Happy Birthday America!

Updating in a pretty timely fashion this time! It was quite the relaxing, chill weekend, and much needed. Friday after school I started teaching the teachers at Waka the teacher dance for the Move and Groove performance we have coming up! They asked me to do it so I choreographed this minute and a half dance to “Marry You” but Bruno Mars mixed with “Shout” the classic wedding reception song (thank you Wedding Crashers). We decided on a wedding theme and ran with it. Amy and Ludvic are the Bride and Groom (Ludvic just got married and Amy is soon to be married so it fit!) Megan, an amazing teacher and role model at Waka is the minister, and the other 16 dancers, myself included are the bridesmaids! Haha its hilarious! They learned the first half and we will finish learning it this week to perform it this Friday!

After practice, Jodi, Amy and I came home to clean the house really quick and Alix and Lauren came over for a girls night! We had a “spa and wine” as the kiwi’s would say and then headed out to dinner in Howick! The place we went was where Amy and Brett took Michael and me and I got the Pineapple pizza again! Yum! J We were going to go meet up with some of Jodi’s friends after but were so exhausted from the week of teaching (how sad is that haha) that we headed in for an early night! Apparently there was an earthquake in the water just off the coast of Auckland around 9pm, a 2.9, but we didn’t feel a thing. We were a little freaked with the recent earthquakes in Christchurch, but apparently that is the difference between California having a major earthquake versus the ones we get in Georgia, tiny and harmless because Cali and Christchurch both sit on fault lines. So nothing to worry about there, thank goodness!

Saturday morning we were up and at em, off to catch the ferry into Auckland and then Ringitoto. This time it was Lauren’s time to forget something (Alix-wallet, Marissa-phone) and guess what we forgot? To call Jodi. We totally left without her and totally forgot to call and see if she was going to join us. She tried to meet us in Auckland and just missed the ferry out to Ringitoto. L We felt SO bad! We did make it to the island/mountain okay though and guess what we saw on our ride in?!? Oaarca WALES!!! Like straight up 100 feet from the boat, 2 coming up from the water, spewing from their blow holes, saw all the way to the white part on their side! We ran out to take pictures but only saw their fins after that. The boat slowed down so we could watch them and take pictures, it was one of the coolest moments of the trip! Once that little ride was over, we docked at Ringitoto and were off to hike up the lava rocks! Ringitoto was formed by lava coming up from under the earth’s crust a couple hundred years ago and is covered in lava rock and lava formed cave formations. There is a crater in the middle of it where I assume the lava came from and then collapsed after its eruption. Scientists “believe it should remain dormant and not erupt again”… quite comforting. The hike to the top only took about 40 minutes, but it was quite rigorous haha. We were huffing and puffing… the worst part was knowing that it would have been half a difficult had we hiked it a month ago. We really feel like we have been lazy in the department of not exercising as regularly as when we were at home and pretty much eating whatever we want. I’m just gonna throw this out there- today Alix and Lauren had to take in their pants for repair a broken zipper and hole in the crotch. It’s only a matter of time until I am next haha. We just can’t seem to get out of the vacation mode and where its okay to eat whatever and not exercise.  I will say, though, it does make it tough when you have to stay after school for meetings and planning until 4:30 or 5 and by the time you get home and change to go on a run, its dark out. That does make it a bit more difficult.

Anyhow! The hike was amazing, and the view was even better. You could see a 360- Auckland, green rolling hills of nearby islands, the ocean that continues on forever. We couldn’t get over how green the landscape was and how turquoise the ocean was. We stayed up for quite a while soaking up the rays of sunshine. We took a little hike around the crater and came back to the top for lunch. On our way down we hiked over to these lava caves and hiked through them! It was pitch black, good thing I brought my trusty purple maglight J  Once we reached the bottom we had some time to kill before we caught the afternoon ferry so we explored around a little. We learned that there used to be baches on the island (summer homes) but they passed a law a while ago saying you could no longer live on the island or build any more establishments. The tore down most of the homes and made people move off the small island, they wanted to keep it completely natural. There also used to be a jail on the island, Alcatraz anyone?

That night we went to Lauren’s house in Maraetai for a 4^th of July celebration! Her host family threw us a little party, red, white and blue balloons, fireworks and all! It was so much fun! They made hamburgers and hotdogs and we brought potato salad, pasta salad and good ‘ol coleslaw J. It was so nice of them to throw the little party for us and made us feel right at home. At one point though, I said “Happy New Year!” because we were shooting off fireworks in the freezing cold and I guess it just felt so much more like New Year’s than the Fourth of July! Haha oh well… We stayed at their house that night and this morning were off to run some errands and then back to my house to hang out, watch wedding crashers and some spontaneous cookie baking. Glad that rough journey up Ringitoto really changed our ways.

Tomorrow I will be teaching the kids about the Fourth of July and doing some sort of activity with them, which will be cool. It was really interesting last night them asking us what the 4^th of July was for. It was really interesting to think about your own country like that and analyze WHY we have our holidays and what they mean. Of course we knew the answer and could explain it to them but it took a little thinking. It was cool to remember why we celebrate the holidays that we do.

So Happy Fourth of July everyone! Happy Birthday America and cheers to independence, democracy and freedom! :D