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| First time SURFINGGGGG!! |
It's wicked windy
here today! Another big storm has blown in a wicked hot warm front
and it’s the warmest it has been all year! I can’t go outside and
tan in it though, because they won’t let us out of the convent
because a tree might fall on us or a shingle might fly off the roof
and slice me open. If I had my red cape I'd be all set though, right
Dottie? Huge gusts have knocked the power out which means I have time
to let you guys know what I've been up to this week: not too much!
Sheep slaughter:
Monday we went back
up to the Topps sheep farm (my homestays house) as part of class and
watched Kevin kill/slaughter a sheep for us. It was a pretty bloody
mess, as I'm sure you can guess because it was a live sheep at one
time. During my homestay, Kevin was wondering how the Americans would
like watching it. He had some good opinions that I agreed with.
Monday came. We went up and he talked to us about what scripture said
about killing and eating, that was cool. Then he talked about large
scale meat farmers and how they inject different chemicals and what
they feed the lambs to make them grow faster and what not. He did the
deed really respectfully and it was as normal as you could make a
sheep slaughter. But some people were pretty upset and felt free to
voice their opinions the next day in class. As I was taking notes in
class, I wrote down the four M words that I kept hearing; Murder,
Massacre, Manipulation, and Mutilation. I was screaming on the inside
that this person decided to talk for 20 minutes about the four M’s.
Needless to say, the women ate two chicken legs for lunch that day,
so, I guess it didn’t turn her into a vegetarian. Later that week
we ate the lamb for supper and the rest of it is in the freezer for a
later feast.
On the town:
Because we are right on the coast,
there is an alarm that is sounded from the center of town every day,
a single long blast is a tsunami and a up and down siren is just
letting the fire fighters know its time to meet or something. It
blasts from a huge speaker on top of one of the hills-a siren and you
can hear it all the way out at the convent. This Sunday, our
professor, came early and was woken by this loud alarm.
He thought it was a tsunami and ran out in the drive way to find Lisa
(funny kiwi women) getting into her car driving driving to church.
The professor ran down the drive way banging on her windows and trunk
so Lisa stopped the car and asked what he wanted. He told her he
thought it was a tsunami and Lisa said “if it was a tsunami, don’t
you think I'd be in a little more of a hurry?” The professor
thought it was every man for themselves and Lisa was leaving him at
the nun house and he had to get out!
We also had to pick a tree that could
become our “treebuddy.” As you can guess, I'm really enthused
about this… not! We pick a tree and go sit with it for 30 minutes
a week and write a journal of what our tree is saying to us. Let's
just say, my journal entrees are wicked short because for some reason
my tree doesn’t have much to say.
This week at the aquarium I was
volunteering again with Bekah and we got to do a bunch of odd jobs.
They have a new octopus that is as small as a gumball-with 8 legs.
It's so small and it is in a little tank that has fish eggs in it so
it reaches out and eats them while you watch. It was wicked cool.
They also have a blue crayfish on display. This week Bekah and I made
good friends with the women who runs it. She gave each of us a
Kiakoura marine aquarium T-shirt for free and free ice-cream on a
stick. The aquarium is great!
Have you ever thought about what
happens to your toothbrush when you throw it away? How many
toothbrushes to you think you will have in your lifetime? Well all
that plastic doesn’t just go away in fact your toothbrush will
never go away. So what can you do about it? Buy a bamboo toothbrush
then when you are done with it you can recycle it! Hahahha! This is a
topic that was brought up a week or so ago. I ordered a couple for
the fun of it, but for the sake of actually keeping your teeth clean,
I’m skeptical if they will really work.
Surfing:
Sunday I woke up early and went to
Lisa’s church because she was leading worship. She gets pretty into
it, I'd say, as with anything she likes to do. The sermon was
something about how each of us are a car. Monica sat beside me and
told me that she was a motorcycle because she only cared about
herself, and I told her, I must be a side-car then because I can’t
get anywhere without someone pulling me along! I think mom would
agree with that! Then we came back to the old convent and filled the
van up with our surfboards and wetsuits and I ran up the stairs to
grab my “bootie surfing shoes” that I got at Mardens for $5
before I came. People were pretty jealous because they didn’t have
any and their feet were cold. So we got there and there were waves so
big! I'm not kidding! they looked so big! Then Brian (a CCSP
employee) said, “Wow, these really aren’t very good waves to be
starting surfing on.” So the waves were wicked big! Rob, Steve, Leah, Kelsey, and I went
surfing and Bekah read the required reading we were supposed to do
this week end so, she could tell us what it was about for class.
I was pretty cocky. I mean, I've wake
boarded and snowboarded, but surfing just didn’t come to me ya
know. First, I didn’t know you had to time the waves so you could
get out from shore. So I ran right in and tried to paddle out but I
kept getting thrashed around like the toothpick that I am. The water
wasn’t cold at all with the wetsuit, so that was nice. I kept
trying but I was too weak and couldn't really get out far enough (you
have to get about 500 feet off shore). The waves were just too big
for my little arms. So after I drank a good amount of sea water and
ate an unhealthy amount of rocks, I took a break and watched from
shore with the girls. I'm just going to say, it's just as much fun to
watch people try to do it because they weren’t good either. I think
Rob got on his knee once that day. I'll probably go again.
When you’re paddling out on your
belly and you see huge waves coming at you it makes you feel like the
wave in front of you is 12 feet above you and you hope it doesn’t
break while you’re trying to go over it because it will push you
way back in. It’s pretty freaky. When you get thrown around from
the wave its like rafting; you don’t know what side is up, or if
you will even come up, or if the board will slice your head open and
let bloods spill out and you then have a million sharks chasing you
trying to kill you. I don’t know, that's just what I think of when
I'm being thrown around like a jellyfish in a washing machine.
Character development:
Rob: when I first met rob he would try
to tell me has been to Maine a million of times. Well, let me tell
you, Kennebunkport (for you flat landers, Kennebunkport is literally
5 inches over the border in southern Maine) is not the same Maine I
am from-no matter what anyone tells you. Finally, this week he was
telling someone about Maine and I heard him confess that it’s not
the real Maine!!
Monica: don’t
know if I’ve talked about her yet but she is normal and a senior
form Messiah studying occupational therapy. Anyway she is here and a
random person came to stay at the convent because they were supposed
to be going to Antarctica but the trip got canceled because of the
American government shut down. So this 'random person' is somehow
related to Monica… small world we live in people. so keep it green.
Just kidding
!
New Zealand fun facts:
1.Farms here just have 1 big fence
around the entire property (1,000 acres) and their animals just stay
in that. They don’t cut down big fields and fence off small parts
of it; the animals are pretty much wild in this huge fence. They can
do this because there are not any predators.
2. It’s a little bit warmer and the
leaves are coming out. So maybe someday soon I can thaw out.
The All Blacks rugby team is what
everyone loves. And if you don’t know what to talk about you just
talk about the All Blacks.
3. Americas Cup, have you heard of it?
None of us have until we got here. It is a sailing race that happens
in San Francisco Bay and it came down to America vs New Zealand. To
win you must win 9 races. Well, NZ was up 8 wins to Americas 1 and
all of the kiwi people were talking smack about the American boat. In
the end, America got 8 consecutive wins in a row and the USA came in
for the win!
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