You can even get sick in magical wonderlands but zwiebelkuchen makes up for it!

It was a rough start of this week. I got sick with a cold Monday and just couldn’t get rid of it. I drank heaps of water and ate all my kiwifruits. I just basically sat in my room for 2 days because I didn’t want to spread germs. I even missed Canadian thanksgiving, I was going to celebrate with Ema and Brayden, the resident Canadians, but it happens and it is never convenient. Being sick sure makes you appreciate being healthy and also appreciate soft tissues because toilet paper just hurts after a day of blowing your nose. I missed a couple classes but nothing too big. Thursday I went to the gym to try and get my blood pumping to work the sickness out of me and afterwards Ema and I decided to do our own little barbque by frying hamburgers. She brought avocado put on hers and so I put a little on mine. A lot of my friends eat avocado a lot here and I used to hate it, but now I think it is really growing on me, they are so cheap here and always so good. Finally by Friday I was feeling ok. Yuko invited me over for dinner with the missionaries. It is always so fun to sit down and have a proper meal with good company. Afterwards I hung around and helped her plan for our Atawhai pizza party the following Saturday. So I finally was doing good from being sick and Ema started to get sick! I felt bad but I really tried to avoid people to not get them sick but she was only kind of sick for a couple days. Later Friday evening, Franzi had decided another german food night was in order. So it was time for zwiebelkuchen! And well if you speak German, it is pretty much like it is called, a cake of onion, just kind of like a glorified pizza crust with loads of onions baked in. It made for a fun evening with bad breathe for everyone! But I love the diversity of our evenings. It never gets old hanging out with 4 Germans, a Scot, a Pole, a French woman, 2 Canadians, 3 Americans, and occasionally a couple kiwis. They are all such awesome people and even though we really are from so many different places we have a blast and all get a long super well. After onion cake we just hung out and I made it a pretty early night (about 1 am haha) because I was still recovering from being sick. But it just makes me smile that we have such an awesome community here and all my friends are just a few houses away so I can just mosey home whenever or run home really fast if I forgot something. I can even just show up at any of their houses whenever I want and say hi or stay awhile. No need to really call or text when you can just walk over and talk to someone face to face. We do anything and everything together. You can always go cook dinner with someone or bake cookies or go into town or down to campus. We really just have a close group that look out for each other and always keen to do stuff, I love it. Throwing a party can be totally spur of the moment and as long as people are in town you are sure to have at least 10 people hopping and ready to have a good time. It is cool. Anyway, on Saturday we had our pizza party in the common room. Yuko order loads of pizzas and snacks and treats. We all hung out and had a good time. It was a lot of really good food and there was even ice cream for dessert after. Near the end there was still some leftover food so Warren had invited the missionaries to come over and get Pizza. I had left for a bit but when I came back some of my friends were leaving and were like” Jen, watch out there are some Jehovah’s Witness’ in there if you don’t want to talk to them”. I looked in the window and was like “no those are Jehovah’s Witness’, those are Mormons. Those are cool guys, a couple of them are even from Utah. They are my friends and just Mormon missionaries.” I just sort of explained who they were and I think they still thought it was little weird that Warren invited them to our party, but maybe they will realize they are normal people and not some freaks trying to shove religion down their throats. It was a fun evening anyay and we finished it off of course by watching some more rugby. The tournament is coming to end! It will be the All Blacks vs. France in the final!

Another fun thing we have also started a new tradition of Sunday morning pancakes. Every Sunday we get together and make pancakes it is kind of like waffles at home but instead of with my family back home it is with my “Atawhai family” I have here. It makes for a good start to my Sundays.  

Franzi cooking onions....lots and lot of onions!

Excited for onion cake!

zwiebelkuchen!