My New Zealand Trip: Mission Bay Weekend!

Most of the food here I have enjoyed so far. There are similar dishes like potatoes, green beans, ham and such. I found one pleasant surprise when Phyllis offered us some biscuits after school. I wasn’t sure if I wanted that flakey hunk of bread that we call biscuits in American, but then she pull out a huge box of cookies! In New Zealand they call cookies biscuits! But there are few things that I really don’t enjoy. One dish was made with rice, curry, and the green grassy part of the cilantro. I didn’t think that people where suppose to use the top part of that herb to actually eat. Tonight I discovered another dish that my stomached and nose do not agree with. It is a cucumber, sour cream, mint concoction…. Ah I hate it.

I can smell it from across the table. And the thing is if we don’t finish it for dinner one night, Christine and I know that we are getting fed it the next night. Often times we try to take these dissatisfying dishes to lunch where we try to make our friends at school eat it. This means that we end up with a smaller lunch because we can’t pack much food we actually like, but it saves us from having the dish a third or fourth time with our dinner.

This weekend we had another girls night! It started Friday afternoon when school got out. We went swimming at the Lord’s house (Heidi and Anna’s host family’s house) in this 4 feet deep above ground pool. Alexis (the Lords little girl) and her friend Alex played with us in the pool. Alexis just sprayed us all in the face with the water gun the whole times, while Alex who is only 4 years old impressed us with flips. I helped him work on trying to breath while he swam across the pool! He did a wonderful job :)

Next we came home for dinner with Phyllis. After dinner Heidi and Anna joined back up with us to start our first baking attempt in New Zealand. I would have to say baking is my forte in the kitchen area and the cookies turned out pretty well if I do say so myself! I don’t know if it was all the sugar and butter, or the New Zealand ingredients that makes better treats, but I like to think it was my baking touch that created this wonderful dessert! (I am working on cooking actual meals when I’m back in the states because my dad always warns me that I won’t ever get married until I improve me cooking skills ha)

Then we watched another movie with Phyllis and enjoyed watching her laugh more than the movie it’s self. It was our first New Zealand film that we have watched so far. It was called “Second-Hand Wedding.” It was a little bit cheesy but the accents made it very enjoyable and it was a sweet story.

Saturday we headed with all the girls to a place called Mission Bay. We had to figure out an hour bus ride with some different connections to get to the bay. Chirstine and I even got to know one of our bus drivers very well, her name was Leah and she was originally from Samoa. Over all the people here in New Zealand have been really nice and open to talking with us.

I have to commend Katie and Becca because that played a big part in planning our mission bay trip!! But we are all starting to feel more public bus competent :) It was a little bit over cast when we first got there but we all laid out on the beach to read and rest for the first little while.

You could see an amazing view of the city from the shore line!

Then some girls decided to try to kayak! Christine and I are going kayaking with Phyllis next weekend so we decided to try out the tandem bikes that they had for rent at the bay! Christine was too short to sit in the front so I had to try and steer the thing. I only almost ran into one small child and a few pedestrians but no major injuries occurred, so it was pretty successful!