Doctor's Appointments, Plane Rides and Glow Worms

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And so, the first leg of our epic journey began with an incredibly hectic Monday. We woke up in the morning feeling pretty good about our day- just needed to do laundry, finish packing, check out of our apartment at 3:30 pm, and meet up with the choir to load the bus at 6. Well, things started to get complicated when I left for an internship appointment at 11 and then Kaylee didn’t feel too hot and needed to get some medicine from the student health center. We threw our clothes in the wash before we left, with just enough money left on our laundry card to dry two loads… perfect. Well… my meeting went great and I got some great leads, but Kaylee had complications at the health center since she is no longer a full-time student. She ended up waiting around for about two hours until a friend showed up and worked things out (mini miracle, by the way). Meanwhile, I went home to change out the laundry and make lunch. Lo and behold, the washing machine didn’t do the dry-spin cycle and so one of three loads was sopping wet. I wrung it out and combined the three loads into two dryers with a vain hope… alas, to no avail. 45 minutes later we had three loads of wet clothes and no money on our laundry card. We tried to hang a few things up to dry on clotheslines but it started to rain… we called our friends to ask if we could borrow their card, but they lost theirs literally ten minutes before we called… long story short, t’was a disaster. So we hung up what we could in our closet with the fan on and moved on with packing and cleaning. By now we were several hours behind schedule and racing against the clock… 3:30 rolled around but the check-out guys were also behind and didn’t come until four. Even then, we needed a few minutes more. Thankfully (another miracle), one of the guys is in our bishopric and was extremely kind and merciful. At 4:30 we vacated our apartment, leaving our suitcases at a friend’s house but still stuck with a laundry basket of wet clothes. A third miracle, we met yet another friend who let us borrow a card and we were able to throw clothes in to dry. We ran around giving back everything we had borrowed and giving away everything not worth taking with us. Dearly beloved friends fed us dinner and we got clothes out of the drier at 5:30, threw them in our suitcases at 5:38, and left for the choir room at 5:42. Incredibly, we were on time and our bags were under the weight limit. Now, perhaps that isn’t what you were expecting to read, but I feel it was an important part of our trip nonetheless.

Wednesday:

The flight was, you guessed it, long. The most interesting thing was that Tuesday completely disappeared: we left Monday night and arrived Wednesday morning, 8½ hours later. It was 6 am, which meant we had a whole day ahead of us. We loaded up on a bus and drove from Auckland to Hamilton (a few hours away). Definitely not feeling too good, but along the way we stopped at an elementary school and sang a few songs for the kids. Totally made our day. Seeing their expressions and reactions was fantastic. One great thing about New Zealand is that, traditionally, history and culture was transmitted through song. So, when two parties greet each other formally, they often sing to each other. So we sang to the kids, and they sang to us. After that, I didn’t feel so grouchy about having a full day after a night on a plane.

After lunch we visited the Waitomo caves. Absolutely incredible. First of all, beautiful caves. We don’t have any pictures because they’re not allowed, but look it up if you want. Second, parts of the cave are filled with glow worms. The tour ends with a boat ride in the complete darkness… except that the ceiling glows with pinpricks of blue light that reflect in the black water. What’s more, the worms are sound-sensitive so everyone is silent. Beautiful… it felt like looking at stars. The highlight of the tour, however, was singing in the cathedral room. It was the largest cavern in the cave system, with a vaulted ceiling 14 meters high. Our guide was a hardy old Maori guy named Trevor (Uncle Trev for short). He was cracking jokes the whole time, but he had a very deep feeling for the caves- his family discovered them over a hundred years ago and has been guiding people through them ever since. Well, when we started singing, he turned all the lights off. We sang a Latin piece composed by a former choir member, called “Ubi Caritas.” In brief, the text described the love of Christ and offered a prayer for our hearts to be sincere, saying, where charity and love are, Christ is there. We sang in the darkness with incredible acoustics, listening closely to each other. I can’t really describe it to you with written words; it was a feeling created through sound. When the lights came up, Uncle Trev was crying, as were some of our New Zealand chaperones. He thanked us and said, “Many people have come to sing in here, but my caves have never heard anything as beautiful as what you just sang.” It was an incredibly empowering moment that set the tone for the rest of the tour.

That afternoon we arrived in Hamilton and met with our host families. The tour organizers had originally planned on hotels the whole way, but their counterparts in New Zealand refused and insisted and having us stay with members. What an inspired idea! It made the whole trip far more meaningful and New Zealand won our hearts through the love of its people. Kaylee and I were picked up by Marilyn Williams, a fantastic woman and model Latter-day Saint. She’s the stake relief society president, her husband is the patriarch, etc. Lovely people, absolutely charming. We had a few minutes to shower (really nifty- you pre-set the temperature and then just turn it on) and eat dinner (pork chops are soooo much better than airplane/travel food) before we left for a youth/young single adult fireside at the chapel. It was ok… we were exhausted and audience energy was low, but Kaylee and I got to talk about how we met and what advice we had for people preparing for marriage. Fun stuff. At long last, we got to sleep.

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Photos

At the Airport
Pink Jordan Almonds turn your tongue pink...
(And ignore Satoru in this one)

Elementary Schoolers
We sang for an elementary school right away - we were freezing, but they were in shorts without any shoes!