in the land of the kiwis : weekend past

this past weekend was another great one!
FRIDAY carms and i headed up to hamilton, we picked up van, and met up with logan and blair and then headed off for an evening surf in raglan. (the drive there was one of the funniest i've ever encountered. but there is just no explaining it. but, to those involved, long live the golden _ _ _ _ _ _.) coast to coast in a couple hours! and what a beauty of a surf it was, the waves were clean, you could look out and see all the eager surfers bobbing around, and the setting sun was majestic. you can't help but thank God for the beauty he created! however, i practically ran a guy over surfing. i caught a wave and he all of a sudden was directly in my path but i wasn't standing yet, therefore, pretty much unable to steer, so, i plowed over the end of his board and heard his shouts follow after me...logan said it is a good thing i'm a girl..haha.
the last wave was magical as van and i both caught one right beside each other and then i looked to my left and there was this other random guy right beside me. and there we were, all cruising along side by side. i couldn't help but roar with laughter.
but in my fit of laughter i had gotten off my board after the wave finished and neglected the whereabouts of my board. another wave came crashing behind me, and flung the board into the side of my head. i heard a loud crack and thought i had maybe broken my jaw. but after a few moments of feeling and moving my jaw around, i soon discovered all was at it should be. mind you my jaw is still tender to the touch. but hey, such is the life of a surfer ;P
after the beach we headed to a local restaurant for some grub and laughs.

after our surf at rags

SATURDAY blair and i played 4 games of pool at logans house and whoever won got to drive the car around that day. and guess who was driving around that day? ME. oh yes, 3 out of 4 games aint so bad! haha
we all headed to the gardens in hamilton for a jazz festival which was alice and wonderland themed. there was this "make a pennant" thingy where you got to design and create your own flag! it was made on a bicycle powered sewing machine. pretty cool!

powering up that sewing machine!

this guy was a legend, so passionate about this project. he is holding up the final product!

i got to learn how to slack line! which is quite a challenge but real good for balance. hopefully i'll get photo's soon from that.
then for a skate in the evening and out to an asian drink restaurant with some sweet as peeps. i got coconut milk tea. it was yum!

skate team: van, stace, me, laura, and blair

our assortment of drinks

SUNDAY was church in the morning, a really great down to earth gathering. and then wakeboarding at karipero in the afternoon. i completed my goal of going from wake to wake yiyiii and also a nice face plant in there to finish things off..
special thanks to Jason Haselden for the photo's! a few select from the myriad of faces that is my wakeboarding face.

i have a nice sore neck from this haha

for the evening carmz, logan, van, blair, stace, josh and i piled into logan's newly purchased van and headed to the Chinese Lantern Festival in auckland. which was such a good time. there were many things to see and eat. and there was one event specifically which i forcefully got very involved in. that event would be karaoke.

some of the lanterns on display

me, van, and stace on the way up!

we happened to have just arrived when they were changing the stage over to karaoke and then my friends just got it in their heads to get me to do it. of course i refused profusely. but they literally dragged me up to sign me up and chose a song for me. they told me they'd give me $30 if i did it. i refused and refused but low and behold, their pleading little faces and that $30 did the trick. before i knew it i was in line to sing "Fever" an old jazz song. but the thing was that we didn't even know if it was the song we were thinking because everything was in chinese except the name of the song. but i hoped for the best. i had an intro from a very cute old asian man and asked where i was from and i told him canada, he said something about delin cion, "you mean celine dion..?" i said. what a cutie. the moment of truth came, music came on and the words across the screen...aaaand they were all chinese characters..haha, i looked up and said, "it's all in chinese" into the microphone and my announcer friend came up and said then lets just dance! so we did and that got the audience going. he told me to go choose another song and someone else would go while i was choosing. my heart was racing as i had to do this all over again, i looked at the book and chose one i hadn't seen when i looked before, "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" by queen. this was it. the time came for me to come back up. the music began again aaaaand, man it was so low! haha, but hey i went with it and i gave my friends what they asked for, a show. i danced, i did actions, i told people to clap, i went down to the audience to give them high fives (HA), i basically milked those few minutes and, i was loving it. at the end i did a little bow with my hands together and said xiexie, which means thank you in madarin and that got another roar. there were several hundred in the audience and they were AWESOME! haha, i actually had such fun and was able to give my friends quite the laugh. and most of them gave me my payment, i think i've gotten $20 of the $30 so far ;) AHEM.

the evening ended with fireworks off the sky tower.

what an epic weekend.

KARAOKE PHOTO SAGA

for your enjoyment

special thanks to Carmen Turkington