The Hard Staff Life

It's been a little while since I last blogged, but then again, it's been pretty busy since I last blogged. We moved out into our staff girls house last Saturday. It's a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom cabin-like house on the edge of the property for 10 of us. I'm in a room with 4 other girls, but they're all pretty entertaining, so it should be fun. It's nice being more removed from everyone else, plus we're closer now to the cow paddock and pig pen. One of the new guy staff from Hawaii gave us girls a house warming gift with chocolate and a fancy little air freshener, and two other staff made us breakfast one morning, which was pretty awesome. On Wednesday, all staff left the students to fend for themselves on campus while we had a staff BBQ at one of the older staff member and his wife's house. They have 3 young kids, so they have a trampoline and all kinds of toys and sports equipment including a tennis-tetherball type game. So while most of the older staff were sitting inside talking, us younger people were having a blast playing outside with all their kids' stuff. The students had a nice night of playing sardines, red rover, and other games in our absence.

While on outreach, my outreach leader learned I had all three of the Mighty Ducks movies and she said that I should bring them to New Zealand and we would have a Mighty Ducks marathon. That dream became reality this past week. She recently got married and moved into her house, so she hosted it there and invited our Middle East outreach team and other random staff members that liked hockey or the Mighty Ducks. We started at 4 and didn't leave until 10:30. We had pizza and other small snacks that we had brought and they gave us chocolate fondue for dessert. The movies are pretty cheesy, especially the first one, but it was still a lot of fun, and it was nice to get away from Faith Bible College and all the students for a day.

As far as my duties as a staff member goes, I don't have a whole lot, but I I don't mind it. Other than helping out in small groups and during class, I take care of the morning tea during our morning class break, as is the custom in NZ and something America should adopt, so I go in early and make and set out the tea and coffee and then clean it up after. The cook at the college is a big Maori lady. I don't really know how to describe her personality other than forward, and at first she can seem a little harsh, but she likes me and we get along fine. The food here is good, as I've probably mentioned, but not the healthiest, so me and about four other girl staff members are adopting a workout plan to do every other day for the rest of lecture phase. One of the girls did some personal training prerequisites because she wanted to be a personal trainer at one point, so she lead our first workout. My legs are still sore.

So things are pretty sweet as here, and I think we learn our outreach locations soon!