weekend trip to Mt. Maunganui

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A month ago I missed this day, the 15th, as I was flying towards New Zealand and crossed the International Date Line. Weird!

I can’t believe I’ve been here a month! It feels both too short and too long a time all at once - I’ve done so much that it feels like it’s been at least two months, but it doesn’t feel like a month since I’ve been away from home. I hope that makes at least a little sense…
Anyway, things are still great here. The most recent trip was to Mount Maunganui, a beach and mountain on the East coast, in the Bay of Plenty. It was beautiful! Nine of us left Saturday morning and drove a little over an hour to the beach. We played touch rugby on the beach a while, but it was too confusing so we switched to football. Then we got lunch at a Fish and Chips and headed to hike up the Mount. It’s a small mountain, so it only took about 30 minutes. The view from the top was amazing - the water was beautiful, and you could see so far around. We took lots of pictures. Then we headed back down. John, Mary, Chad and I went down a different way, and ended up on the other side of the mountain, which was even more beautiful. The path at the bottom went along the water, and the edge of the water was built up with rocks, which I of course had to go down and play on. Eventually we got to the other side of the mountain, and met up with everyone else. After that we went to the peninsula that juts out from the beach. Again, there was a big ravine and lots of rocks, and most of us climbed around on that (pictures included of all of this). The guys wanted to camp there, and we would have if there weren’t a sign that said No Camping - $500 per person fine. Too bad. We ended up setting up our little tents at a campground, in the dark. It was interesting. 9 people for two 3 person tents. It actually wasn’t that bad - 4 fit comfortably, and a couple people slept in the cars.

Sunday morning I had scheduled a dolphin-swim with a company that advertised seeing dolphins 90% of the time. I woke up early that morning, and it was rainy and cold. I met the group at the wharf, and we all got on the boat with Captain Butler. He definitely looked the part - big belly, big grey beard, and a wool cap. Unfortunately, our trip was in the 10% that didn’t see dolphins. So basically it was a 6 hour boat trip with nice people on a cold wet day. Not the most exciting thing ever. The people were really nice, though, and I talked to them most of the time. There was a young journalist from Israel, four high school girls on exchange from Germany, a family from England visiting their daughter, and a Maori family. (There were a few others on the boat but they were seasick and laying down most of the time so I didn’t get to talk to them).

After the unsuccessful dolphin trip I found John and Mary again and we headed back to Hamilton. The others had left already and gone to Rotorua, the place where the AustraLearn orientation was. When we got back we were all exhausted, but it was a great weekend.
Back to Friday before we left. That day we decided to have our first gathering at our house - a barbeque! We invited the people that we had contact numbers for, and told them to bring their own meat. A lot of people showed up, and we had a great time. Afterwards most of us went to the rugby game! My first rugby game was wonderful! I love it. The waikato Chiefs (the area team) were playing the canterbury Crusaders. I think the Crusaders have a few All Black members on the team. The Chiefs lost, but it was a great game - lots of back and forth in points. Our seats were on one of the goal lines, and we saw a lot of action. Our flat mate John plays rugby so he explained everything to us - very helpful.

Speaking of John and rugby, he has proven that rugby is not the safest game ever. He’s been playing on the university rugby team, and had practice last night. He came home with a broken jaw. : ( He can talk, but his right cheek is really swollen, and he can’t eat very well. He’s at the hospital right now figuring out what they’re going to do, and he’s hoping that they won’t have to do surgery. I’ll keep you updated.

Other kiwi experiences - I had a lot of them yesterday. I played Squash (racquetball but different) with an American friend. It’s basically like racquetball but the ball is a lot smaller and the rackets are smaller and there are lines on the wall you have to hit it between. We didn’t know what we were doing, but a guy from the next court helped us out a little. It was interesting. That night I went bowling with a friend and her flat. They call it ten-pin instead of bowling. The bowling alley was a lot nicer than back home. There’s no smoking in buildings, so there wasn’t smoke everywhere, and everything was just really new and clean. After bowling they discovered that I’ve never had a hot cross bun, and took me back to the house to experience it. I had no idea they even still existed! All I know is the song - Hot cross bun, hot cross bun, one a penny, two a penny hot cross bun….Yeah. Anyway, it was very yummy - basically just like a dinner roll but with raisins and a cross on top. They only sell them around Easter time.

That’s it for now, time to go to class! I hope everyone is enjoying the warm weather there! Have a great week, and write me!

katherine

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