Bungee Jumping

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

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

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