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.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
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!
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!
Thursday, September 13, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, September 7, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
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.
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.
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