Kia Ora!

I MADE IT!
I can't even tell you how excited I am to be updating my blog right now. Haha.
So I'll tell you about my last couple days.
My flight was ridiculously long. But not as uncomfortable as I expected. I had an aisle seat and there was no one in the seat next to me and then my friend Anna was in the seat next to the empty one so we had a lot of space. That was nice. Air New Zealand is awesome, and their safety instruction video is pretty much hilarious. I never watch those things, but theirs was so awesome. It had all these famous rugby players and stuff and we were all laughing the whole time. The plane was ginormous and they gave us lots of food and kept coming by to ask if we wanted wine or coffee or tea. It was pretty awesome. And we had our own personal tv screens with like 70 movies to choose from and a bunch of tv shows and stuff. But I didn't really want to watch anything. I was so tired. So I attempted to get some sleep (and I got a few minutes here and there) and then ended up just doing ken kens the rest of the time.

NZ Money. Sorry I forgot to rotate it. I'm too lazy to re-upload it after it's uploaded.

We FINALLY got into Auckland around 9am their time (12 noon LA time) and were met at the airport by Dr. Jacobs and all the families we are staying with. Whitney and I met up with Julie and Beau and packed our luggage into her car and drove home (on the LEFT side of the road). The whole road situation is still kind of freaking me out. I have a little bit of a hard time crossing the street, but that's ok. I'll learn. And then when I get home in April I'll have to relearn how to cross the street. haha. But it's so awesome here.
Once we got to the house Whitney and I unpacked everything, got settled in our rooms, and took some much needed showers. Then we went for a walk to see where the chapel is that we have class at.

The chapel where we have classes

A cute little house we saw in the distance on our walk

Whitney and Me on our walk through the jungle

Whitney and My swollen white feet/ankles. Give it a week and I'll be dark again!

We called Neeley and Nicole (2 other girls from our program) and went on a walk with them and I bought some toothpaste for 5 dollars. Haha.
We basically just hung out the rest of the day, getting settled in, getting to know Julie and Beau and trying to stay awake until 9pm so we wouldn't throw off our sleep schedule. Then we finally got to go to sleep at 9 and it felt AMAZING to sleep in a bed and not on a plane. And Whitney and I decided to start a tradition while we're here and every night we're each going to say one thing we're thankful for and why. We're cute, I know.

Whitney and my room :)

Our back deck

The lounge/kitchenette

 This morning we woke up at about 630 and showered, had some delicious NZ cereal and headed off to class. Classes today were good. We just had an intro to NZ and the NZ school system. It was really interesting, and Carol (our teacher) gave us a lot of food to try. We tried golden kiwis, meat pies (with tomato sauce--which is their equivalent of ketchup), kumara (which is similar to a sweet potato, but way better), milo (which is like hot chocolate), and this lemon soda called L&P. Those were all pretty good, but then we also tried marmite, which is waaay weird. It's really similar to vegemite apparently, but I'm definitely not a fan. Haha.
At class today, we also learned a couple Maori songs, the New Zealand National Anthem, and some dance moves for one of the songs. Haha. We looked pretty awesome, I'm sure. I've been trying to learn the accent, but it hasn't been working very well. I sound kinda dumb. Haha. We also learned how to hongi (which is the Maori greeting where you touch your noses together. It's really...interesting...to say the least. But apparently it's something we'll have to do in the schools and possibly at church too. So better get used to it. Haha.
After school, Neeley, Nicole, Nancy, Hannah, Whitney, and I went back to our house and then walked down to the park on our street. It was less of a park, and more of a just a field behind a high school (or college as they call it here). There were a bunch of Samoan guys there sitting and talking and we went and talked to them to see if they knew any cool things for us to do while we're here. It was really funny though because they freaked out when they heard us talk and they were like "hey, are you from america???" and they told us we had sexy accents which I thought was funny because, clearly we don't have accents...THEY DO! haha. But they taught us how to throw a rugby ball which was pretty fun and exciting. They were super awkward though because they were like 18 and when they found out we were 20-22 they were super surprised. 

Most of our group after classes today. From the left--Anna, Me, Heidi, Whitney, Janet, Diana, Katie, Rebecca, Nancy, Hannah, Neeley, Nicole, Christine, and Jessica

Nancy, Hannah, Nicole, and Me on this weird 4 person see-saw at the park

Sorry this was the longest blog post in the history of the world, but I had a lot to say. I promise I won't be so obnoxiously wordy in the future.