I think I found another difference about New Zealand that I wasn’t expecting...time seems to go just a bit faster! I can’t believe how fast these weeks have just flown by! I haven’t had a dull week yet and I don’t necessarily plan to, I already have a bit of a mental list going about the fun things I should do any free time I have. There is a link to a Picasa web photo album below if you want to take a gander at all the better photos at once. So I guess I could try and sum up this week for y’all. Last Saturday started with another early morning trip to the market then to come home and get ready for a day long tramp. We got a bunch of friends, fortunately a few with cars, and went along a curvy road just outside of Palmy to what is affectionately termed as the “Sledge Track”. I cleverly pointed out a sensible name change to the “Sludge Track” as rains all week left this spongy mountain seeping water down every crevice. But as I have mentioned before the vegetation was something I have only seen in the movies. Thick, thick forests with vines, tropical trees and ferns surrounded us as we trekked. I even tried a rather pathetic Tarzan swing on some slick vines. But everything really was so beautiful, a few of the more long term students or locals teased me for how many pictures I would take of just random stuff because I just loved the atmosphere so much. Near the top we made our way to a cave we were going to try and go into only to find about a meter of water in the bottom. We decided it was a little too risky to enter without proper gear with so much water, although a few of us were tempted to have a little adventure and give it a go, we made the sensible choice to continue on our tramp. We made it to the top and as the vegetation cleared we could see green hills covered in maggots....actually sheep but will so many so far away it resembles hundreds of maggots feasting on an avocado. Some thick clouds had settled in so we couldn’t see as much of a view as we wanted but it was still beautiful. We took a lot of photos and hiked another loop around the top. We search for another cave for awhile but with no luck, we had to head down to beat the sunset. As we went hit a few different types of vegetation that felt sort like a safari then back into the heavy tropical bush. If going up in the mud was fun, you can only imagine how down was. I had done so well on keeping my running shoes I was wearing dry and mud free but all hope was lots as at parts we literally slid down the mountain. There was even one point I lost my footing and went butt first into especially slick section of the sludge trail. But it was all good I just walked into the freezing river at the bottom of the trail and washed off. But we really had a lot of fun, hiking here, or tramping as they call it, really is a whole ne w experience. I haven’t seen a lot of wild life but just the bush enough to make you feel like a dinosaur could appear out of nowhere. It was a great day with good company. Afterwards we were a bit nippy, especially have my half plunge into the river and decided to throw together a barbque, well actually they had all planned it before and just barely told me, so we swung by the market so get some barbque foods. I made a hand crafted burger to fit my square bread bun, it worked super well. We just parked the barbque outside the common room and brought some couches outside around it to stay warm and barbqued for a few hours. It was a nice solid meal after a long day although still pretty chilly outside I was getting sick of being cold. But all in all a great Saturday.
Sunday ended up being a great day as well. I’m getting to know a lot more people in the ward. After church I got a ride home with one of my semi-close neighbours besides Warren and Yuko and he was pretty cool and has a very cute family. But with 1:00 church and hanging around afterward I got home at 4:50...five minutes before my other new friend was picking me up to go to a dinner for the ysa that one of the old ysa leaders put together. So we went to dinner and it was so good with chicken, sweet potatoes, rice, and chow mein. Then straight from there, we headed back to the church for a devotional. Wow this devotional blew my mind! It was a guy who studies genealogy stuff and indigenous tribes. He spoke at least 5 different languages, Sioux, Hawaiian, Maori, English, and Cherokee I think. He talked about how all their ancient legends all relate and talk about the coming forth of the church and the work the church is doing with missionaries. It was incredible to see the clear connections. As it turns out that Haka I posted earlier has been translated incorrectly and is actually about John the Baptist he is referred to as tangata puhuru puhuru (which now translates to hairy man). The maori people have words describing Christ (tame nui a rangi) and his baptism in the river (te awa o rongo or tw wai papa roaa tane nui a rangi) They even have words for the 2 priesthoods. It just shows you the worldwide coverage of the knowledge of Christ, it is crazy. So anyway, ya that was pretty mind blowing, I really enjoyed it.
So then Monday got pretty interesting, pretty fast in the evening. In the late afternoon it started to snow! Like big fluffy flakes snow! They haven’t had snow here since 1939! People were freaking out. It was so great, there were snowball fights and snowmen happening everywhere. Pretty much everyone’s facebook post was “SNOW!”. Then while I was watching the snow fall we had another little earthquake. Nothing big, just enough to notice, so no worries yet...until the power went out. Yep. but that was because of the snow. It was dark and I didn’t have a light except my computer with its 3 hours battery life. Most people just gave up on studying but for me it worked out the opposite. I was doing research for a paper and had all the web pages up I needed before the internet went down and so for that hour or so was the most productive I had been all day, because no internet meant no web surfing ha ha. It was a pretty crazy night, but the power did finally come back. But then for that half inch snow fall we got, one of my classes got cancelled! What a pleasant surprise! My teacher said in all of her 39 years here in Palmerston North she has never seen such an event. I didn’t know snow was an event, but I was cool with it.
Geez this blog is going to be out of control if I keep up this rate of elaboration, but for all of you who know me when I tell a story, this is about how it goes. J
Tuesday was rather insignificant...well actually it might have been significant but I can’t remember what I did that day. ha ha. Actually my flatmate made some good german dish that was just basically pasta with cherries on top. It was better than it sounds, it was like sweet noodles, I’ll have to get the recipe.
Wednesday the adventures started again. So I entered a few friends and I into a “eco competition”. So Ema and I went into town to participate in part of it that was a relay race sort of thing. We were supposed to have a team of 4 but could only get the 2 or us. But after dressing me blindfolded, sorting some recycling, yelling a pledge, wheel barrow racing, bike racing, and building a sign, we got 2nd! We were in last until the sign building portion of the race...I guess I picked up a few points on building a solid simple structure from dad. We had hammer, nails, 2x4’s, and some rope to make a secure standing sign. I killed it in like one minute and we jumped into second place! It was too bad because 1st got a 100 gift card to the grocery store but we still won goody bags with hats, scarves, gloves, and snacks and somehow also got a wheelbarrow out of the deal. It was a good deal for some free fun and stuff. There were like radio stations there and people from the newspaper...I’ll get to that detail in a second. But I had productive rest of the day and finished it off with some volleyball practice.
So Thursday I had the pleasure of dissecting a lamb leg. It was part of our lab to learn the anatomy of a leg, so naturally they had plenty of sheep legs to go around, so Ema, as my TA, walked me and two others through the dissection. It was really cool and a little gross. This one girl was really funny though because she would repeat stuff I would say and I thought she was just agreeing with me but then her friend was like laughing at her and she realized she was just doing it because she liked how I said everything because it sounded “American”, she was just trying to sound like me but I guess she didn’t do a very good job because she still sounded New Zealandish to me.
Friday I actually did some solid school work because I had 2 papers due that day. So it was not so exciting, but I got them finished. Although for one of my classes that day we just went to the gym and learned how to do fitness tests, which meant...we did fitness tests like vertical leap, sprints with timing lights, skin folds, flexibility, agility, speed, including the beep test for all of you that know how miserable that one is...yep, fun stuff. But it was a good time and really interesting and good since I’m just basically taking that class for fun. Afterwards I swung by the place where they have the newspaper and asked them for today Thursday and Fridays paper because as I mentioned earlier the newspaper people were around at the event we did Wednesday and well...I just wanted to take a look because the camera guy had the camera in our faces the whole time, so ya never know. And well you guessed it! There was huge picture of just me and Ema on the 2nd page! It was in the regional newspaper the Manawatu Standard. here is the online link if you care to take a look. http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/5466394/Green-flats-not-so-easy Yes you will notice they got my name wrong, but I think that might be part of the being the paper experience. Oh also we are blind folded because that was the portion of the race that we had to dress me blind folded. So basically this region must have no news and we might just be kind of a big deal, but that is the paper for the entire Manawatu region, which is a pretty good sized region on the North Island. Anyway, that evening I also had an indoor soccer game. We barely had enough players after recruiting a few and played an ok game. We lost horribly, 1-6, especially at the end but I did score the only goal on my team, so I felt like I had an ok game. That is all for now, I doubt anyone can handle much more of me after all of that. But there are some new photos in that album so take a look and I’ll add some more soon...real soon J Much love from New Zealand!
Friday I actually did some solid school work because I had 2 papers due that day. So it was not so exciting, but I got them finished. Although for one of my classes that day we just went to the gym and learned how to do fitness tests, which meant...we did fitness tests like vertical leap, sprints with timing lights, skin folds, flexibility, agility, speed, including the beep test for all of you that know how miserable that one is...yep, fun stuff. But it was a good time and really interesting and good since I’m just basically taking that class for fun. Afterwards I swung by the place where they have the newspaper and asked them for today Thursday and Fridays paper because as I mentioned earlier the newspaper people were around at the event we did Wednesday and well...I just wanted to take a look because the camera guy had the camera in our faces the whole time, so ya never know. And well you guessed it! There was huge picture of just me and Ema on the 2nd page! It was in the regional newspaper the Manawatu Standard. here is the online link if you care to take a look. http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/5466394/Green-flats-not-so-easy Yes you will notice they got my name wrong, but I think that might be part of the being the paper experience. Oh also we are blind folded because that was the portion of the race that we had to dress me blind folded. So basically this region must have no news and we might just be kind of a big deal, but that is the paper for the entire Manawatu region, which is a pretty good sized region on the North Island. Anyway, that evening I also had an indoor soccer game. We barely had enough players after recruiting a few and played an ok game. We lost horribly, 1-6, especially at the end but I did score the only goal on my team, so I felt like I had an ok game. That is all for now, I doubt anyone can handle much more of me after all of that. But there are some new photos in that album so take a look and I’ll add some more soon...real soon J Much love from New Zealand!
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