warm, while watching the cops deal with this guy. The cops kind of checked him over for a few minutes, and we see them try to lift him, and we're like yay they're helping him! , but then we see them put hand cuffs on him and we're like oh. I guess they found something on him, or were arresting him for public intoxication. Pretty soon after that, we had to meet back at the Starbucks because it was time to go. So my group didn't get a whole lot accomplished.

Saturday we finally got to go on the high ropes course. It was decently nice out in the morning, but after the 20 minutes drive up some mountain to get to the place, it had cooled off and was looking a little cloudy. It was a really cool looking course, there were obstacles and zip lines all over this clump of trees. There were 6 different course levels, and some of the higher level courses were up 3 stories. We all got harnessed up and went through their little practice course, and we had to go through course 1 and 2 before anything else to get a feel for it. Those were pretty easy, but still fun. Level 3 was a bit longer, but it had a really fast zip line down to the bottom which was a lot of fun, though you crash into this big foam pad labeled "brake" at the end, which isn't as fun. Before I even started I told myself I was going to go up to level 4, but then one of the girls said I shouldn't, but I figured I'd see how I feel after 3. The girl that I was doing most of the course with decided that she would go, so I figured I might as well go to. Yolo, right? A first it wasnt that bad, it wasn't too high, and though the obstacles were more difficult, it was still fun. If I got scared at all, I would start singing/whistling "My Heart Will Go On" from the Titanic. I dont really know why I chose that song, I only know one line of it, but it was stuck in my head, so I just went with it. Halfway through 4, you have to climb up higher and then there are these 3 obstacles that just sucked. A lot of hanging loops and swinging pieces of wood. I sang a lot during that part. Towards the end, I got really lazy and so for two obstacles I just put my zip line thing on and pulled myself across (still counts).

I felt quite accomplished and thus I celebrated with a $4 bag of peanuts in the vending machine. It actually started a round of people trying to catch peanuts in their mouths as I tossed them up. There were about 8 of us just standing around waiting for the more adventurous people who were tackling 5 & 6, so they sent a van back earlier and I went with. We begged Madeline, who was driving to let us stop at Patrick's Pies for lunch instead of going back for sandwiches, and she let us, so I got a mince and cheese pie since they didn't have the chicken apricot one that I wanted to get. It was still good.

Strange Boy In A Strange Land

The assistant director asked to see me after the classroom on Tuesday night, and I was automatically nervous and started racking my brain for reasons I would be in trouble, and started worrying that I would be sent home. Not that I had actually done anything, mind you. Just, you know, old habits. It all worked out fine, I had worried for naught. She just needed to give me my visa applicantion form so I could start filling it out. Let me tell you, that form was thick, and it came with an equally thick instruction packet on how to fill it out. Luckily, since I was applying for an extension that was less than 6 months and I have no children or anything, there were some parts I could skip over. Though I do need to take passport photos to paste in, pay like $160, and find a way to pay that $160 since they don't accept cash and bank drafts take too long. So that's been super annoying, especially since no one else had any trouble getting a visa.

Wednesdays we have a bunch of free time in the afternoon, so me and this other girl got a group together to go op shopping in Greerton (a suburb of Tauranga), but none of the staff could drive us, so they told us to take the bus. I though we should've just hitch hiked, since apparently New Zealand is safe enough that people still do that here, but since there were like 6 of us going and not everyone was on board with hitch hiking we headed down to the bus stop. As we were coming out of the house driveway, this kind of scary looking dude, all in black, with his music blaring walked past us and one of the girls was like "man I really hope he isn't going to the bus stop too cause that would be awkward." As you can probably guess, we indeed ended up at the bus stop with him. We got to talking to him, and he was suprisingly really nice. His name is Ethan and he's 18. He told us how he dropped out of high school when he was 15 and he cuts trees for a living. (He told us how his Aunt is a treehugger and hates his job, jand whenever she asks how many trees he cut down that day, he ups the number a bit). He told us he lives in Papamoa and was only in our section of Tauranga because he was visiting family. We tallked with Ethan for like 20 minutes while we were waiting for a bus to come, and it was a lot of fun. We asked him questions about New Zealand and he wanted to know where we were from and why we were here, and when one of the girls said we were missionaries (though we aren't technically) he was super suprised. Ethan helped us navigate the bus system and when we got to the Strand, which is the main bus stop area, to switch buses, we asked if he wanted to come with us to shop in Greerton, and he decided to come along.

Now, I know this all probably sounds pretty sketchy, and yes I was there for the lessons on stranger danger, but behind his long black trench coat, arm tattoos, and little blue dice lip stud, he was a teddy bear. When one of the girls asked him why he dressed so scary when he was a rerally nice guy he told us that he dresses like he does because he walks around in some sketchy areas, and if he looks scary, no one will mess with him. He actually told us about this one time where a Maori guy put a gun to his head and told him to give him his wallet, and just said "pull the trigger" and the guy walked off. I was just like damn! That is hardcore, though he assured us at he was shitting his pants on the inside. Crazy shit, my friends. We hung out with Ethan all afternoon, and even invited him to the community dinner Monday night, and he agreed to come, so I guess we'll see him again then. What's funny is on the bus back to our section on Tauranga, this one guy came and sat by us and wanted I know where we were from (I guess people were really intrigued by these loud, foreign white girls). He name was Dylan and he was also 18, though he was a lot less teddy bear like. He came to the back of the bus holding a hand rolled cigarette and told us that people called him the "crazy Dutch bastard". Luckily he didn't stay on the bus too long. The whole excursion took like 3 hours and we had to sprint from the bus stop to avoid being late for dinner. I missed dinner prep because it took a lot longer than we had anticipated, but Thomas and everyone were super cool about it, so it worked out fine. It was a crazy, but fun, day.

Also Mount Tongariro  aka MOUNT DOOM erupted a few days ago about 2.5 hours away from where I am, shooting 8km of ash into the air. CRAZY.

Food&Fun

The weekend was all around super relaxed. With nothing really planned we could wake up at 9, eat whenever we wanted, and besides our work duties, there was nothing we had to do. Except Sunday we all had to choose a time to go to church. I chose the morning slot since not many people were going then, so while they were all gone in the evening, I would have the shower all to myself. Smart, right? It was one other girl, me, and about 6 guys who went to the morning service, and it took us forever to get out of there because our driver kept on talking to people for like 40 minutes after the service had ended. I was talking with one lady while waiting around for him, and she had a Japanese exchange student who was  living with her family, and she introduced me to him. Apparently he didn't speak much English, and I was really cursing the fact that I could remember barely any of my Japanese, so I couldn't really carry on a conversation. We finally got out of there and were the last to get lunch, so it was kind of a free for all. Just for fun I tried avocado toast, not expecting it to taste like anything, but it was SO GOOD. I had at least 3 pieces that day. And since there are 2 avocado trees outside of the guys house, it looks like I'll be having plenty more in the weeks to come.

 Sunday evening right after a dinner of minestrone, I decided that since I had time and it was still light out I was going to go for a run. I had my ipod and got all decked out in my Underarmour spandex and long sleeves and stretched out and everything. It was a mile run max. I ran down to the college soccer fields nearby up the road, and back to the house. Oh well, it's the thought that counts. Since I wasn't really satisfied with my workout and the house was empty, I decided to take advantage of this time and use the punching bag they have in the basement. Yeah that's right, they have a punching bag in the basement of the girls house. It's in this weird storage room thing and there's a box with boxing gloves in it and all, so I strapped them on and started going at it to Drake and Lil Wayne. Even threw in some crunches and front planks. It felt good to be doing something after a week where the most excercise I would get is walking to and from the guys house. It looks like Sundays will be my workout day.

Monday was back to classroom stuff and waking up at 7:30. Everyone was pretty much dead all morning. During the classroom though, we learned what kind of city outreaches we would be doing, since every Thursday we go out in the city and volunteer. Apparently it's stuff like helping out with an afterschool program at the YMCA, visiting with people at a local retirement home, and giving out fruit in a poorer section of Tauranga. All I was thinking was shit. I don't like children,  I don't like old people, and I would probably just want to eat the fruit. Apparently though, we were supposed to sign up after class and I didn't know that so I'll probably be stuck where no one else wanted to go. At the break time, I ran down to Patrick's Pies, which is an award winning pie shop close by our classroom, and I got a mushroom, ham, and cheese one since one of the guys said it was really good, and even though I don't normally like mushrooms, it still tasted great. I felt so official eating my meat pie in New Zealand.

Monday nights are our community nights, and all the staff, the director of the Tauranga YWAM, and other random people come for dinner and we all play games and hang out. After a hamburger and fries dinner, some staff took an "offering" and went to the local grocery store and bought a ton of junk food for us all with it and we just had a party with ice cream, Tim Tams (these chocolate covered biscuit things), gummi worms, marshmellow candies, fruit, and L&P which is a fizzy, lemony drink. I then played Polish poker with some people and came in third out of four players.(woot). Then a staff member and me and three students decided to walk to the grocery store just to get out of the house. I got banana milk, these coconut and chocolate covered marshmellow mound things, some chupchups, and had a nice time talking with the others that came along.

Catchup, Fries, and the Springs

It's only been a week in New Zealand but there's so much going on, that I'm already struggling to keep up with updating this blog as things happen. I must be about a day and a half behind. Though I guess if you adjust for the time change, it's only half a day (ha). Also, I thought it was worth mentioning that this blog after a week already has more views than my History As Fiction blog that  was up all semester, so yay for being more interesting than Libra!

Anyway, a few nights ago we had our first outreach prep class time, and we learned that there are three options. The first, involves going to Singapore for the majority of the time, then to the Phillipines for about 2-3 weeks, with possibly a stop in Indonesia for a bit. This one would for sure be ideal for my plan of trying to go to as many countries as possible while on my gap year. The second one goes to S. Korea for the majority of the time, with a stop in Japan for 2-3 weeks to primarily help in areas that were affected by the tsunami. The last option involves outreach in the Middle East. All of the options in my opinion have ups and downs to them. The Indonesia/Phillipines trip would be pretty cool, though one of the staff members was telling me he got Salmonella several times during his outreach there, which isn't very comforting. I think the Middle East would be cool to visit, and the food would be amazing. Apparently the plane trip would be around 30 hours, which is ridiculous, but as long as there are inflight movies and edible meals I'll be fine. I'm not very excited about the Korea/Japan option. Korea has never really been a country that has interested me, and while I love Japan and think it would be cool to help out in the tsunami relief areas, that would only be for 3 weeks max out of an 8 week trip, but if I got put on that trip, I guess it would be fine. We get to submit our preferences in about a week, but I'm not sure when we find out where we are going.

Saturdays and Sunday's are pretty much are our activity and free days. The adventure group will go off and do our awesome activities, and the other groups will do whatever they do and then we come back for classrooms and stuff on Monday. This Saturday, the plan was to go to a high ropes course with the whole group, but the rain just doesn't seem to stop here, so it got cancelled. I'm kind of bummed but not terribly since we'll probably just go on a free weekend or something, and if not, heights scare me anyways. Since we couldnt do the high ropes course, alot of us girls decided that we would just spend the day at The Strand (downtown area) and go to op shops and hang out, which would've been awesome, but it took so long to get everyone out there and apparently they all close early on Saturdays so we didn't get to do that. Instead we just went to The Warehouse which is like their Walmart and I got a Kinder Egg and some floss.

Later that night they decided to take us to the hot springs, which is basically several different swimming pools with varying degrees of hotness. It was a lot of fun. After a while of jumping in pool to pool and just hanging out, the guys started making human totem poles, and at one point had five people stacked up on each others shoulders. This eventually switched to four of the guys launching someone in the air to do flips. One of the girls in the group used to do gymnastics so she was really good at it; she got like 6 feet in the air. After about  1.5 hours, I was getting tired and my eyes and face were kind of burning from the salt water in the pools, so I jumped in the earlier van to head back.  I liked pretty much everyone in the van,  and we all just decided to stop off at Burger King and get fries and other shit, and pretty much everything but the ice cream cones were kind of expensive; the cheapest sandwich was $3. Then the rest of the way back we listened to two of the staff tell us how they got engaged because they were the ones who drove us (he proposed on The Mount). It wasn't the most exciting part of the but I really liked it because I got to know the people in my van a lot better, and I felt they got to know me better because it was a smaller group. Considering how much stuff fell through, it was a pretty fun day.

I'm in New Zealand, Trick

New Zealand is both very similar to the US, but also pretty different. I figured I should dedicate a post to New Zealand-isms and such, so here we go.

First off, New Zealanders are in fact not called New Zealanders or anything of the sort, but rather Kiwis. Cute name, but not to be confused with the endangered flightless bird that is the national bird, or the delicious fruit that comes in green or gold variations here. That they call kiwi fruit. The  New Zealand accent is an interesting thing indeed. To me it sounds kind of like an Australian accent with a bit of English accent thrown in. It's kind of hard to tell what exactly is different about it from an Australian accent (maybe there isn't a difference, I mean, lets be honest my ears have failed me before) but I plan on mastering a New Zealand accent imitation by the time my trip is over. I mean how cool would it be if I came back with an accent? It probably won't be that easy, but I can dream.

Kiwis also have their own lingo other than the fact that they spell things like the English when it comes to "er" (centre, theatre, etc.). A lot of them  I find really cute. They say "heaps" in place of "a lot". They pronounce garage "gareage". And they say "I reckon" all the time.

Several kiwi words that I have run into and their American equivalent:
Op shop: thrift store (oh yeah, they have these here. Imma go crazy.)
Kia Ora: Maori for hello
Haere Mai: Maori for welcome
Lolly: refers to all candy
Vegemite: New Zealand version of Nutella
Supper: midnight snack
Elevensies: before lunch tea
Cuppa: a cup of tea

Due mainly to the fact that New Zealand is an island everything is imported, so everything is expensive. Even the things that are grown in New Zealand, like kiwi fruit, are relatively expensive because they export the best of the crop and then charge the people in New Zealand the going market price. Electricity is super expensive, so we aren't allowed to use dryers because it costs $4 a load. Tampons are $18 for a box of 36, so I'm super glad I packed a ton. Makeup is outrageously priced, with mascara costing $30-$40, so its a good thing I won't need to any of that. Internet is "beamed" from Australia, so you have to pay per gig you use, and if you go over the limit it switches to dial-up mode. Since videos take up so much space, video Skype is severely limited, and YouTube and Netflix are forbidden. Luckily, the DTS program bought 60gigs per month for each house, but unluckily, we have to pay a staff member $15 for the password, and the password changes every 4 weeks. I just coughed up my $15 this morning, and now I'm set for August.

Also, I thought it was worth mentioning that while the book in Mississippi said that New Zealand had the most sheep in the world, the population has gone down from 22 million to 12 million. Not to worry though, I'm sure I'll get my sheep fix.

So It Begins

Today was the official start of my program. We had our classroom orientation today where we went over rules, the values of the program, fire escape, etc. basically everything that was in the binders they gave us. We also got together in our different schools (there are 3, but mine is definately the coolest) and I got to see firsthand who all is in my program, and it's about 6 girls and 7 guys, most of whom are around my age so that should be fun. One of the leaders of my group are Simon, who I mentioned before as the guy who took us up The Mount, and he's really cool and a lot of fun to play games and hang out with. The other one is Madeline, or Maddy, and she is 22, has dark red hair that is twisted into dreadlocks, and a face that kind of looks like Jennifer Lawrence. Anyhow, the adventure group looks like its going to be doing a lot of really cool things: hiking, kayaking, caving, fishing, bungee jumping (I'm not so sure I'll join in on that one yet) and luging, which if you've seen the geico commercial with the guy in the lay-down cart thingies when a pig on one comes by him with a pinwheel, then that's luging. Apparently the cart things can go up to 60mph.

I also learned today that the program is a requirement for a University of the Nations degree, which may not be why I'm going on one, but along with that, it means the program is graded pass/fail. Or in other words, it is possible for me to fail my gap year program? What? Oh well, I'm in it for the experience. Along with the fact that the program is a course means that we have journals due every week and a book report due every 3 weeks. They gave us our first one today and the books about the guy who founded the program. It's also due the day after my birthday, which basically means I will be spending part of my birthday working on it. On that note,  I am very sad to not be celebrating in the good ole USA this year. I suppose my first lottery ticket and BB gun will have to wait until December. Oh, and my first voting election will be in another 4 years. Whatever, we're probably 
screwed whether Romney or Obama gets in office. Maybe I should just stay in New Zealand and 
avoid all that. Just kidding, of course.

As part of the program, everyone has household chores/responsibilities. I completely lucked out with mine. On the board were things like dinner cleanup, grounds maintenance, and hospitality which who knows what that entails, but I'm guessing I wouldn't do that job very well. I got dinner prep, which means I get to help cook dinner. The cook for the program is a young guy named Thomas who is really nice, a suprisingly great cook ( I am LOVING the food here), and he looks kind of like Waldo from "Where's Waldo" but without the turtleneck or glasses. So basically during our allotted chores time after classroom me and 3 other girls and an Indonesian boy named Kevin go over to the guys' house, because that's where we eat lunch and dinner, and help make dinner, and when we're done we hang out with some of the staff and whatever guys are around and play games and chill. One of my favorite things about this experience so far is hanging out and learning new games to play, and for some reason since the guys' house is the main meeting place we don't really play games in the girls' house, so since I'm on dinner prep squad it makes me feel like I have a legit excuse to chill more in the guys' house and play games. Things are going generally well for me, we are going to learn what outreach locations are available to go to soon. Keep reading, and I miss all of you terribly!

Sunday (Saturday for you)

It's actually a great deal colder here than I had anticipated, about 54F each day, which was a bit of a shock considering the fact that I packed more shorts and T-shirts than anything. Apparently I was also supposed to bring my own blanket but not sheets which I brought, so it looks like I'll be sleeping in my sleeping bag for 5 months. It's one of those that can keep you warm in below freezing temperatures, so I'm not worried. Really, bring it on New Zealand. When I woke up this morning there were two of my roommates already here and asleep. I met them and one 20 named Brianna and one is 19 and named Shelby. Shelby is in my Adventure DTS program as well. I was a little worried I would be the only girl in my program because yesterday is was basically me and 5 guys chilling playing cards, Settlers of Catan, and we went for a climb on Mt. Maunganui (aka the mount), and although it was a little drizzly and cold it was still a really nice view. Hopefully we'll go when it's a lot nicer out so I can get some good pictures.
I tried to unpack and organize, but the room is about the size of mine at home with a closet and 2 small bureaus, but housing 4 people. Most everyone went to church this morning, but it was optional today, so I jumped on that and chilled at home with Shelby since she was the only other person who didn't go. We hung out and ate breakfast and chatted a bit before we hunkered down with a book to read. I started My Sister's Keeper while at the airport in San Francisco and I'm already halfway through it. It's a very intersting topic and I really like how the author switches points of view. I find Jesse's particularily entertaining. Anyway, I trekked over to the guys cabin for lunch with Shelby and since we were early, one of the staff, Simon, showed us how to play the card game scum and we played that until everyone got back from church. The entire day was pretty much eating and playing cards, very chill, but also fun. My roommate Brianna and one of the guys named Patrick taught us to play a card game called Mau which is so confusing and ridiculous because the rule is that no one can know the rules. The Fight Club of cards. So they knew the ground rules and we had to figure them out, and once someone won a round they could impose a rule of their own, and only told one person it to keep them honest. And one of the rules was no talking. It was pretty crazy but also kind of entertaining.

Since today was still not officially the start of the program, we got fish and chips for dinner from a local Tauranga restaurant that the staff claimed made the best fish and chips in the whole city. It was really good, even without ketchup (I know, I'm such an American). After dinner, there was another opportunity to go to church at 5, and surprisingly most everyone chose to go again. They said they wanted a few girls to stay back because another girl might be coming, so naturally I jumped at the chance. I hope they don't make note of the fact that I stayed back both times, but come on, it wasn't mandatory. So, right now I'm just chilling in the girls living room area with Megan who is 17 and from Texas, and Audra who is 23 and from Portland. I asked her if she had ever seen Portlandia and if people in Portland hate it, and she said she didn't mind it, but not everyone is like that in Portland. Good to know I guess. Right now we're all just sitting in the living room near the heater going on our computers. Pretty chill day in a pretty chill(y) country.

Up Up & Away

Leaving the familiarity of Champaign Urbana and all my wonderful friends and family wasn't easy. I tried not to think about it and more just focused on the fact that I would be home by Christmas. It's when I'd see everyone again anyway if I were at college. I drove up with my dad to Chicago early Thursday (if it even was Thursday, I'm kind of confused about the days. I think today is Saturday in New Zealand, but I'm not certain.) and visited with my Grandparents and Aunt and Uncle for a while before we headed off to the airport. The flight from Chicago to San Francisco was better than expected, I actually had an inseat TV which normally I don't get on a 4 hour flight, so I was pretty excited to enjoy Keeping Up With The Kardashians, The Colbert Report, Friends, AND Phineas and Ferb.
I had a four hour layover in San Francisco that involved a lengthy conversation with the lady at the Air New Zealand ticket counter involving why I didn't have a visa when my return flight was in 5 months and they only automatically give a 3 month visa, and after a phone call with some guy in New Zealand that I could barely understand, I got my ticket on the condition that I speak with immigration once I arrived. I then felt I deserved a "splurge" on a falafel sandwich at an airport cafe before my flight. With still 2 hours to kill I hung out by the gate which for the most part was uneventful other than a 38 minute phone call with Leah and a cute guy with an Austrailian accent informing me after hearing me panic to Leah over the phone that my flight was supposed to leave at 9:45 and the clock above the gate said 11:48, that it was only 8:50 and I had nothing to worry about. Seriously, why would you have a clock ANYWHERE in an airport that is 3 hours fast.

The plane to New Zealand was huge. It has a second story section in the front of the plane and the wings were as big as most of the planes I usually fly on. I was placed in one of the emergency exit seats with extra leg room which I at first couldn't believe my luck. Then after then seeing that that meant there was no seat in front of me to hold a personal TV screen on a 12 hour flight when some of the movies included The Hunger Games, 21 Jump Street, and Friends With Kids (It has Kristin Wiig in it y'all), I REALLY couldn't believe my luck. A flight attendent shortly before takeoff put my worries to rest by showing me and my row mates that the screens were folded in between the seats. After watching Friends With Kids while enjoying an airplane meal that was a far cry from the rubbery pizza that I got when I went to Japan, I slept for about 8 hours and woke up just in time for breakfast and 21 Jump Street. Both excellent.

I landed in New Zealand at Auckland around 5:45 am, so it was too dark to see anything out the window but stars. Things were going fine until I got to customs. I was really hoping that I would be able to slip by and be on my merry way and that perhaps that guy I talked to on the phone wasn't here or had forgotten about me or something, but no. As soon as I gave the customs lady my passport she told me to go sit on the black couch by the wall near the immigration desk, a total couch of shame, until I could be helped. After about 10 minutes I was pulled into a little office area and asked about the program I'm on,how much money I brought, etc. Since I apparently didn't have the recommended $1,000 per month of stay, I was only granted a 1 month visa instead of a 3 month as anticipated ( $3,000, really?).

I met my shuttle driver about an hour later than planned but he didn't seem too upset. He was in his mid sixties, bald, and had an English/Australian accent. Less than a mile away from the sirport a car cuts him off and he exclaims "You bitch!" then quickly "pardon my language, but I hate when people drive like that." He also mentioned that it was lucky one of the towns with murals was lucky no "little shits" have graffitied it like the rest of New Zealand. We got along just fine. The 2.5 hour car ride went relatively quickly. The driver would point out landmarks and tell me about the towns we would go through and it was all very beautiful, lots of hills and cows and sheep, and green everywhere.

We got to the dorm, well the correct one since at first we went to the guys, a little while ago. I learned I was the second girl to arrive, and the first "girl" is like 40. Oh well. I'm just hoping the group's mean age is somewhere near mine.