yay! for surfing pictures!

Mags got a picture of me surfing the other day.

some of you may be thinking, "oh it looks like of stormy."

well, its because it was. very stormy.

nz is beautiful

this is Jacquie Secor, Haeree Kim, and Katie Merrill in Queenstown riding a giant kiwi on the warf (dock)
behind us is where most of our group jumped off the warf into the glacier water that very night.
i love new zealand!

New Zealand is Beautiful:

we have the most amazing sunsets in the world.

with being so south it looks like we can reach up and touch the clouds!

today for school we went fake rock climbing. and now my arms feels like noodles. next monday we will go real rock climbing.

the first and last time i ever went rock climbing was with my friend, Matt Freeman, who is now married to Angela, my other friend.

this one time we went rock climbing, i threw up. and it was kind of funny.

this time, i did not throw up at all or feel like throwing up, so i'm up in the world.

yesterday we went surfing at curio bay (the place where we swam with the dolphins). but there were no dolphins there that day. instead we had a bull seal! it was huge and it was beached until we started surfing then it swam away.

the wind was blowing sooooo hard into the ocean (off shore wind) and the waves were huge! at least 5 feet. maybe 6 feet. the crazy thing is, that for most surfers 6 ft. waves are like babies. but for us they were ginormous!

we were getting completly schooled out there, over and over again we were wasted. there was a line of us with our boards and we could see a wave coming and we would all jump up and brace ourselves.

once i got to ride down the face of a wave (it was awesome!!!!) but as i was coming down i could see the nose of my board sinking in the water. then i knew i had it coming. i literally felt like a rag doll, the water came crashing down on me and my legs flipped over my head and all you can do is let it take you. then when you get oriented enough you cover your head with your arms because your board has to come down sometime. and it was amazing.

i wish we were out there everyday. one of these days i'm going to have to put up pictures of all of our bruises. the moms would love that. i feel like a little boy with my shins and arms covered in bumps and brusies ;)

Queens Park

Queens Park: the prettiest park in invercargill.

we go there to listen to live music, play touch rugby, frisbee, or just lounge in the beauty. yesterday after church we stopped to admire the rose garden and take pictures there.

Kayaking extravaganza!

i love NZ. i love kiwi fruit. i love beaches. i love surfing. i even love the bruises i get from surfing. but i dislike, with a passion of a thousand bloody swords, kayaking. i am not good at it and it is not a flow experience for me. not fun.
so this past wed. was our last day of kayaking. we were going through grade 2 rapids. it was our assesment day.
i was not happy. infact, i was terrified. while we waited for the first group to finish the course. i was more then half tempted to jump from the ledge we were sun bathing at and accidently knock myself unconsious. because they can't possibly make me go kayaking when i'm unconsious right? well, i didnt jump or accidently get pushed. instead i faced my fear and when into the river straped to a plasic coffin. i was getting physically ill, but i did it. and it was fine! i went through the rapids (there were 4 or five in total) without killing myself or others! it was amazing. i have never been so high in anxiety and stress then in those couple of hours. i wanted to die.
but i didnt ;) i did make the instructors laugh at how many times i would flip over on my kayak though. they would help me in once i bailed out of my kayak, then as soon as nathan (instructor)would turn around i would flip again. (i didnt do it on purpose! believe me, its not fun being trapped under the water strapped to a kayak).
toward the end of the river i relaxed more. this was mostly due to the fact that our instructors nathan and curtis started a didymo fight. and i was more focused on revenge vs. staying upright.
Didymo: (noun) the most discusting slimy green/brown floaties in the water. they'd flick it with the paddle and it got everywhere. in my ears, hair, face! but dont worry. i got them back.
kayaking is over, and hey, maybe when i get stateside, i'll go kayaking again. someday. far in the future.

this picture was taken at curio bay

catch a wave!!

today for school we went to colic bay to go surfing and it was amazing!!!!!!!!!! i loved it sooo much! it was so cold this morning when i woke up i had 5 layers on and a coat. at this point i was a bit worried since i didnt have a wet suit. but we wrangled some up from the school and we were ready to go! it was sort to get the hang of at first, but as soon as you start feeling how the wave moves it get soo exciting! i think everybody in our group stood up today or at least got on their knees. *sigh* as soon as we get the hang of it we can go out to curio bay where we body surfed with the dolphins and go real surfing with them! how cool!

Invercargill: my new home

Invercargill, its about the size of Cheyenne ( only a wee bit smaller). It is a couple years behind New Zealand and New Zealand is a couple of years behind the rest of the world. I love it here. We have done alot of second-hand shopping and alot of playing in the parks. We bike everywhere and boy are we going to be happy when we aren't saddle sore anymore.
My host family Joyce and Neville are amazing. They are proud grandparents of 13 kids within the ages of 6-21. They come over all the time. The other day the youngest, Erin, came over so grandma could make her a "sprinkle sandwich"(bread with butter and rainbow sprinkles) for afternoon tea. What a great grandma!!! Every morning I ask Neville how he slept and he answers "Well, with me eyes closed!" in his southern kiwi accent. :)
School is going to start for everyone pretty soon, and I feel like i'm in grade school again for a couple of different reasons:

• we bike to the corner market to get ice cream
  
• we call each other on landlines to make play dates in the park
• we bike to each other's houses
• we get packed lunches
• and then we share and trade everything in our lunches
• we are all in the same class with the same teacher
• we all wear our rain gear to school then hang them up to dry in the back of the room
• we play "mash" when we're bored
• our "mom's" fret about us and make sure our sheets are clean and they do our laundry
  

we ride bikes

We have bicycles. all 34 of us. they are red and we ride them everywhere. Everyone in Invercargill knows us by now. We are either the americans or the mormons. or both.
yesterday we biked to the beach in the baking sun (45 mins and several kilometers of heaven or hell, it depends who you talk to).

The Kiwi's dont beat around the bush. look at those signs for instance. i mean you have to admit, you cant say they didnt warn you.
luckily we didnt fall off a cliff or get swept away as the signs suggest.

black sand hmmm.....

So Cam critchfield (a guy in our group) found out about a remote black sand beach out east of Waitomo where we were staying during the first week. A small group of 8 decided we wanted to go to the beach instead of a hike. It was basically our favorite beach ever. I've already posted some pictures from this beach in the post before. I think you weren't supposed to be in it because of this sign we found afterwards. but we didnt run into any "freak waves". thank goodness ;)
On this beach we ate a simple dinner of Cadbury chocolate, Chips (french fries), and some assorted Lollies (candy). Then we body surfed the "freak waves" jk. Then we played an intense game of ultimate. We are learning to play rugby. it really fun.
In the boat picture its me, lisa fuller, steph richards. in the other one its me, ashely andrews, lisa fuller, and steph richards

pasta for 40 people!!!
























ultimate frisbee on the beach!!!



















diving into the river at rotarua
















the LDS temple at Hamilton, NZ




i love the trees in NZ they are sooooo fun!!!

I steal other people's pictures because I don't have a memory card for my camera right now!!

view of the south island from picton, southland



















My favorite black sand beach playing frisbee and body surfing!!
















Jacqueline and I




Sunset at the beach

just the beginning..

Our adventure started in L.A. where we met up with our 34 companions for the next 3-4 months. 6 boys and 28 girls making a grand total of 34 amazing people! Our plane flight was shorter then i thought might be. We (and by we i really mean we, beacuse we synchronized the t.v. screens) watched Across the Universie together. it was an amzing movie. i love it so much. then we have breakfast at 4:30 in the morning and we landed at 6 local time in Auckland.
At the baggage claim, i came to realize that my bag was not there. so that was exciting. and by exciting i mean not so much fun. but i dealt with it, because we all ended up sharing anyways.
our first stop was Whitianga, where we swam on the beach where the second narnia "Prince Caspian" was filmed. aka Cathedral Cove. we also hiked to Mordor also known here as Tongoriro Crossing. It was an 8 hour hike but we finished it in 5 hours. Mount Doom is as ominous as it looks in the film Lord of the Rings. It was worth every step, it was probably one of my favorite days.
I love our group. we were traveling in 4 vans with trailers stuck to the back of them. the trailers have all of our luggage and more often then not, they fly open on the highway. this is interesting because my van is usually behind another van so bags start flying out and we scream and scream as ramsey (our drivier/makshift dad/one of our wonderful boys on this trip) skillfully swirvse around the bags. on one instance we probably skiddied 30 feet no lie.
i have got to say my favorite place was christchurch in the southland.
Our day at christchurch was a pretty eventful day. The night before 2 girls got hurt on the jumping pillow, stef dislocated her thumb, and janessa knocked her two front teeth out on a slide. There was a huge festival in town, we got our pictures taken and we are going to be pulbished in a book in germany, got our van towed, and got ticketed, oh and saw a guy get hit by a car. it was fun.
i love kiwi's they are the most easy going fun loving people i know! yesterday we learned to play cricket. its not like baseball at all. and we are learning to playing rugby.
marcie (my roommate, but we have our own rooms so i guess she is my housemate) just found heaps of kilts in her dresser, so one day we are going to play dress-up and roy (our host uncle) is going to teach us to play the bagpipes!! Yay for N.Z.!!!

gettin the kiwi slang..

its been just over two weeks since i said cheerio to the states. our group of 34 students have finally made it down to invercargill, southland. i do have much to catch up on but first here is my list of kiwi words that i have learned to use so far.
oh shivers
40 winks
cheery/cheerio
lollie
cheeky
lie-in
bum fluff
candy floss
foot path
jutter bar
rubbish
tramping
tea/ tea time
wee
heaps
frankferter