So Long North Island! Kia Ora South Island!

Tomorrow we are leaving the North Island and flying down to the South Island. Woot woot! We fly into Queenstown, stay until Saturday, and then we'll drive to Christchurch until next Wednesday. I am so excited to explore and travel, not having to worry about anything (school) except for having fun. The thing I am looking forward to the most is BUNGEE JUMPING!! All of the locals we talk to about bungee jumping think we're absolutely crazy for wanting to do it, but I am SO excited. None of us are bringing our computers, meaning I won't be able to blog until I get back. That means that my next blog post is going to EPIC, hopefully full of pictures and fun stories. Get excited :)

Church was lovely today. I loved walking to and from church today because it was a beautiful day and not raining at all like it was last week. They asked us to help out in Primary (teaching the little kids) when we get back from the South Island, so we're all excited about that. I love the little Polynesian kids...they are absolutely adorable. I met a few of them on my run a few days ago: Italy ("like the country!"), Amani, Murti, and Ziffinia. They all go to Colwill Primary School, so I told them to look out for me since I'll be teaching there soon. I am SO excited to finally get into the schools and have that unique experience in education outside of the U.S. It will be so different, and I am ready to learn from it ways to make my future classroom and teaching better.

Here are a few more pictures from our tourist adventure yesterday :)

At Kelly Tarlton's there were penguins up on the wall. Apparently we thought it would be fun to be the penguins :)

This one is Toddy.

This one is Melody. Belt it, Christine!

This one is Dynamo. This picture doesn't capture it, but my feet really did get as high as his ;)

Jess and I successfully completed the Polar Plunge. We had to dunk our arm into those buckets of ice water for 30 seconds. It doesn't sound that bad, but it was so cold that 30 seconds was actually quite painful. But, we did it! Champions!

And this was just in front of the Museum. I thought the antique color option fit the picture well :)

Tourists

I felt like quite the American tourist today! We were supposed to go to Piha Beach and Honeymoon Cove today, but it rained all Friday night, and was still tsunami-y this morning. So JJ changed some plans around, and we ended up going to the Auckland Museum and War Memorial and then to Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater Adventure. We weren’t wearing fanny packs or big hats, but we did take as many pictures as we could :)

Here is the museum...it was HUGE. Three stories: Ground Level-Maori Culture, People, History; Level One-Land, Ocean, Volcanoes; Level Two-Scars on our Hearts War Memorial.

We started on the Maori level. This was inside a huge Maori house/meeting place. It is traditionally respectful to take off your shoes before entering. We tried our best to imitate the tikis on the walls. Somehow our tongues never looked as big as the Maoris or tikis we were trying to imitate.

This canoe, or waka, was soooo long. It started here and went all the way to the back of the room.

We posed with many Maoris who stuck out their tongues to humor us. We learned that it actually is a symbol of defiance.

My favorite part of the Maori exhibit was the Traditional Maori Culture show we went to. These Maoris sang, danced, showed us how to use their traditional weapons, performed with the poi balls, and made us all laugh. It was great.

This was by far my favorite part of the day: MY FIRST LIVE HAKA! haha it was SO cool.

After the Maori show we explored the rest of the museum. It was neat actually seeing the kiwi bird. It's interesting how they distinguish the fruit by calling them kiwifruits, but they don't really distinguish between kiwis (birds) and kiwis (natives).

Here is another kiwi and a kiwi egg. Someone told us we just HAD to see the kiwi egg because it was so huge...when we saw this we were a bit disappointed. I guess we had just misunderstood: it is the largest bird egg in proportion to it's body size.

Another really cool part of the day was the seeing the war memorial. There is a huge hall with names covering all four walls. I thought I might see some Burnetts on the wall and sure enough there were four on the main wall, one on the wall for the South African War, and 36 Burnetts on their internet data base! Now I want to look up to see which ones I'm related to!

After the museum we went to Kelly Tarlton's Underwater Adventure. It was a cool aquarium that is actually built partially underwater. We got there in just enough time to catch the last Sting Ray encounter. These sting rays were huge!

Next we took a snowcart ride to see the penguins. It was an enclosed cart that rode around a big circle to see the penguins underwater and above. It was quite an experience...especially with the massive fake killer whale at the end haha.

There were lots of different fish. This was one of the cool ones...and if you look on the right you can see one of the many lego structures in the aquarium. Random.

One of the exhibits was an underwater tunnel with a moving walkway underneath. It was the coolest when the sharks swam right over us!

It sure was fun to be tourists instead of students for the day!

Classes? Check!

I am done. No more BYU classes. Ever. I officially finished classes for the semester today, and it is only January 28…how great is that?! I feel so old. And my brother, Daniel, even told me I was old today when I chatted with him. Not old in the sense that I’m falling apart; just old in the sense that I am pretty much done with my schooling. I’m excited for this next phase in my life, whatever that may be :)

Of course we had to take a last-day-of-school pic :)

We did some neat experiments/explorations in science today. Most exciting experiment? Why, the exploding volcanoes of course! We put these red fizzing tablets (we assume they’re similar to airbourne or alka-seltzer) on the lid of a film canister filled with water. Then we turned them upside down to start the reaction inside a cup filled with oats. With all the pressure building up in the film canister, it soon exploded and the oats went everywhere. It was cool because instead of just watching vinegar and baking soda “erupt,” we got to experience several exciting and crazy explosions. Good thing we found a vacuum to clean up!

Most eye-opening exploration? The fruit and vegetable close-up of course! It’s funny because we eat fruits and vegetables every day—or at least we should—but rarely do we ever take the time to look at any of them. Well today we just sat there with our magnifying glasses and knives to take a close-up look of some common fruits and veggies. I don’t know if you’ll be able to see all the detail we were able to, and it probably is ridiculous to put all these pictures up, but it really was cool :)

The close up of our mini to-MAH-to. (don't want Alexis correcting my pronunciation again!)

When do you ever look inside a blueberry? Rarely. They're not even blue!

Slice of our carrot close-up

Star core of our apple. It was a native NZ apple and it was probably the sweetest tasting apple I've ever had. Delicious.

This was my favorite one: the zucchini. I don't know if you can see but it has this intricate swirling pattern with the seeds...so cool!

Hokey-Pokey Disaster

One of our science assignments was to teach a lesson with some kind of science experiment. We were in groups of four, so Anna, Jess, Christine, and I decided to focus all of our lessons around making hokey-pokey. Sheryl had told us that it is a common experiment in schools because so many things can be taught from it. Jess used it to teach chemical reactions (when you add baking soda to the sugar/golden syrup mixture it froths and bubbles like crazy), Christine used it to teach changes of state (solid to liquid to gas), Anna used it to energy transfer and equilibrium, and I used it to teach about igneous rocks (we compared the hokey-pokey to igneous rocks to gain more understanding of the properties and characteristics of igneous rocks). Part of the reason we chose these, obviously, was so that we could eat the hokey-pokey afterwards. Sadly, we burned four of the five batches, and the one that didn’t burn still had crystallized sugar instead of melted sugar…disaster. And such a disappointment. The funny thing is, our Professor Ian Milne LOVED that it didn’t work. He was absolutely fascinated with my first batch—the most burnt—because “it’s just beautiful.” It actually was pretty cool though. It had a swirly, glassy outside texture and a bubbly, pumice-like inside texture. Ian was excited because this burnt batch made a much better igneous rock than even the perfect batch of hokey-pokey would have made. Funny how that works.

It's pretty obvious, but the one on the right is the most burnt, but most igneous-y. It gets better as you go around counter clockwise, ending with the only one that tasted good. We're going to go ahead and blame it on the faulty stovetop we had to use. I mean, it definitely wasn't our lack of hokey-pokey making skills ;)

I had a monumental realization today: tomorrow is my last day of class. Ever. I have been going to school since I was five years old. I am now 21, meaning I’ve been going to school for 16 years! I’ve probably spent more time in school than doing anything else. And tomorrow is my last day. Ever. Now, I know still have the practicum in a few weeks, but that’s different because I’m going into the schools and teaching. And I still have my internship, but that’s different too because I’ll be the teacher and I’ll be getting paid. AH! I feel so weird. I should be excited—and really, I’m thrilled—but it also is a little scary. I’m about to be thrown out into the “real” world with a “real” job. Absolutely crazy. Exciting, but crazy. Hope I'll be ready :)

2 More Days of College Classes...What? Already?

I cannot even believe I only have 2 days of class left. But, it’s not only 2 more days of class left this semester, but it also 2 more days of class left of my entire college career. That is absolutely CRAZY. And honestly a little scary. Sometimes I just can’t even believe that I’m really almost done. Time sure does fly.

My perception of the world has changed today. In our Social Studies class we did an activity where we were given 50 M&Ms and then asked to proportion them out according to certain questions. First we had to do the population distribution of the world. The biggest shock to me was that Asia takes 30 of the 50 M&Ms. 60%! Africa—7, Europe—6, South America—3.5, North America—3, and Oceania—.5. Then we had to make our guesses about the comparison of water consumption in Africa compared to water consumption in New Zealand. It was another shock: the average African uses 2 M&Ms or 15 litres per day, while the average New Zealander uses 48 M&Ms or 350 litres per day. Such a disparity! Our next task was literate vs. illiterate adults. For some reason our past guess made us think there would be more illiterate adults, but really 14 of 50 adults are illiterate, while 36 of 50 adults are literate. At least that one is a little more promising. We also learned the stats for oil consumption per capita: US = 42 of 50 M&Ms, China = 5 of 50 M&Ms, and India = 3 of 50 M&Ms. It is an interesting activity to make us all more globally aware of the huge disparities we usually do not even think about.

One of the most touching things we talked about today was the story of Iqbal Masih from Pakistan. His story is incredible. He was sold into slavery at the age of four. He was exploited as a child laborer in the carpet making industry until the age of ten when he ran away. He started speaking up for himself, gained international attention, and began giving speeches about child labor and his life experiences all over the world. He came to America, spoke to many children in schools, and was awarded Reebok's 1994 Human Rights Youth Action Award. He could have stayed and lived anywhere he wanted, but he chose to go back to Pakistan “to finish what he started.” Soon after arriving home, he was murdered while biking in front of his house. His life has inspired many children to take social action and do something about the wrong things happening in the world. Some students who heard him speak during his visit to America raised $250,000 to build schools in Pakistan in honor of Iqbal. Twelve 12-year-olds, including Craig Keilburger, started and organization called “Free the Children.” It’s incredible all the things people have done. This kind of stuff makes me want to get out there and be a better member of society, a better human being. It also makes me feel so extremely blessed and grateful for my life and everything I have been given. It makes me want to enjoy every moment, and not take anything for granted. Even on a small scale, like these beautiful plants and flowers I get to see everyday:

I am so blessed.

M&Ms, Gingernuts, and Current Events

Ian Milne has turned out to be quite a wonderful science professor. He talks quiet and it is often difficult to understand what he is saying, but he has had us some sweeet investigations. Today, he wanted to show us how to teach some lessons, so he showed us by allowing us to do the investigations. The first one involved gingernuts—cookies similar to our gingersnaps. Our task was to figure out why the gingerbread man hopped on the fox’s back instead of getting wet in the river. We observed that they first floated in water, then the heavier material (molasses) dissolved to the bottom and created a brownish/yellowish bottom layer, then the cookies sunk, and then they eventually floated back up to the top. You can’t tell in the picture too much, but the cookies were absolutely disgusting by the end.

We also experimented with dissolving M&Ms. We just dropped an M&M in a cup of water and observed. This may not sound very exciting, but it was so cool. First the color dissolved off. Then the white coating dissolved off in swirling patterns. Even the “m” came off! And then the chocolate stayed completely solid. If the elementary school students are as intrigued by this as we were as 21 year olds, I know it can be a great science lesson!

This one was cool because we put two M&Ms in thinking the colors would mix, but they surprisingly stayed on their own sides for the most part.

Social studies focused on current events today. As much as I wish I was up to date on the current events of the world, I definitely am not. Especially at BYU in the Provo bubble, I know I miss out on most current events that I know I should know. I have decided that I need to be informed and be aware in order to be a more effective teacher, and therefore I am going to take a daily or weekly current events quiz online (our professor gave us some great online resources for this). That way even if I don’t have a ton of time to read the newspaper or watch the news, I will still be aware of the major current events. Here are some of the quiz questions we were asked at the beginning of class:

1. Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar is from what country?
2. The Marshal Island, currently faced with rising seas, is found where?
3. One of the world’s leading arms manufacturers is the Untied Arab __________?
4. The oceanic whitetip is what kind of animal that is believed to be attacking people in Egypt?
5. Fifa’s “Ballon d’or” is for the world player of the year in ­­­­­­­­­­____________?
6. What is uranium yellowcake?
7. To try and put out a fire in the Pike River Coal Mine, a jet unit has pumped in __________________.

Some of them I knew, many of them I guessed. It was easier when I took it because I had multiple choice answers, but see how well you did :)

1. India
2. Oceania
3. Emirates
4. Shark
5. Soccer
6. Raw material for atomic weapons
7. Carbon dioxide

Chilly Bin?

I love New Zealand. Before I came, I had this image in my mind that everyday was going to be sunny and warm. Well, this image has proved to be a false imagination, but even through all the rain and “cold,” I still love New Zealand. The day started off super rainy and windy. So rainy that we rode the bus instead of walking to school. And so windy that there were a few times during class when the building sounded like it was going to collapse. Crazyy!

Just waiting in the rain and crazy wind for JJ to open the gate to let us in to school!

Luckily, the clouds cleared and the sun came out in time for our big group picnic. It was supposed to be last week, but we got rained out. It was rescheduled for today, but when it was still raining this morning, Dr. Jacobs relocated the picnic to the Lord’s house. That meant that Anna and I came home from school today and got to clean the house! Vacuum, scrub the sinks, clean the bathroom and our room, wipe down the counters and the table, etc.—all very exciting. ;) But, it was all worth it because the big potluck dinner was a big success. There was TONS of food—sausage, chicken, pizza, curry, sushi, rolls, salads, pavlova and more. Quite a random group of foods, but delicious nonetheless. We spent the evening talking and getting to know the families better, and it was all quite enjoyable. Lots of laughing and lots of fun :) Oh, and one of my favorite parts of the night was learning that they call coolers, "chilly bins." Isn't that great? Instead of saying, the drinks are in the coolers, they say, "The drink are in the chilly bins." haha love it!

Now, I’m off to lots of homework. It’s the most we’ve had so far and I’d better get started…

Picture Catch Up

Rain, rain, rain. I don't think I have ever seen so much rain! We were going to walk to church today, but it was pouring so bad that we would have been soaked within a minute of being out there! Luckily, Sheryl kindly offered to drive us. I really do feel so blessed to be living with the Lord Family. They have been so kind, generous, and fun to be with! And, we are so lucky Kerry is such a great cook and makes delicious dishes every night. Before we came, JJ only promised us 2 things: a bed, and a school. He couldn't promise that the houses would be nice or that we would like the food we were provided with, but we have been so blessed to have all that we do :) The only big thing to report today is that Anna and I made homemade ANZAC biscuits. Sheryl buys mini ANZAC biscuits and we LOVE them, so we decided to try it out ourselves-they were delicious! We were going to make another pavlova, but I wanted to try some other New Zealand-y recipes; I'm going to have a whole bunch to bring back to the states!

Since there wasn't too much going on today, I thought I'd just post some pictures from the past few weeks that I didn't get the chance to post:

This was from our first day at the beach! From the left: Christine, Janet, Me, Jess, Anna, and Rebecca.

Such a be-a-utiful day :)

After watching the Maori channel one night, Sheryl brought home some poi (the Maori balls at the end of strings that they dance with) for us to try out. After my first attempt, Sheryl told me I looked like a crazy person and needed to focus on only using my wrists to move the poi haha. I don't know if I got any better, but it was fun to try!

Some of the girls have noticed that there is a lot of bacon-flavored things...some host families have given them things like bacon flavored cheese. When we went to this cafe with the Lords, Anna and I laughed when we saw they even put bacon in their crepes with bananas and syrup!

It is a very common thing for Alexis to walk into our room and say, "Do you know what?" One day she wanted us to know that she had made this bubble wrap dress all by herself. Very stylin' Alexis :)

Kodie is hilarious. Except for our very first day here, he always calls me "Anna." When asked where Heidi is, he always knows it's me, but he insists on calling me Anna. Anyway, when I had all my Mozzy bites, he was so helpful and wanted to rub that conditioner all over my legs. So cute!

Last week we attempted another pavlova, but for some reason I didn't put up the pictures. Here it is! I loved our kiwifruit design, but I think I liked the taste of our thinner pavlova pizza better.

We were trying to get a picture of the giant hole in the middle of the pavlova, and ended up catching the kids sneak a taste :) Love it!

Authentic Chinese in NZ

We were scheduled to go to the beach again today, but woke up to clouds, rain, and no sun. :( So, we ended up going to a Chinese New Years Festival and market. It was in a huge warehouse, and reminded me of the Women’s Expos or Bridal Fairs—tons of booths set up everywhere, samples, food, free giveaways, drawings, etc. We walked in and I literally felt like I was in China; the only other non-Asians I spotted were Anna, Sheryl, Alexis, and Kodie! It was fun to walk around, try some interesting food samples, drink some fresh coconut milk out of a real coconut, and then eat the most authentic Chinese food I’ve had. I really don’t know exactly what I ate haha. Sheryl bought us a variety of Chinese chicken and vegetable pancakes, beef and noodle soup (with mushrooms that looked more like tentacles to me), white Jell-o-like noodles (the women who gave them to us said they were green bean noodles, but I’m still not sure where the green bean part fits in), and then some delicious sesame chicken. It was quite an experience.

The Lords had their first taste of our cooking tonight—Anna and I made chicken fajitas! I thought they were good, and everyone ate a lot. Later this week we’re making pizzas, and then we want to cook a couple other big “American” dishes for them, not sure exactly what yet, but hopefully we can wow them :)

One more thing: I’m becoming a big fan of Milo. The first I had it, I could barely drink a whole cup. We found out it was probably because Phyllis had made it with water, who knows how many scoops of milo, and no sugar. Sheryl wanted to set us straight, so she made it for us with milk and a bit of sugar, and it was much better. Anna and I are getting pretty good at making it just right now. It was the perfect way to end the day today—drinking a warm cup of milo, listening to the rain pour and pour outside. Lovely.

Sometimes it really felt like we were in China!

Here are some unique instruments we heard--thought my family would like to see them.

Haha. These were just some goofy pants we saw a bunch of guys wearing.

And here is our coconut milk...if you can't tell by our faces, it wasn't our favorite thing we've tried so far. But it was really cool to drink it straight out of a coconut!

They had lots of different little acts here and there, including these funny Chinese men "fighting" each other. You can't see much on this clip because my camera cut it off, but it was so funny to watch them because they seemed to do it all in slow motion.

I finally saw some sheep!! I had heard that there are more sheep than people in New Zealand, but before today I hadn't seen any. Needless to say, it was kind of a big deal to finally see these sheep.

Tim Tams!

Friday! Woot woot! However, it was a looooong day. We started our last two classes today: Teaching Science and Teaching Social Studies. I already learned some pretty neat stuff in science: 1) I learned out to drop a piece of paper straight down but make it move horizontally across the room, and 2) If you put a metal hexagonal nut inside a balloon and move it around, it sounds like the balloon is screaming—some crazy noise. In social studies, we explored the real meaning of social studies, and it was actually much more interesting than I thought it would be. This next week is going to be wayy busier than any other because we have a bunch of assignments and assessments. My motivation is our excursion down to the South Island a week from Monday!

Kerry and Sheryl took us out for Indian food tonight. It was more like fast food Indian rather than sit down Indian, but it still was sooo good. We tried four different curries; my favorite was the mango chicken, followed by the butter chicken. Delicious!

There was a regional YSA (young single adult) “Milo-side” tonight. There was a big dance party, games, incredible musical performances, and video from the variety show at their huge YSA conference two weeks ago. It was really neat though because I have never seen so much diversity at one event. All the diversity should have hidden the fact that there were an extra 16, very white, girls from America, but it definitely did not. Ha! Especially when they turned the music on, and we were all out there dancing, and most of them stayed up against the walls. We were surprised that more weren’t dancing, and thought maybe it was because they couldn’t dance, but that was proved wrong as we watched the videos of the variety shows and everyone was a million times better than us. Hopefully we’ll come back with a few new moves :) Oh, and I am so excited because Natalie—one of our new New Zealand friends—is going to introduce us to the New Zealand music. We were kind of disappointed because so far we already know the majority of the music on the radio, but Natalie will be our in to finding some new music. Yesss!

Ever since day one, we have all talked about Tim Tam Slams. According to Wikipedia, this is how it’s done: “Opposite corners of the Tim Tam are bitten off, one end is submerged in the drink, and the drink sucked through the biscuit. The crisp inside biscuit is softened and the outer chocolate coating begins to melt. Ideally, the inside of the biscuit should collapse but the outside should remain intact long enough for the liquid to reach the mouth.” The goal is to get the cookie all the way into your mouth before it completely melts and makes a huge mess. Anna and I are proud to report, we both successfully accomplished our first Tim Tam Slam in New Zealand! And let me just say it was soooo yum!

No More Maths!

We are officially done with our math class, or as they call it here, maths. These past four days of maths have flown by. Today was filled with lots of learning, but also lots of fun. Helen, our teacher, assigned us an investigation simulation with pebbles—which are like M&Ms except not nearly as good. We had to go through making a pictograph, bar graph, strip graph, and pie graph to display our results of the most of the most common color in our package of pebbles. We had to be precise in all our measurements, and be sure to have all the correct parts for each graph. It was kind of annoying because we haven’t been held to that standard in so long, but it was a good reminder of how we’ll have to do precise modeling in our classrooms if we want our students to be precise in their work. One thing that was a bit ridiculous was that Helen made all of us change our graph titles from “Colors of Pebbles” to “Colours of Pebbles.” She said, “I don’t care that you don’t spell it that way in America! You’re in New Zealand now and you have to spell it like we do.” Ha. Hopefully I’ll remember all the different New Zealand spellings when I’m actually in the classrooms helping kids spell!

Another fun part of our day involved lots of newspaper and creativity. Our job was to create an “authentic” New Zealand outfit out of Newspaper and colored paper within the time limit. Our group wanted to be different because we knew everyone was going to do some sort of Maori or Pasifika dress, so I suggested we create a Rugby player. Whitney turned out to be a legit rugby player…especially with the rugby ball I made :) My favorite part was the collar we made for the rugby jersey. I don’t know if the picture does it justice, but it looked good!

One more highlight of the day: after school workout video with Jillian Michaels (one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser). Whitney brought the video with her, so we decided earlier this week all 16 of us were going to do it. Well, we did it! It was hilarious. All of us in our classroom (which is really the gym in the church building) breathing hard, sweating, and laughing at all of Jillian’s funny comments. We plan on doing it at least once a week, maybe more…we’ll see how long we last!