To Celebrating Life

Today was a very sad day at school. One of Amy’s students (Amy is my host “mom”) passed away over the weekend. Her name was Keremoana and she was only 10 years old. She had bleeding in the brain, woke up in pain Saturday morning, was flight lifted to the hospital and went into surgery but it was too late. She was a beautiful, Maori girl who really did her best in school. We found out today and I was asked to take over Amy’s class for a bit before they found out, to give Amy a second. We then had a year 6 meeting in the Hall where the assistant principal, Margaret told the students what had happened. Of course this news was not taken lightly, and Amy’s class was heavily impacted. The teachers were hit pretty hard as well. One of the year 6 teacher’s husbands is in the hospital, another just lost a close family member and Katie and I had Kere in our Math class. When things like this happen there is little that can be said, everyone just has to grieve in their own way. Many of the guys just needed to distract themselves with books and games which was fine, most of the girls sat and cried and hugged each other. Throughout the day the students in all classes wrote lovely cards to the family to be taken over today. Other sought out counseling. Amy’s class made a beautiful wall and table display to remember her by. Keremoana will truly be missed here at Wakaaranga. It was a tough day to say the least, but the healing process will soon start and we can rejoice in her dancing in heaven with Jesus with beautiful angel wings. As I sit in my classroom typing this it is pouring down rain, appropriate for a day like this. However, the sun is also peeking through the clouds revealing a huge and vibrant rainbow overhead, god’s promise that there is a reason behind everything and with every disaster, there is good to come. Couldn’t be any more symbolic of this day.

It is very difficult to transition from that to my adventurous weekend, but if death doesn’t teach us anything it should show us how special life is and remind us that we need to cherish it. This blog is to celebrate my time here in New Zealand and my adventures with some amazing people so I will continue, everyone just say a special prayer for Keremoana’s family and the teachers and students here at Waka.

Cheers to celebrating life!

Friday I met Lauren and Alix at the Ferry terminal at 3:45 only to realize I left my phone in Amy’s car. Alix and Lauren were not there yet so I had nothing to call with and knew if I waited for them to get there I would not give Amy enough time to return with my phone before the ferry left at 4:15, so long story short I ran to the yhatt club house thing and asked a woman at a closed desk if I could use her desk phone, which she was not happy about. When Amy wasn’t answering my phone (I didn’t have hers) I had to look her up on the computer (which the lady was ever MORE unhappy about) and I FINALLY got in touch with Amy, asked her to turn around STAT and waited…waited…waited. At 4:14 she sped up to the curb, practically threw my phone at me and I ran down the dock and hopped on the ferry as it was pulling out! Whew! Haha Lauren and Alix were there waiting and we laughed over the fact that last time it was Alix’s wallet, then my phone, next it would be Lauren’s passport or something vital. The ride to Auckland was nice as usual and once in Auckland we took a taxi to Carolyn’s house! That night we went to the Blue’s Rugby Game! We had another frustrating situation when we tried to buy a beer with dinner (just one little beer) and they refused to serve us because we didn’t have our PASSPORTS! We all had our American driver’s license AND I had a copy of my passport, but no sir they would not budge unless we had our passports. Seriously? Who travels with their passport in their back pocket?! If you lose that you can’t get home! It was my visa in it too! Anyway, after that frustrating situation we ate our corn dogs (aka battered dogs) and “chicken and chips” aka chicken strips and fries and really enjoyed the game! It was raining pretty good but we forgo’ed our uncovered seats for 4 much drier seats up under cover, and must have looked like we owned the place because the seats all around us filled up and nobody came for our seats! The people in front of us had a good laugh at all of our “wait, what’s going on?” “Why did they do that?!” “Whoa look at them!” “Huh? I’m confused” etc etc. The game is much different than soccer and football and there were many things that were lost on us. The Blues did win though! So we were excited about that! That night we all stayed with Carolyn’s host family, which was very generous of them!

The next morning up bright and early to catch the ferry to Waiheke Island for our wine tour! We went to 3 different vineyards and one olive-oil producer place. We lucked out with incredible weather and got to taste quite a few really amazing wines. I learned so much about the different flavors, mixed wines, the smell to wine etc. Did you know why there are commonly rose bushes at the end of each line of vines? Because the bugs that will eat up the vines will first attack the rose bushes which both distracts the bugs and gives the ground keepers a warning to cover the vines. Pretty cool! The olive place was awesome! They showed us how they made the olive oil and we got to taste quite a few! We ate lunch at one of the vineyards, and it was quite tasty!

Funny side note- at the last vineyard which happened to be the swankiest and nicest we were up on this beautiful hill with incredible views and our tour guide was in the middle of this spiel about something when of course we went to take a picture and Alix had her wine glass in her hand behind everyone with my arm sitting under it (if you can picture this, good luck) I went to pick up my hand to take off my sunglasses and managed to

The bus dropped us off in town and we went down this winding path to a beach! Half way down we decided we were going to stash our suitcases in this little cove of tree and bush, a very good plan that ended up working out- we were free to explore the beach and all our bags were there when we got back! :D The beach was so nice, the island does have a warmer climate than the mainland for some reason and it was so lovely. We threw off our shoes and got the New Zealand sand and saltwater between our toes!

Next was the bus to the hostel. The ride wasn’t too bad, but what the website failed to warn us was that a. it was the last bus stop and b. you had to hike up literally 184 steps to the hostel. Not okay. Haha Carolyn and I had a pretty easy time given our backpacks we carried. Lauren and Alix however were lugging around rolling suitcases and man o man was that a funny sight seeing those two lugging those overhead up al those steps, in the middle of the woods I might add. I am pretty sure we got double the work out due to our laughing the whole way up. Once at the top we finally found our hostel, Kina. Its safe to say we stuck out like sore thumbs. Everyone there was pretty hippie, having been on the island for a couple months working on vineyards etc. just blowing through. Here come the 4 blue-eyes American’s in our matching boots and rolling suitcases, we were sure to blend right in. The first person we met was the owner, who lives wih his family next door, he was great. The second person we met was Guy, a white gentleman with dreds down to his butt. Guy and the owner were brewing their own beer, so we sat and waited, still panting from all the steps, until they were done and could check us in. We got our 2 rooms, both with a set of bunk-beds and a little shelf thing.

We chilled for a bit and then got recommendations for dinner at a winery just down the road. We really didn’t care where we ate- only requirement: no more steps. The winery ended up being a great option, warm and cozy, a little vintage, a little hippie, but delicious. We were told to get the honey-glazed cooked olives, which were incredible. It was a tapas place so we ordered a few things to share. The first was a lamb and couscous which was so delicious. Then we got what we thought was potatoes slices and sausage with tomato sauce on it. After hours of wondering where the sausage was, we realized when we asked her about the dish she had simply said “tomato sauce” and not “tomato and sausage” haha THEN we got what we thought was a duck and egg quesadilla, which we spent the rest of the night trying to figure out where in the heck the duck or the tortilla were, only to realize it was duck-egg, as in the egg in the dish was from a duck, and it was more of a breakfast keesh. Haha we enjoyed the food but between the fancy wording on the menu and their accents explaining it we were SO confused! It made for a good laugh later though!

Staying at the backpackers wasn’t too bad besides the mats for mattresses and the blaring music until about 1am. Guy invited us to a party, but we were already so exhausted, we watched Cars in the lounge and headed to bed early. The next morning we were heading out to catch a ferry and Guy offered us a ride into town! We were going to get dropped off for breakfast, but he offered to take us to this funky breakfast place, with an amazing view of the ocean, like almost everywhere on that island so we ate with Guy with the dreads! I got bagels and locks! SO amazing! (Michael would be so proud!) Then we were off to catch the ferry back to Auckland and kill time there until our ferry left for half moon bay.

Last night Amy and Brett had a BBQ at their house with Brett’s parents and brother and a good friend of Brett’s and his wife and baby girl J They made steak, sausages, potato salad, pumpkin something or other and it of course, was amazing! We get it tonight for leftovers J YUM! It was so nice having everyone at the house just hanging out, everyone is so welcoming and open to having me there, it is such a comforting feeling.

Well, that about sums up my weekend, like always pictures to come soon because I am updating at school. Michael gets in tomorrow morning at 5:30am! I am beyond excited for him to come here and see my new little world for a week! I have so many amazing things planned for us, I can’t wait! J

*I apologize for any typos or miss-spellings; I don’t have time to proofread right now, so just roll with it! haha