Hot Water Beach

This week has been a little bit rough for me.  I found out that Mrs. Jones, the teacher that I have been working with in the schools, is resigning and this next week is her last week in the school.  There are two teachers taking over the classroom.  The morning teacher is a brand new teacher and this will be her very first class.  The afternoon teacher is this strict scary lady.  She is not very nice to the kids or me.  Over all this poor class is going to undergo a huge transitioning period, which leaves me in the dust a little bit. 

Mrs. Jones suggested then rather try and stick it out through the transition, it might be best for me to start working with a different class.  I’ve been moved into a year 7 and 8 classroom which is 6^th and 7^th grade.  The teacher’s name is Mrs. Chase and she is actually the wife of one of the bishops in our stake.  She runs her classroom very differently than Mrs. Jones.  She never yells and there is a lot of structure and order. 

At first I was so frustrated because I’ve worked so hard to get to know my students, and I love them so much.  I’m frustrated that I have to start from scratch to try to figure out my place in a new classroom and try to teach my lessons and carry on with my BYU practicum expectations and assignments.  But I am going to try and have the best possible attitude with this change.  Here is my list so far of why this is a good opportunity.

1.      I’ll get to see how the older grades are run.  I haven’t had an opportunity to work with this age group yet, and I think that I may prefer the older grades.

2.      Mrs. Chase is a very organized and talented teacher.  I will get to learn a lot from her.

3.      It is good practice for me to try and learn names quickly and get myself involved in a situation that is not always comfortable.

We’ll see how it all goes on Monday!  I have three weeks left to make the most of this school experience.  Here are some last few pictures of my class year 4 and 5 class.  

 Some of them try to act tough but don't let it fool you.  These are some of the sweetest boys you will ever meet!

My last lesson I did with them was making a body garden.  They had to work in groups to make their own garden.  To get the measurements and sizes to the different parts of the garden they had to use string and use parts of their body to make the plants.  You could do the size of your forearm for a stem, the size of your finger for the petals, and the size of your wrist of the center of your flower.  Or you could use the size of your foot for a pond and so on.  The kids got very creative as we worked on measurement together.

After a stressful week of figuring out what I was going to do, we got the chance to take a weekend vacation with all the girls to the Hot Water Beach.  We rented three beach houses, one for the Jacobs and two for all the girls.  I stayed with Christine, Anna, Heidi, Janet, Whitney, Diana, and Hannah!  

We arrived Thursday evening, unpacked our things, found some cool hats in the closet and realized that Christine and I were oppositely matching.  This roommate thing has really been coordinating a lot of our outfits to match lately!

Our beach house was not the fanciest place I’ve ever stayed, but the view was breathtaking.  We had a balcony that looked out over the ocean just below us.   

Friday morning we were able to casually get up when we wanted.  We had no schedules, we could do whatever we wanted.  I woke up early and had quiet time to read and write in my journal sitting on the deck listening to the ocean and watching the waves crash onto the shore.  

Once Heidi woke up we headed out to the beach to go for a run.  We started out and suddenly realized how much harder it is to run on the beach ha.  Much sooner than expected we began to walk along the shore.  After our run/walk, we ate breakfast on our balcony and got ready for our swim and true hot water beach experience.  They don’t call it hot water beach for nothing! 

Because there is volcanic activity right below the beach, there are certain areas of this shore that have carbon dioxide that rises to the surface giving off heat.  At low tide each people begin to gather in a certain section of the beach to dig their own hot pools.  

It’s a little bit competitive because so many people come and there is not tons of space.  But with our aggressive group of 16 girls we claimed our territory and got to work.  

We dug two different hot pools.  The first one ended up being right on a hot spot and the water was scalding.  I learned that the water can be up to 60 degrees Celsius which is 140 degrees Fahrenheit.  The second pool we made ended up being perfect!  The right amount of cool ocean water mixed with hot volcanic warmed water.

 It was hard work.  When we first started the waves kept coming in and ruining what we had started.

 Here we were deciding on a perfect spot for our hot tub :)

 This is the first hot pool.  It ended up being way too hot.

 Definitely some cuties here at the hot beach.  Note the man sitting behind me.  And this wasn't even the worst of it. 

 But our second one we worked on was much better and bigger!  

Here was our final result!  Our hard work paid off!

Then came my favorite part of our hot water beach experience.  We strategically placed our pool right behind one of the hottest parts of the entire beach.  There was this hot spot that was so hot it was spouting up boiling water.  It spout was very small but it was really cool to look at.  Anyways Heidi, Katie and I laid down in our hot pool and watched the hot spout.  It was the funniest thing to watch people who intentionally and unintentionally walked over or touched the boiling hot spring and then realized just how HOT the water really was.  There were people yelling and dancing, old men squealing, and boy-friends trying to act tough but couldn’t contain themselves once they touched the heat.  It was one of the funniest sights of my life.  I wish I had a video camera at the time to capture all those moments!

After relaxing in the hot tub some of the girls and I took the boogie boards out and rode some of the best waves I have ever experienced!  The water was perfect.  Then after a late lunch we laid on the beach and I continued to read my book, “No One Can Take Your Place.”  It’s so good J

Next was a big spaghetti dinner all together!  Linda (Dr. Jacob’s wife) graciously donated one of her 2 huge bags of American M&Mx for dessert, and unfortunately the 16 of us girls downed the entire thing that night.  We had some M&M sucking competitions that contributed to the fast disposal of the treats.  About half of the girls (with Whitney giving us the idea for this game) sat around a big wooden table.  Each of us lined up 5 M&Ms at a time and raced to see who could suck up all 5 the fastest.  We had a few rounds, one of which I was the proud winner when I realized the speed increase you get from sucking up the 5 with only one sucking breath and a quick swooping motion down the line of M&Ms.  But after we had played a few rounds of this game I became very grateful that no one got splinters in their lips from the wooden table ha.

Once it got dark, one of our new friends Natalie took some of us on a night adventure.  We hiked up a little trail to go see the glow worms!!!  It was a really beautiful sight to look up into the trees along this jungly hike in the dark and see these gleaming lights shining down.  While admiring the beautiful light that these worms give off I learned that it is not the worm that is lighting up but in fact it is their poop that glows…. Hm it now wasn’t quite as beautiful as I first thought, but it was still really cool!  After the glow worms a few of the girls and I wanted a little bit more of an evening adventure and we went for a little dip into the ocean.  It was such a great night!

I got to our only torch on my head :)- In New Zealand they call flash lights, torches!

The next morning a few of us got up by 6:30 and heading to the beach to watch a beautiful sunrise.  Even though the sky did have some clouds there were also some beautiful pink and blue colors.

The last adventure for the weekend brought us to a place called Cathedral Cove.  This is the place that they filmed one of the scenes from the last Narnia movies.  Unfortunately the trail to the cove was closed off because of the rainy, stormy, unsafe weather that we had that afternoon.  We took a trail that took us to Sting Ray Bay which was just across from the cove, so we were able to see some parts of it. 

Note:  I had my backpack on under my coat on my back side.  That is why this rain coat (courtesy of Phyllis) is so tight around my waist.  I swear the M&Ms and other New Zealand sweets haven't hit me that hard yet :)  

The whole weekend was so fun to be with each of the girls!  We got to enjoy another amazing part of New Zealand and rejuvenate ourselves for the last half of our teaching experience.   I’m getting nervous for my new class on Monday, but hopefully it will be a great experiences.