Himatagni Beach and more

This week was a bit more school filled but that still doesn’t mean I did a lot. I had 1 report due on Friday and another one that was supposed to be due on Friday but in typical new Zealand fashion, my teacher put off the due date a week. Most teachers here are so relaxed, especially about due dates. But I got most of it done anyway. It was part of a project for my Maori class and our teacher said we could work together so of course the 5 of us from Atawhai village made it a team effort and it only took us a few hours to each do a bit of research and then share everything we found with everyone. During the week I also got some good training sessions in with Ema, but she decided to stop doing the sprint training because she doesn’t have time and doesn’t actually need real results for her study, it was just really more for fun, but we still just do our usual gym routine and it is great. On Wednesday though I decided to change it up a bit, one of the guys from church is a professional fighter and he teaches a muay thai kick boxing class on Wednesdays in town, so I decided to go to that. Instead of kick boxing it should probably call it a kicking Jen’s butt class, ha ha just kidding, but it was a pretty solid work out. I was pretty tired at the end but I was impressed because I was able to do a lot more then I would have a few months ago before training with Ema because it is a lot more strength stuff then just my typical endurance type running, so it was fun. Afterwards I had to run down to our volleyball game and afterwards Ema and I were going to work out because she hadn’t yet that day but then some Polynesian girls we had met the weekend before at rugby were playing basketball and invited us to play with them. So we grabbed a couple more guys and played some 3 v 3. I haven’t played ball in forever so it was really fun and really random because we barely even knew these people but they are just so friendly, I love Polynesians. Ema has played a lot of basketball and on account of my height, we won but it wasn’t a real serious game anyway.

Thursday, there was a ceremony for international students that will be graduating or leaving massey and so it was mostly all the graduate students that were graduating that semester and then like 4 of us exchange students. We don’t think we were actually supposed to be there but we had been invited and got a certificate for a “certificate of proficiency” basically I think we all just checked some box on our application that we weren’t supposed to, ha ha, but it was fun to pretend to graduate and they even gave a us a little gift.

So the weekend got a bit more interesting. Saturday a few of my friends all decided to go to the Himatangi beach even though it had rained all morning, but we wanted to have a bonfire and I really wanted to make s'mores, so I found some wanna be marshmellows at the grocery store that were kind of pathetic in size but they worked and so we went to the beach for the afternoon and had a picnic and a fire and I finally got a s'more! But we had to use funky chocolate covered wheat crackers to make them so it really wasn't quite the same but it was close. Fun fact: turns out fires are illegal on the beach so we got in trouble by the fire brigrade ha ha but it was ok, they just said hey don't do it again. Oops. But it was a good day, we played soccer and frisbee on the beach even while wearing our coats because it was cold.

Sunday Brayden and Graeme had their marathon . They both did really good, I was super impressed, especially with only training about 3 weeks. I had wanted to go and if not run it, at least cheer them on but I had general conference so Ema made some fun signs and gave them some moral support. General conference was pretty good, we saw it 1 week after everyone in Utah because of the time change and just watched the 2 sunday sessions on a projector in the chapel. Afterwards I went over to a fellow ysa’s house and we made some giant pizzas with like a million toppings and watched a movie so it was a really good chill sunday. Afterwards I came home and watched the RWC semifinal, Australia vs. All Blacks. I literally have never seen more blood in any sporting event in my life ha ha and they don't care, they just keep playing. Those guys are monsters. Granted this game was probably the 2 biggests rivals in any sport in the entire world so it was extra intense, but of course the All Blacks won and now will be in the final whoot! Good thing too, because I am not sure I would want to be living here in the All Blacks lost.

Fake graduation

Ema at the beach

Bonfire!

Brayden and Ema made the paper!

Haka!

Smore!

After Training one day