New! Zealand!!

Is a frickin' great country, man. Seriously.

So I've had internet access here at my looooooooooooovely amazing wonderful kind generous fun and froofy host family's house, but I've just been too gosh-darn knackered running around the place being carted from here and there stuffing my face and taking in the sights.

This place is SO gorgeous!!!

So now that means I am monumentally even more behind in trying to blog and post and write and show all the wonderful things that I have gotten to experience in the past yeeee-ah.

"Oi kin toh'k loik i' N'Seelinda n hev m'sef hapes n hapes've hohhht cheeps n fizzee soh'ft dranks!!!!"

How's that for phonetic intonation. Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens, I LOVE you and you are my inspiration!!

The vernacular here is quite spectacular.

So! Brief overview of whirlwind schedule:

Saturday:
Arrive at 4:45am IN AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND!!! and get off the plane. Retrieve my luggage. Declare my contraband like a good girl, yet still experience that uneasy tinge of fear, dread, and loathing, as I encounter - THE OFFICIALS OF NEW ZEALAND BIOSECURITY.

We then actually wait around a bit in the airport because I think we were slightly earlier than anyone had anticipated - and the FIRST meal I had in New Zealand was a McDonald's Egg McMuffin (nummy) and hash brown (seriously NOT even the same as in the States, weirdly enough ...).

And then my mom forgot about ONE peach that she didn't eat (as she had planned) on the plane, and was fined!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oy vey, what a day. My mommy, the subversive bio-terrorist. Haha!!

Then we arrived to our lovely host family's place - freshened up - ate at a super nice Chinese restaurant, and met more churchy peeps.

Went to a water park - neato!!

And had a potluck dinner at another church. (I think. It's getting fuzzy now, been over a week!)

Sunday:
Went to TWO!! Church services - EFC of East Coast Bay and EFC of North Shore. And honestly I forget what we did on Sunday night. I'll take a look at our schedule another time. But I must say - the second church had a hugely hot sanctuary. Good thing I was close to the window!!

Monday:
Ordination service for a pastor that used to be at our church in Orange County!! Huge lovely potluck afterwards, as well. No clue what happened that night. Something lovely, I'm sure.

Tuesday:
We headed off for the youth camp up in Maungewatetitau!! Okay, it's not really called that, but it looks like that. It was Epworth Camp in the ... Waikato region, I suppose? 3 hours south of Auckland. :) Fun day that first day. CHICKEN!!!! (was my team's mascot and I'm proud to say we won the first competition of the week. Thank you, thank you.)

Wednesday:
I get up ridiculously early to walk at least a half mile significantly UPhill to play with the sheeps and cows. That landscape was GORGEOUS!! Unbelievably. I remember thinking I should have brought my camera, but you know - just experiencing running with stampeding cows (yes indeedy, I started the stampede!!) was quite glorious. It was a good walk in the morning and I also smelled apples and cinnamon and got cravings.

Okay, wanna know something else completely amazing? At the entire camp, throughout our stay, there were three gobsmackingly awesome Chinese peeps WHO COOKED EVERY MEAL AND A LATE NIGHT SNACK for 160 people EVERY DAY!! I was hearing they got up and started at 6am and finished at 11pm - for 3 days. And they do this EVERY camp! Because it was all Chinese food, too. Man, I was duly impressed.

And then the daughter of my host family came down with wretched horrid allergies and I stayed with her in the morning but she ended up going home!! Pooh.

I also roused myself up to play some of the outdoor games in the afternoon and was rewarded with grass stains on the knees of my only pair of jeans, a gigarntic abrasive "grass burn" (according to one lovely individual named Tim) on my left elbow (yaaah, it looked seriously harsh), a bruise on my inner right knee to go along with the bruise which mysteriously sprouted on my inner left knee during the course of New Zealandish events, and bug bites on my arms. And I don't even know if we won. I have no idea, because I left earlier to go and freaking shower. :) Besides, that game was like unlawfully hard. AND THE OTHER TEAM LIKED TO CHEAT!!

Thursday:
I think I slept in. We had our things to do - and then in the afternoon we had STATION GAMES/GAME STATION! That was SUPER fun! And I KNOW we kicked some booty on some of those games but we did dirt-poorly at the first one which was supervised by one of our own!! It was a good game, though. We are just somewhat less than ideally coordinated, I suppose.

Then we did a skit at night and I got to act like a goofy ole drama queen. And we had testimonies that were GREAT! And also went on for like 5 hours.

What can I say.

Chinese people - SOME Chinese people - really. really. REALLY. Like to talk.

Friday:
We left! So sadly!! Or - "We reft. So sadry, we reft." And ronery, I'm so ronery - ronery and sadry arone. ;)

We saw some NEAT places - and had honey ice cream at THE HONEY SHOP! in Tirau. And went to Rotorua which smells of hardboiled eggs' yolk!!

I saw one of THE most amazing things ever, in my life - an actual spring of fresh water coming from who-knows-where - it was AWESOME! I've never seen anything like it in my life - I'm massively deprived, I think. And it roils out 1,000,000 gallons of water an hour, apparently.

And we went to a Chinese buffet!

And I got to cuddle the little munchkin!

And went to a Polynesian Spa, which was quite impressive.

Saturday:
Ran all around Rotorua and went to a a geothermal park and a beautiful waterfall and Lake Taupo and our frickin' youth pastor went bungy jumping. HAHAHA! He completely caved to peer pressure!!! But it was cool.

I also LOVE LOVE LOVE Miss Wendy our resident doctor and a wonderful travel mate. Man, she's cool! I've seen her for well over a dozen years at church but never had much of a chance to talk to her and now she is officially one of my favorite people. :)

Sunday:
More church and dinner at Denny's and hanging out with host daughter Megan!

Monday:
Probably time to go, eh. Mate. :P

Ciao for now! See you stateside!!