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!
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
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.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
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
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.
Monday, August 27, 2012
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.
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.
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