Tapa Mats and Hokey Pokey

This is what I made today. It was SO much fun. It’s called a tapa mat, and it’s very Pasifika. First we drew grid lines on our paper, drew the design in pencil, went over it in sharpie—which, by the way, they call “Skerples”—dyed the whole paper brown, and then bleached out the parts we wanted white. Far out project right? We talked about how this one project could be integrated with math (measurement, grid, rotation/translation/reflection, patterns), social studies (cultural patterns of Maori and Pasifika), science (chemical reaction of the bleach), etc. I wish our schools were more like this instead of so rigid and strict and focued on certain programs and assessment.

After school, Jess, Christine, Anna, and I experimented by making some hokey pokey cookies…they were interesting…haha. Phyllis didn’t like them, and I only liked them because I ate mine with hokey pokey ice cream and the actual hokey pokey we made. :) I guess making hokey pokey is a science experiment they often do in schools. All you have to do is boil 5 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons of golden syrup (which is very similar to molasses), and then after it boils add 1 teaspoon of baking soda. It gets frothy (similar to a vinegar and baking soda reaction), and then quickly hardens up like peanut brittle or caramel. It was delicious. I wonder if they have golden syrup in the states?

After dinner, we went and delivered our treats to Carol Anderton, our literacy teacher who lives just up the street. We ended up spending the rest of the evening chatting with her and her 20-year-old daughter, Natalie. It was such a fun time! We asked them a lot of questions we have all been wondering, and we planned a trip to visit Mt. Eden and a city tour of Auckland. We even got Natalie to attempt an American accent! It reminded me of that YouTube video of the Harry Potter cast “speaking American.” So funny.

Our night ended with a fun little convo of “do you have…?” with Sheryl. Sometimes I think she’s a jokingly offended when we ask her if they have certain things because she’ll respond with something like, “Of course we do! We’re not that barbaric!” Anyway she was going through some of her cookbooks asking us if we have cookies, or rather, biscuits like brandy snaps or gingernuts or ANZAC. It was an interesting little comparison to show just how similar and how different our desserts are. We now have plans to try many tasty New Zealand treats…YUM!

It all started with the late bus...

Wow. I am still laughing about the events of tonight. Elder Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve is visiting NZ and giving a fireside tonight on the North Shore. Our ward YSA was meeting at the church at 6:15 where a bus would be waiting to drive us to the fireside. Earlier today we saw a bus stop at the bottom of the street of the church, and decided we would just take a bus from our houses to the church. Looked it up, found out the bus would pick us up at 5:50 and drop us off at our stop at 5:55, leaving just enough time for us to walk up the hill to the church. Perfect, right?

WRONG. We encountered many upsets:

1. The bus was late. Every time we have taken the bus, I always get so nervous that it isn’t going to show up—one of the first days we were here that happened to two of the girls in our group. We were deciding what we would do if it didn’t show up, when it finally pulled up just before 6pm.
2. The bus driver wouldn’t give us the student discount. When we ride the bus in the mornings, the driver is always so nice and always gives us the student discount ($2 instead of $3.40). Not this woman. Apparently she needed to see an X on our student I.D.s to validate them. So we paid almost twice the amount we would have to get to school for half the distance.
3. We got on the same bus route we always do, 090, but this driver turned into a neighborhood we have never seen. She turned this way and that, up hills and down, and got us very turned around. We were just hoping we would somehow get back to Triangle Road where our stop was. Eventually, we made it to Triangle, but she turned the opposite direction we needed to go!
4. At this point, I asked her if she was going back at all because she passed our stop. She said, “You never pressed the button!” To which I replied, “Because you never passed our stop!” She pulled off and let us out, but we were far from where we needed to be.
5. Fortunately, we knew where we were and how we could get to the church. Unfortunately, it was raining, we were all in skirts, and Christine was in heels. But, we only had a few minutes before we were supposed to be the church, so we decided to run. Please imagine four foreign girls in skirts running down a main road in the rain, one (Jessica) holding her long dress up so she doesn’t trip on it, and another (Christine) still holding onto an umbrella that broke and is now blowing backwards. Quite a site.
6. Another upset: Christine stepped on a piece of glass and cut her foot.
7. We finally made it to the church (hallelujah), but only to find an empty parking lot. It was 6:24, but we thought we would still be ok timewise because everyone is always late—not the case today! Maybe the meeting place changed?
8. The church is locked.
9. We don’t have a phone to call anyone.
10. We don’t even have Dr. Jacob’s number with us.
11. We don’t know the bus schedule.
12. It’s still raining.

This is where things begin to turn around. We walked across the street, picked the house that looked the nicest, knocked on the door, and asked to use their phone because we were just a little lost. The gentleman who opened the door was extremely nice, made us all come inside to dry off, and offered the phone, drinks, food, a ride, etc. So friendly. We first called Carol Anderton (our literacy teacher) to get JJ’s number, but she couldn’t find it. Next, we called Phyllis (after first dialing the wrong number), who had a hard time locating the number, but eventually found it. Finally, we got a hold of JJ, explained the predicament, and he was soon on his way to our rescue.

Quickly back to the family whose house we invaded. The dad came back into the room saying, “So, you’re not from around here are you?” This made me realize how the family must have been sitting at the dinner table laughing about the fact that four wet and confused American girls were sitting in their TV room frantically trying to phone someone to pick them up. Ridiculous. Anyways, he started asking us lots of questions and was so excited to learn that we were here studying to be teachers because they were a family of teachers! He teaches at Henderson Intermediate, and his wife teaches, too. Kinda crazy, huh.

JJ soon pulled up and saved us from this crazy night. Hooray! Luckily, we are able to laugh about it though because it really is comical. We just have to remember, "Come what may and love it." :) Quite a learning experience!

I wish we had a camera to capture this wonderful adventure...good thing Anna is such an artist and drew this to help us remember. Oh, and if you can't tell, Christine's umbrella is inside out at this point.

You Make the Whole World Smile

Isn't she just the cutest?! I think she could make the whole world smile by singing this song :)

MATH! Today was our first day of math. All day. 8-3:30 with a 45 minute lunch break. I think we were all dreading it a little bit, but guess what? It really was not bad at all. Helen Walters is teaching it, and she is fabulous. She used to teach school (every grade except for 4^th), and then she taught at the University of Auckland, and recently she has been a math consultant for schools all over Auckland. She is extremely knowledgeable about making math fun, and I love it! We played tons of different math games with cards, dice, numbers, and monkeys, and she said we’ll play even more tomorrow! Maybe this week full of math won’t be so bad after all.

RAIN! Today was also our first day of rain. It started sprinkling as we ate lunch outside, and then the skies opened and it poured all afternoon. Luckily Phyllis came and drove us home so that we didn’t have to walk home. If we had walked home, we would have been soaked in just a few minutes—thank you, Phyllis! The unfortunate thing about the rain, however, was that it cancelled our big host family picnic at the park. JJ decided that it would be better to postpone it until next week when we’ll be able to enjoy the picnic outside—hopefully!

LAMB CHOPS! Because we didn’t have the picnic, Kerry grilled us some delicious lamb chops. They were seasoned with Moroccan spices, and as they say here, it was YUM.

PIXIE CARAMEL! Sheryl bought us a pixie caramel candy to try—known for the longest lasting chew. She told us all about the advert (commercial) for it where they was a guy about to be killed by a firing squad. They ask him, “Any last requests?” He replies, “Yes, a Pixie Caramel!” They bring him a Pixie Caramel, he begins eating it and chewing the longest lasting caramel. Apparently it takes him so long to eat it that the entire firing squad falls asleep and the guy is able to escape. My experience trying a Pixie Caramel was not nearly as exciting, but maybe someday it’ll come in handy…

NEMO! Kodie’s favorite movie is Finding Nemo. It is quite common for him to watch it every day, multiple times. I sat down and watched some of it with him today and was reminded what a great movie it is. So, my advice today is, just keep swimming. Life isn’t easy, and we’re going to be faced with tough decisions and situations; we gotta keep our heads up and just keep swimming :)

Sunday's Top 8

Today was lovely, but I’m much too tired to write much tonight. But, not to worry, I will give you the Top 8 of today:

1. Skyping with the fam :) It really is just so wonderful to be able to “see” and hear them. Technology sure is amazing these days.
2. Skyping with McKenna and Lisa…Anna and I sure miss our roommates!
3. Pavlova: Sheryl decided it would be a good idea for us to perfect the pavlova while we’re here, attempting a new recipe or a new method each Sunday afternoon. Trial #1: Last Sunday, turned out more like a pavlova pizza, but still delicious—success! Trial #2: Today, turned out more like a pavlova dome, and then a pavlova cave when we put the whipped cream on, I liked the crunchy to soft ratio of the pavlova pizza better, but still delicious—success!
4. YSA FHE activity: the BYU girls who showed up made up about half the girls there…hope they don’t feel like we’re taking over. We heard there have been some hard feelings towards the BYU girls in the past from the NZ girls who think we’re taking their boys. We decided to just be their friends, and today was a big step in the right direction—we’re already friends with some of them!
5. Big Budda: you know that game we play called “Big Bootie?” Well, they call it “Big Budda” here. Haha. We thought we were just hearing it wrong because of their accents, but no, no, they really were saying Budda instead of Bootie. It was even funnier because the guy who stayed as the Big Budda the longest was this big Poly.
6. At church, there were these adorable twin girls who were sitting in a double stroller. They were ahead of me, and one of the little girls kept pressing her face against the mesh siding of the stroller, trying to get her fingers through the material to touch her face. She noticed me watching her, so I started making faces. She would try to hide, but every few seconds she would peek through to see me again. She was so cute, and got me so excited to get into Colwill school and teach all those cute kids!
7. Also at church, one of the YSA boys introduced us to a new term: mingle jingle. We related it to our version of mix and mingle, munch and mingle, have a cookie and take a lookie, etc., but he was insistent that mingle jingle was the best.
8. Sheryl bought us lots of fun New Zealand treats for this upcoming week: TimTams, crumpets, and the top brand of Hokey Pokey ice cream to name a few. We’re quite excited for that :)

Oh, and I’m trying real hard not to complain, but there is one thing that is driving me crazy—the Auzzie Mozzie:

I literally have over 20 mosquito bites on my right ankle/foot. And then at least another 20 or 30 on the rest of my body. I rarely get mosquito bites in the States, but apparently these mozzies like my blood more than any mosquitoes I’ve run into before :( But, I just gotta think, come what may and love it, right? So, I’ve been trying to think what I can love about this, and I decided it’s the healing gel Sheryl gave us to put on our bites—it’s from Fiji :)

Ok so I guess this wasn’t as short as I thought it was going to be—guess I had to more to say than I thought I did!

Boating and Floating

What a day. Three years ago today, Sheryl’s grandmother/Raewyn’s mother passed away. In memory of her, their whole family gathered at the cemetery today to bury her ashes. It was very informal, but heartfelt. It was neat to meet many of Sheryl’s extended family, and hear cute little memories they had about Nana. It could have been very uncomfortable for us since we had never known this women, but everyone made us feel welcome, and Raewyn even insisted we participate in throwing a flower into the grave.

Then we all went to lunch at a cute little café called, “Ravenhill.” I had cannelloni with this amazing cheesy tomato-y sauce, and also a banana smoothie. But this smoothie was unlike any other smoothie I’ve had before…it was not thick at all—more like an extremely cold drink, and while it did taste like banana, there was another overpowering flavor. We couldn’t put our finger on it at first, but finally I realized it was honey. As soon as I had the realization, it was all I could taste—I felt like I was drinking an extremely cold, honey-flavored drink. Quite interesting.

Highlight of the day today: Kerry took us out on his boat!! It was SO much fun! We boated through Auckland’s harbor and got to see tons of boats, the cityscape, lots of beach houses, a swordfish(!), oyster shells, etc. We also got to anchor and swim around at a small, beautiful beach, float around the ocean, pop air-filled bubbles from the seaweed, and feel the sea breeze rushing through our hair as we sped through the water. I loved it all! My two new favorite things: boating and floating :)

We actually only wore the life jackets for the picture, but I can't even count the number of times Alexis told us to put them on...Maybe she thought we couldn't swim because she was quite persistent!

This is where we stopped off to swim around. The water was so clear and beautiful!

Kerry took this picture and wanted us to say: "Hello Utah! Wish you here instead of freezing in the snow?"

Alexis was SO proud of her driving skills :) Good thing Kerry was there to keep her going the right way!

There were so many unique houses all along the shore. Beautiful!

It was just so picturesque as we sped past the beautiful city. That thing that looks like the Seattle Space Needle is called the Auckland Sky Tower. It's similar to the Space Needle with observation and rotating restaurants on top, but you can also bungee jump off the top of it!

Even the car ride home was exciting: Alexis started dancing to one of the songs on the radio. She was hilarious, and we were quite excited to learn all of her sweet dance moves. Enjoy!

Two mini stories about food:

1. We had fish and chips for dinner tonight! I have been wanting to have some fish, and this fish was delicious! We also got to try fried wontons with balls of pork in the middle, and pineapple fritters—pineapple rings dipped, fried, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Can’t say I feel healthy after that meal, and I sure am glad this is not a common meal in the Lord Family home, but it was fun to try!
2. **Here is the best one that I can’t believe I’ve forgotten to write about until now: A few days ago at dinner we were talking about tomatoes. I said something about how my mom loves tomatoes, but Alexis stopped me and said, “You mean to-mah-toes.” She said it so matter-of-factly. No, Heidi, you’re wrong. It’s not “to-may-toes,” it’s “to-mah-toes.” Raewyn and I started singing that song, “You say to-may-toes, you say to-mah-toes,” but Alexis was still convinced that she was right. The funny is, Kerry and Sheryl told us that Alexis is quite a good imitator and has already picked up on some of our “funny” American pronunciations. We couldn’t get to say any tonight, but we’ll get her one of these days :)

New Perspectives

Anna and I walk down this looooong driveway to and from the Lord’s house multiple times a day (and the picture only shows about half of it). Today, however, was the first day we noticed these:

You might wonder how I could have missed such beautiful flowers? And they were right along that green fence this whole time? I learned that all I needed was a different perspective. As we walk by them, the flowers face down, and I guess I just never thought twice about them. When I changed my perspective and walked right up to and underneath them, I was able to behold their beauty. Here comes the cheesiness…I think that is why this experience is going to be so wonderful: I will gain a completely new perspective. A new perspective on a different way of living and thinking, on education, on my role as a teacher, on life. It is going to be amazing. Incredible. But, I also know it is not going to be easy. I honestly do love it here, but it is different being so far away from family, friends, BYU, and everything I'm used to. Nothing too hard yet, but it is only the middle of January. One of the girls today talked about how we need to always remember to find joy in the journey, not taking any second for granted. So, that is what I am doing. I am finding joy in the journey, every second I can, even when it’s hard. Plus, I can always just remind myself that getting the new perspective of the flowers wasn’t necessarily all that easy either…

But it was definitely worth it :)

Other highlights of the day:

• Finishing our first two courses of the semester! Literacy? Check! Assessment and Management? Check! Woot woot!
• Taking a relaxing swim after a long, hot walk home with Jess, Christine, and Anna. Oh, and then it got really exciting when Alexis, Kodie, and the neighbor boys joined us. And by exciting I mean that we just got splashed and squirted a whole lot more :)
• Eating lamb and mint burgers for dinner. It is really interesting because in NZ mint is popular for savory things (like our lamb burgers) rather than for dessert like it is in the States. They even have bottles of mint sauce near the bottles of ketchup at the store. It may take some getting used to to have mint as one of the main flavors of dinner, but it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be!
• Baking chocolate chip biscuits (cookies) with Anna, Jess, and Christine. It was so cute because Phyllis got out all the ingredients for us and set up the recipe book and everything to make it nice and easy for us.
• Watching my first New Zealand movie! It was one of Phyllis’ suggestions called, “Second Hand Wedding.” Maybe not the greatest movie I’ve ever seen, but it was cute!
• Star gazing on the tramp, and seeing (or at least we think we might have seen) some southern hemisphere constellations. Stars really do fascinate me, and I LOVE star gazing, so hopefully i'll be able to see more on a clearer night. Sheryl even mentioned going to the observatory so we really could see the constellations. yess!

Pizza and Pasta :)

Another day in the Kiwi land. Here are some fun facts I leaned at school today:

• You can’t think “harder.” Rather, you can think differently.
• There is a layer of ash that can be found around the entire earth. It is part of the evidence to support that a giant 6-mile in diameter meteor killed off the dinosaurs.
• There was a young boy named Calvin Graham, who enlisted in the Navy during World War II at the age of 12!!
• We now have butter knives as well as steak knives because Cardinal Richelieu was fed up with one of his dinner guests who picked his teeth after dinner with the pointy steak knives. So, Richelieu rounded out all of his knives. Since he was an influential man at the time, everyone followed suit and we now have rounded butter knives.
• What is the “daffy definition” of elapse? [how a dog drinks] dilate? [to live to an old age]
• D C-L S N D C. [the seal is in the sea]
• I M N D L-F-8-R [I am in the elevator]

The host mom, Julie, of two of the girls in our group (Whitney and Emily), invited everyone over for a pizza and pasta night. We all crammed into their little house and ate some delicious pizza, pasta, salads, ice cream, and peach cake. With all 16 of us “BYU American princesses” as JJ likes to refer to us, it was quite a noisy affair with all our chattering and laughing. We all had a wonderful time getting to know some of the host families, and just being together. We are together during school, but we are focused on school since there is so much to cram into so little time. It was just so nice to get together outside of school, relax, eat, and enjoy each other’s company. We really do have a great group. There are a lot of us (last JJ came, there were only 11 girls!), but I feel like we do a good job including everyone and just being nice to each other. Carol Anderton, our literacy prof, commented on how she has never seen a study abroad group so united. She said that usually there are a bunch of little cliques, but we are different. She noticed how we sit by new people every day, and can often be found talking in one big group. I like that. We are all so different, but this experience has brought us all together, connecting us and forging great, new friendships. I’m excited for all that is still to come…