farewell for now

Just wanted to let everyone know that I won't be able to update the blog/call until the end of next week, because we are spending the week in Tauranga, a city about 3 hours from Auckland, and we'll be staying on a "marae" which is basically like sacred ground for the Maori (native) people. I think it will be a great trip, definitely unique! Can't wait to get you guys up to date next week. Love to everyone. Have a great week!

the moment we've all been waiting for

So, Tuesday was pretty normal (especially compared to the appendicitis-scare fiasco), and we were just learning from our speaker, Josh Menning, about the character and nature of God. Which has been really cool – he is so knowledgeable and passionate and we’ve all really enjoyed it a lot.

Tuesday afternoons are our “outreach prep” time, and at the beginning of it, Josie told us that the staff just hadn’t reached a decision about who was on what team, and they weren’t ready to release any information to us. So, we just talked for a while about general things that would be helpful on any outreach. So eventually we started talking about perspective and how important it was for us to have perspective, and Josie said we were going to play a game to get us in the right mindset. So, she said they were going to hand out a piece of paper to each of us and we had to find other people whose cards related to ours, and the pictures on each card would correspond and make a story that we had to figure out. So they hand out the cards, and tell us to open them. And what does mine have on it? A picture of an airplane with the South African flag on it. And truth be told - I really wanted to be on the South Africa team. So I’m sitting there, a little upset, because I’m thinking “why did they give me this picture? Now, if I got put on a different team, I would admittedly be pretty upset, As other people started coming to me with other South Africa-related pictures, we started trying to put the story together. As we are trying to do this, Josie says, “Okay, so let’s really try to work together to finish the stories, because… these are your outreach teams!”

Immediately we all kind of freaked out, did a big group hug, and were just so excited. And something else that’s great - - Erin is coming too! It’s me & Erin, Rachel (London), Minsoo (Maryland), Rebekka (Norway), Elise (Texas), Mikkel (Norway) and our staff leader is Andy (England). It’s a GREAT team – we all get along super well and just have really complimentary personality types. A guy who is in one of the other outreach teams made the comment that if we all were in outreach team Olympics, our team would win. I think that sums it up. :)

Anyway we are all VERY excited and have tons to do now… even though we won’t leave until the end of December, I know it will be here before we know it!

just another manic monday

Well, I suppose this story begins on Sunday night. After dinner, around 6PM, my stomach started hurting pretty badly, badly enough that I asked Erin to wash my dishes because I didn’t think I could make it. So I went to lie down, and after about 10 minutes, I got nervous that I was going to be sick. So I ran to the bathroom and sat on the floor for a while until the feeling had subsided a bit. At that point, I got Erin and had her sit with me in the bathroom. Just to give you an idea of how bad I was feeling, Erin was so disgusted by the bathroom floor that she just kept asking me to get up because it was so bad (the hostel bathrooms don’t get cleaned very often… or maybe ever, we’re not sure)

Anyway, a few minutes and antacids later, I started to feel a bit better, and went with Erin to her room and a few of us just talked and relaxed for a while. But the worst wasn’t over - - and as my stomach pain started to return around 9PM, I decided I didn’t want to stay awake any longer, so I took 2 Tylenol PMs in hopes of just “sleeping it off”.

Sadly, an hour later, I woke up in even worse pain, just constant shooting pains in my stomach. I went back to the filthy, yet somehow comforting bathroom floor (comforting maybe only because I knew if I did get sick, I was in the best possible place), and waited it out again. I returned to bed hoping that this would be the last of it.

Then, this whole process happened 2 more times. Sleep, waking, pain, bathroom floor, disgust with bathroom floor, not caring about how gross it was because I just felt so bad, returning to bed, and repeat.

The final time, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore (and was pretty scared that something was actually wrong), so I went downstairs to the reception to see what time it was. Completely expecting it to be 5AM after all of the turmoil, to my disappointment it was only 1:40AM. Knowing that I couldn’t make it the whole night through repeating this process, I went to the staff apartment to try to wake Craig & Jen to take me to the hospital.

So I knocked… and I knocked… and there was no answer (their room is set off from the hallway door, so they couldn’t hear me). So there I am, in terrible pain, 2AM, desperate, and I just decided I wanted to lie down. Right there. In the hallway. Mind you, I’ve never seen anyone vacuum that hallway. But I didn’t care. As I was contemplating my next plan of action, something amazing started to happen. The pain started to go away, just enough to motivate me to get up and go to bed, for the 4^th time. And by some miracle, this time I slept through the night.

I woke up still feeling a bit uneasy, but MUCH better. When I told the students & staff that next day, people still seemed pretty concerned, and Mikkel, one of the students who just graduated from medical school, asked to examine me. So we did that, and through the course of his examination, he became concerned because the pain I was having & the location of the pain was indicative of appendicitis. So – he said he recommended that I go to the doctor… RIGHT then. I will admit I was pretty much totally freaked out at this point.

But we walked, in the rain, to a little clinic here, and the doctor there felt pretty confidently that I was okay, because I had started to feel better, which doesn’t generally happen with appendicitis. So he told me to just monitor it throughout the day and come back if it got worse. And although I was deathly afraid that my appendix was just going to rupture at any moment, it didn’t! and I feel absolutely fine now! So basically it was the biggest fluke stomach pain ever, and I am officially attributing it to the broccoli I ate Sunday night (I remember a time in high school when I ate a good amount of broccoli and felt really sick, so I am thinking maybe there’s something in broccoli that my body can’t handle in large quantities). Anyway, I am fully recovered. And I have a crazy story to tell. So I hope you enjoyed it!

just call me the wilderness woman

Today we went hiking, a term I don't think I ever quite understood until today when we got out to the trail. To give you a better mental picture, they call it "tramping" in New Zealand, which to me, kind of says it all.

So, we are driving down "Scenic Drive", and there's a place where we pull off the road and park our cars, then literally just off this two lane road, there is an entrance that leads to a "trail", which consists of a partly cleared path with tree roots, huge rocks, branches, and more mud than I have ever seen. In NZ the mud is more like clay, so it's 100X more slippery. Half or more of our group ran off, leaving us with no idea of where to go (we have no map), so we decided to go right... which led pretty quickly back up to the road. All the while people are slipping and falling into the mud, grabbing onto tree branches for dear life, and cursing the rain that is starting to fall.

Once we got back up to the road, three of us (Stephanie, Lauren, and I) decided we didn't want to go back down for the full hike, which was supposed to take 4 hours. So we took everyone's valuables back to the van so they wouldn't get wet, and we prepared ourselves for an adventure of our own. We start down a different trail to a place called "Christian Road" which Stephanie is convinced should be renamed Devil's Way.

Ironically, the trail that we chose to go down, unbeknownst to us, was WAY more rugged and difficult than the one we had been on with the whole group. Pretty soon, we were headed through worse mud, bigger & more slippery rocks, except now we were going down inclines of about 50 degrees. ON THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN. Let's just say I have never done anything like that in my life. And to top it all off (Brice & everyone else who knows how un-athletic and un-outdoorsy I am will appreciate this), I was leading us down the trail.

Eventually, we came to a little place of civilization that we didn't know existed - there were some old men down there that run a "Dam Tram" and they told us that we could walk a little farther and see the water filtration system, which really wasn't much to look at, but it was cool to think about the fact that they actually gather water there from the dam and purify it for the city.

So, then we start the hike back up - we went a different way because we saw an entrance that said Scenic Drive - which was where we needed to go... and the men told us it was a longer trail, but we had time to kill so we did it anyway. Which was a very interesting choice. The incline going back up was about 65 degrees at some points... I literally had to stretch my leg up as far as it would go to boost myself up (kind of like pulling yourself out of a swimming pool)... which was much more difficult for the other girls because I have abnormally long legs so mine could reach up higher. Anyway, after about an hour, we made it back up to the road! We came out at a different point than where we started, but I thought we should turn right down the road (again, for those of you who know how bad my sense of direction is, it is hilarious that I was leading)...

At this point, I had so much adrenaline pumping through my body from just trying to survive up the side of this mountain, that I felt like I wanted to run down the road to try to find our vans. So I ran for a few minutes and eventually... there they were! Hallelujah. What a good day. Will post pictures soon!

canadians & choices

Our time with our first speaker, Phil Cunningham, has been pretty interesting so far. Phil was born in Ireland, is Canadian, but lives in California now with his wife & 2 girls (1on the way too!) He is pretty involved in raising awareness for justice issues of all kinds and has been introducing us to some cool stuff. My favorite thing so far has been something called the Girl Effect, an organization that promotes the education of young girls in an attempt to rectify situations of injustice that uneducated girls in poverty statistically face. Please take a look at their videos... they're really really cool & hopeful.

Well (drum roll please) we found out today where our potential outreach locations will be. There has been a lot of confusion because one of the staff members decided to step down last week, so we thought there were only going to be 2 outreaches instead of the 3 that there usually are. But unexpectedly, they decided to throw in a “wild card” which would be essentially student-led.

Anyway, without further ado, our locations are Muizenberg, South Africa; the Middle East (Israel or Jordan); and the wild card – either Thailand or Vanuatu (an island near New Zealand). Now, we are going to have a few days to process the choices and on Friday, each student will hand in their top choice & reasons why, and then the staff will try to assemble teams based on who lists which choices. It’s still possible that we will have only 2 teams, just depending on where the interest lies.

I’m fairly confident about where I want to go – but I think I’ll wait to say anything until we find out for certain where we’ll be sent. Anyway, this is exciting… thinking about the next step…I’m definitely ready to just find out!

weekend adventures

This Saturday we had our first weekend outing… they set up optional weekend day trips for us, and since we don’t have much else to do during the weekend, most of us went today...and probably will most Saturdays I’m guessing! We visited Mission Bay and Devonport, two little seaside towns right outside of Auckland, only about a 20 minute drive from the city.

It was a lot of fun, lots of pretty scenery – it was great to get out of the city. Living in the city is good because it’s “real” – we see poverty, homelessness, prostitution, real life… but after a week chock-full of that, yesterday was a much needed breath of fresh air. Not to mention it’s pretty nice to just take the time to realize and remember that we are in NEW ZEALAND! Walking through the city all week feels more like NYC or Chicago, but seeing the mountains and the beach was refreshing. Erin, Lauren and I ate lunch at a cute little café, grabbed coffee, walked around the little shops, and even walked a bit up a big mountain to get a great view of the bay and the city. Some great photo ops J

The highlight of the day was probably that Stephanie (see previous pictures), while attempting to slide down the mountain on a cardboard box, ripped the box and rolled/fell/tumbled down the mountain for a good 10 seconds. She was fine, no injuries, so it was ABSOLUTELY hilarious. Actually.... have a look for yourself.

While we were in Devonport, we got to go to a supermarket – that sounds totally boring and normal, but you have to realize that in Auckland city, there are no supermarkets. That sounds crazy but it’s true. So, walking inside, we felt like we had walked back into the United States for a brief moment in time. I don’t think we realized that we really missed home until then! I just kind of wandered around aimlessly, up and down the aisles, I must admit I have a soft spot for wandering grocery stores (James & I did this the first time we hung out alone... and have done so MANY times since then), so it was just great. More to come. Love.

More pictures!

Check out all my photos - link here to the right ---->

But here are a few!

Our group walking out onto Mission Bay

A great view of the city from a mountain in Devonport

St. Pauls - where we went to church this Sunday

Erin & Chelsea's Auckland Adventure

This may be my favorite picture that's ever been taken of me (credits to Johanna). In such a beautiful little field on the mountain in Devonport.