hole in the rock from our sickening boat ride
marshmallow roast
get used to turning your head. one of my many marshmallows
flax weaving...flowers can't you tell?
our beach!
sorry about the rotation issues
The top of our hike
the beach / middle of the hike
toilets! still turning your heads left
My purple monster dress
Well the bay of islands turned out to be another great experience. Surprise surprise. We had a nice long winding (as always) ride there, which made some of us feel like dying a bit inside, but once we turned our last curve and the beach opened up in front of us, that pretty much just went away. Jane's parents (Jane is one of the directors of Arcadia New Zealand, my program) live on Bland Bay, this great (warm) beach with all these dark black rock islands off in the middle of the bay. We were all split up into these tiny campers around the property...kind of cool. Susie and I were roomies.
We spent that night first night eating lasagna, eating some sort of quiche deal, eating bread, eating salad, eating, eating something else I can't remember, and then finally my favorite part, eating dessert (http://www.joyofbaking.com/Pavlova.html), ...and then taking a nice long walk on the beach by night. This walk seemed like something out of a dream because you could vaguely see these crazy dark and light stripes in the sand. I was barefoot as that is the proper decorum of beach walking, and so I waded a bit in the remarkably warm water. On the way home, I was carrying Charlie's headlamp and for some reason got an urge to turn it on only to look down and see that my foot was hovering of the carcass of a bird. It took me a second to register what is was but I jumped over it barely missing it's rotting corpse. I commiserated with Susie for a good long bit about how horrible it would have been had I sunk my foot in a dead bird. Nice image yeah. Sweet as. We finished the night with a group charades game.
Some of us were the early kayak crew (not Liz or Audrey because they are not morning people) and so we (Susie, Alex G, Bryan and I) woke up around 7:oo to eat another huge meal and hit the water. It was perfect sunny weather and we took a nice ride to this island out in the middle of the bay. We stopped to pick up some shells and hang about on the rock oysters. Alex G fell in and that's mostly all that matters.
So while the others were kayaking the rest of us did some flax weaving (flax is a pretty common plant here for those of you in the dark,) ate out of the gigantic fruit bowl, and some of the boys went fishing (I wanted to go but there wasn't room for a girl evidently.) We had another gigantic meal surprising I know, which involved more drumsticks in a bowl then I have ever seen. Lots of food later, oh and more Pavlova and chocolate mud pie, we played a Patonk tournament. This is the New Zealand version of bocce ball... Us losers, yeah that's right LOSERS, took a fantastic swim/neck deep wade in the ocean for a few hours followed by a run back to the luke warm hot tub.
The rest of the day was spent going on a 2 hr hike up to the top of this ridge where Liz became one of the most comfortable chairs I have ever had the pleasure of sitting in/on. We walked back to another huge meal....the fish (red snapper, and something with a t) the boys caught and so much more. We finished out this night with a marshmallow roast over our fire on the beach followed by Whale Rider.
We had to be up early again for another long winding ride (felt so sick at the end of that) followed by a ferry ride, more winding drive, and then to the signing place of the treat of Waitangi. We went to the Whare Nui (that's big house in maori) that represents all new zealanders (usually they represent one tribe.) And then governor Busby's house and gardens. He oversaw the treating signing. The treaty, signed in 1840, established the relationship between the Pakehas (people of european decent) and the Maori. It's considered a good treaty even to this day. You should read more about it because it's interesting stuff that I don't feel like writing out here.
Finally we went on a boat ride that was supposed to take us around the bay of island. After the quantity of food that weekend and all this winding road nonsense, I felt like dying on the boat. Dying may be extreme, but somewhere close for sure. The waves were huge. I don't usually get boat sick but this was an exception. I didn't throw up though if anyone is wondering... : ) We stopped by Hundertwasser's public toilets (an austrian architect who was only allowed to design public toilets here) and then I had a nice drive back to Auckland sitting in the front seat talking to Kate (the other director) the whole way.
So now we're all back in Auckland, for the first time in forever, and life is good. I have a crazy 8 hrs of things to do tomorrow but that's thursday. 6 hours of class, 2 hrs of field hockey and a partridge in a pear tree. I took my first test yesterday night. It was for engineering and lord do they test differently here. The test was fine really, but they're so concerned about people cheating that everyone has to sit one seat away from each other (this is complicated because there are 600 ppl in the class so we take up two huge lecture theaters for exams), all bags must be up at the front of the room, you will be kicked out of the class if you have your cell phone on you, and well, they stroll the isles while you're taking the test. Coming from Oberlin, this is weird seeing has how profs aren't allowed to proctor tests. A new public school experience I guess. Instill fear and no cheating will happen?
As for the April Fools side of this, Liz and I were the most horrible people last night and scared the crap out of the guys. We pretended I had fallen, staged a perfect seen I might add, and Liz ran down stairs and got the boys to make them come help her carry me down to a cab that was waiting to take me to the hospital...they looked so concerned, but then I just sat up and asked if any of them knew wilderness first aid. They were so confused, then shocked, then we gave the brownies and card we had made for them and they left. I felt horrible for a while but they said we had done well. Either way, it was a good april fools joke. Here is the staging process
Well that's all I have for this evening. Liz has a new freckle on her toe she wanted me to mention and I would like to say that if you stick your head in the cookie shelf at foodtowne (our grocery store) you'll want to live in there. We also have amazing water pressure in our sinks. Things you might want to know about my actual life. Hope you all are well, L
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