Having a "sweet as" time

Our first Saturday here was a blast! We woke up, caught an early bus, met at the church building where we have our classes and took vans to the beach. It was fun cramming 25 people, their bags and a giant surf board into two vans and a tiny pink car.

Here is our group upon first arriving in New Zealand. There's a lot of us!

Our first day of classes. All of us are about to have our morning devotional. (I'm in the way back left, if you were not able to find me.)

Here we are crammed into the cars on the way to the beach!

It rained the entire way to the beach and James, our tour guide, informed us that it didn’t look like it was going to let up anytime soon. He was right. The beach was freezing! The rain made the air so cold that being in the water turned out to be a lot warmer than being out of the water. Emily, Alisha and I went for a short walk and we drenched by the time we got back to the group.

Emily, Alisha and I

After a couple hours James took us to what essentially was a water park built on a hot water spring. It was incredible! Even the water slides had warm water. The water in the very hottest pool got up to 48 degrees Celsius...which apparently is pretty hot. You could get scalded if you weren’t’ careful.

This is us in the 2nd hottest pool (40 degrees C). The tiny pool in the background is the lava one.

After a good couple of hours there we took headed back to the church. It wasn’t until we were about ten minutes away that we realized we left three of our girls back at the water park! One of them was Brooke, my roommate! The van I was in had been full and I guess no one had noticed the extra seats in the second van until just then. We all quickly turned around and drove back to the waterpark to pick up the girls we’d forgotten. I felt so bad that I didn’t realize Brooke was missing! I had just assumed that she’d gotten into the other van. From now on I’m going to make sure she’s with me whenever we leave anywhere.

Later on that day a small group of us went to a large shopping center called Westgate. It’s got a ton of different stores and we’d planned on going shopping for a while and the getting something to eat. Much to our dismay, we discovered that most of the stores closed around 5pm. On a Saturday! So we rushed and found some dinner at a small restaurant off of a Walmart-like store called The Warehouse. The place was called The Hollywood Bakery. That’s just one of the places we’ve found out here with Hollywood in the name. I think that all of us were a little homesick because the majority of our group ordered a burger and “chips” and I got fried chicken and “chips”. A true American meal. The “ketchup” was a little different than it is out here. It’s pure tomato sauce…no sugar. To me it tasted a little bit like tomato juice and hot sauce mixed together. Not the same. It was probably a good thing that the shops had started to close because it seems that everything here is about three times the amount it is in America! The smallest make-up products are so expensive. I’m glad I brought everything I needed!

Anyhow, we were supposed to go find our new ward, but Phyllis asked us if we’d like to go to church with her today. She said that the girls from last year had wanted to attend church with her but once they’d gone to the LDS church they had been given callings and had to attend every week. She figured that if we came the first week we wouldn’t have that problem. It was a really nice experience. Very different from what I’m used to. We met in a very small building where they set up chairs in a small semi-circle. The stood up to sing all their songs which were different from the hymns in our hymn book. Many of them sounded like they could be on an EFY CD. The pastor who gave the sermon was very energetic and was particularly into congregation interaction. He liked responses to his questions. We talked about Matt. 17:24-27. It was actually quite interesting. He called his sermon “The Unusual Miracle” and said that we should never assume to know all of what Christ might do or say, especially in our lives this coming year. After the meeting, which turned out to be about an hour and a half, we mingled and had “tea time” with cookies and crackers. This was one of the few times I had attended a church different than my own and it’s always such an interesting experience for me. It makes me so thankful to belong to the church that I do and to know the things that I know. I’ve been very blessed to grow up with the fullness of the Gospel in my life. I can’t wait to meet my new ward next week! I would love to get a calling and I want to be as involved as possible.

A little extra New Zealand tidbits. Some things that are slightly different from things back in the States:

The trash here isn’t called trash, its called rubbish. On rubbish days everyone puts their identical rubbish bins out in front of their houses. It makes me think of Privet Drive from Harry Potter.

The light switches (at least in Phyllis’ house) are opposite. When it’s pushed down it’s on and up is off.

There are two flushers on the toilet and I’m never sure which one to push. Apparently one is a half flush and the other is a whole flush. I can’t tell the difference though. Regardless of which one I push it sounds like a huge whirlwind going off in the tiny bathroom.

Cell phones here are called “mobiles”. Because they move around with you I guess.

While we were cleaning up after dinner Phyllis called the garbage disposal "the gobbler". I don't know if this is just her or if it's typical of all New Zealand people. Haha.

Also there's this sign. Apparently "pud" means something along the lines of "flabby stomach". Brooke spotted this Friday on the way to school and we couldn't resist taking a picure.