bday weekend

this past week was a good one filled with work, helping campbell with the veggie boxes, surfing, watching Intouchables (such a good flick, i recommend), night longboard sessions, youth group at BBC, skypeing the fam for my sister leah's bday and my own and opening the wonderful birthday package they sent me.

birthday package from home!! 

skypeing my fam whom i love more than words can say

goodies in the package :D

FRIDAY was my NZ birthday! i awoke to gifts from carmen, jenni and rodney, so sweet of them :) i headed to work at monte gelato, had a pretty slow day soo i did a little photo shoot.

i can see the ocean from work!  

posing with some yum gelato, i believe from left to right we have
blackberry white chocolate, pistachio, and vanilla

job title: Gelaton Technician, no joke, it's on my payslip 

yum!

i came home to a lovely surprise! my room filled with balloons and streamers compliments of carmen and a bag of yummy goodies from laura (thanks laura!). i was allowed to choose what we were going to have for dinner or "tea" as they call it. and i chose butter chicken, YUM! they also baked me a lovely cake which was adorned with the number 23 candles sent to me from my fam package, it was a joint effort! and carmen made me a pavlova, a dessert originating in this area. one of my FAV desserts!

balloons and streamers!

birthday goodies

yum bday dinner: rodney, jenni, carmz, laura, and i

PAVLOVA!

"family away from home" photo

balloon after math, it took a great deal of effort to pop all those.
i made sure to plug my ears, wear shoes, and make noises.

after dinner laura and i went to city church youth and then after a group of us went to mark's flat (the youth pastor) to hang. and we had great chats late into the night. it was a good 23rd :).

SATURDAY morning i met up with some city church peeps for coffee and then headed to work again at monte gelato as i was filling a shift for someone. after work laura (a different laura haha) met me at the mount and we went for an awesome skate. there's something about the cool evening air and the stars that make it so invigorating but relaxing at the same time. then we headed to mark's flat again to hang with a bunch of folk. community is an awesome thing.

feijoa fruit a work friend gave to me off her tree

SUNDAY in the morning we went to BBC to help with the set up of easter journey. a MASSIVE walk through experience telling the story from the start to finish of the Bible. they've been working on it for weeks and planning for months. apparently around 8,000 people went through it the last time they did it and this year they are planning on 10,000! so there is tons to do, and i even got to use a router, yup, they trust me with it.
in the afternoon we went to watch a soccer game where we had friends on both teams, van and laura r. and then jetted off to go to Adrenaline Adventures for my birthday technically. it was quite challenging and SO fun! it's a series of high ropes courses. there are 6 different pathways and they get higher, harder and longer as you go along. the highest level is 18m up, you are in charge of your safety as there aren't any guides, they just show you the ropes (pun intended), make sure you can do it, and away you go! photos courtesy of Jase.

carmz and i loving it!

laura battling the barrels

walking on a wire through logs

swinging anything didn't really work so well for me..

we really bonded on our excursion.
left to right: logz, carmz, jase, laura, and i

blood bruising aftermath, hardcore!

heading late (due to tree climbing) to city church with Jason closed the end of the voundabar weekend.

city church and raft races

FRIDAY eve i was invited by a friend from work to come to city church as they have a youth group that includes young adults, (people my age! at Bethlehem Baptist it's a really large church but there is a lack of young peeps or any groups for them) and since the younger kids were away at a camp, it was just my age group going out to eat and have drinks. i was a bit intimidated going but i've heard really great things about this church so i really wanted to check it out. i brought carmen and we went. and i was pleasantly greeted by some really cool people. people i can now call my friends. (and it's fb official haha) it just takes that little bit of courage sometimes and it normally turns out to be so worth it. we went to this REALLY cool restaurant called Astrolabe. it has an awesome atmosphere. there's a patio/ porch area and a camper van and astro turf and real mean decor such as possum fur hanging from the roof. i'm gunna go back :)

SATURDAY i worked in the morning at cafe eden and then headed to our youth day (with the youth group i am a leader at at Bethlehem Baptist Church or BBC). our event was raft races yiyiea! there were about 5 or 6 different teams and we all had about an hour to build a raft for our team from bamboo, tubes, and our particular group had an old cover for a hottub. and a twist was we were allowed to have ammo! the ammo ranged from eggs to rotten tomatoes to flour bombs to horse poo. so once one the water, the first 1/2 an hour or so was intense ammo showers and then war raged from raft to raft. our's got completely demolished. bois came and untied all our bamboo and, well, perhaps our raft design wasn't the best haa. but after about the first hour the cold set in and i mean COLD. and out of all the days of sun we've had (every single one since i've been here) it turned out to be a very overcast day. no sun. i stopped moving which was a bad idea but i was so cold that i couldn't really start moving again. but we had some real troopers on our team, much stronger than i. we ended up being in the water for about 3 hours. (we've dully noted that that was too long and for the next time we will shorten the length of the race) almost every team had to get towed several times to get us to the end faster haha. we had a feed at the end and then prizes were awarded. i was awarded the pity prize basically. haha, he intro'd it like, "this person endured hypothermia and blood shed and you'd think they'd be able to handle the cold as they aren't a kiwi, but canadian, etc" i just got made fun of really. a few of the leaders thought it was funny to slap my cut, they acted like they were feeling sorry and then they'd get close and just slap it! funny, yes. painful, somewhat. it felt SO good to finally get warm again after it all!

our raft team!

out floating craft we lovingly called "oh ship". thanks Avon. 

all heading to the river 

ammo!

we were sinking right from the get go..haha

what a well built raft really should look like..

several of the crews heading down the river

quite the contraption

sinking a tub HA

getting preeetty cold

getting towed by one of the saftey boats, what was left of our raft

what whaaaaat

war wounds

yummaaaay

SUNDAY was church at BBC in the morning then we had a leaders lunch, (which we have once a month) and then i wanted to check out the night service at city church so i went along with my friend jono (van's brother). it was really good. the service was good and i got to meet some more real cool people and catch up with some of the ones i met on the friday night. a crew of us went to get some food after at this mexican place, burrito brother's or something like that, which was great. i'm feeling super blessed at being able to meet so many welcoming loving people who really want to get to know me!

some slang

i have been asked for clarification several times as to why i use "as" after certain words for example "sweet as". it is not a mistake. and i decided to clear the air with the definition of that among other kiwi slang just for fun that i found off a website. hope you likie!

Sweet As		Cool or Awesome (you could also say something like, "slow as", if someone were going slow. it would just be like Canadians saying "really slow" or "so slow".
Kiwi		New Zealanders
No Worries		It's OK / Not a Problem
Haka		Maori war dance, commonly used by national sports teams
Hangi		Traditional style of Maori cooking
Jandals		Flip Flops / Thongs
Arvo		Afternoon
Sauce		Ketchup
Tramping		Hiking
Bro		Brother or good friend
How ya going?		How're you doing?
Knackered		Tired/Exhausted
Dear		Expensive
Motorway		Highway
Jersey or Jumper		Pull Over / Sweater
Feijoa		A popular garden tree and the fruit is commonly eaten which is green and sweet.
Hot Chips		French Fries
Dairy		Corner Store
Ae/Aye		As in agreement with what you said, "it's real hot today ae" or instead of asking "what?"
Mate		Friend

rotorua & taupo

SATURDAY carmz and i headed for taupo to meet up with van, logz, and blair. on our way we went through rotorua which let me tell you REEKES of rotten eggs. but it's because of all of the thermal hot pool in that area which are sulfuric. we stopped so i could see the lake there as well as some boiling mud pits which pump out steam. it's quite a sight seeing mud boiling on the surface of the earth..makes you wonder what's going on much further down.

lake rotorua

continued our trek to taupo and met up with the others at a market. we got some feed then headed out to float down the waikato river which connects into lake taupo.
we got all geared up into wetsuits, pumped up some tubs and an airbed and set out for our river mish. after a few moments of trying to figure out why my wetsuit wasn't zipping up properly logan looks at me and says, you've got that on backwards, see those knee pads, they should be in FRONT of your knees. weeeell we all had a good laugh and then had to wait another good five minutes for me to remove said wetsuit and adorn it properly. so much effort. but of course it's always worth it in the end.

the team: logz, carmz, van, me, blair, and stephan in the back, he regretted not wearing a wettie

chillen like some villans

beaut of a day

"standing" on the airbed

the boiz were bringing up rocks from the bottom. logans was by far the biggest.
and then they decided to carry it the whole way..

a bungee tower right above us! we got to watch a guy jump, wasn't
 too entertaining tho as he didn't squeal or anything.

look at that clear water! 

at the end there were hot pools you could sit in, which were SOO hot, such a contrast from the really cold river.

hot hot pools

it was a little too hot for carmz :)

we went to get some more grub after and then headed to the skate park to watch the locals and the bois skate. there were so many cute/real good little little kids, probably as young as 5. there was this one little girl riding her skateboard and playing one note on her recorder which was quite entertaining.

after dark we headed to a place where a hot stream meets up with a cold stream, almost like a fork where they connect and it creates a perfect temperature sitting pool. you can move more one direction to get warmer and the other to get cooler. it is such a beautiful area especially at nighttime with all the zillions of stars. since i was with people who had done this before we were super set. with a boogie board to put drinks and snacks on to float between us, and tea lights to put on the rocks around us. such a mean experience.

boogie board goodies 

loving life!

veggies and celine

MONDAY i helped out a friend of mine, Campbell who is just starting up an organization called Good Neighbour and to support himself he is putting together and selling fruit and veg boxes. on monday it was his first round of orders to be completed. so i got up real early and we headed out to pick up the produce from local distributors. constucted the boxes, put labels on and packed them up in a pretty fashion! i then headed to a shift at Eden Cafe. after my shift he picked me up again and we headed around dropping about 30 boxes off. which ended up taking quite a bit of time! but each time the process should get smoother and it was neat to be a part of the beginnings of this project. for my time he gave me some fresh fruit and veggies, can't beat that!

packing the boxes for Good Neighbour

FRIDAY i picked up my..... CARRRR! super stoked about it. i've been looking for the past several weeks for something cheap, but quality. there were a few ones that came close but rodney ended up being the one to find this little dime piece.

celine and me!

i like to call it Celine. for a few reasons. one, Celine Dion is very canadian. two, it's funny. three, i'm keeping with the french theme (car in canada is Jacques...what the hay i have two cars!?). four, Celine just simply sounds like a fitting name for this champagne coloured car.