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.