Cows Like Water and Karaoke

This weekend we took a group excursion to Whangarei to James Ahmu’s (our tour guide) home. This house was absolutely amazing. The yard was spacious and so green. The home was an adorable blue color with white trip and porches that wrapped around. Very picturesque. 

Highlights from the weekend:

Friday: 

On Friday when we arrived we stopped at a cute little book shop. This store was full of childrens books by New Zealand authors. I purchased the book The Wonky Donkey by: Craig Smith. It is a funny story that tells about this really strange donkey to a song! Who doesn’t like a silly song?

Right after the bookshop we went down to James wife, Janet’s, family farm. This was so cool! When we got there, Sid Going, a famous Rugby player that was formerly on the All Blacks team, greeted us. You might also know him by his Mormon Ad he did. Here is a link for you to watch and get to know him better.

I learned so much about cows. It sounds weird, but they are actually pretty interesting animals. For example, cows have to be milked 2 times a day. They are so smart that when they need to go get milked they just start heading over to milking station where they all congregate and wait to enter. The guy milking the cow said that when they need to be milked it is kind of like the feeling of having to go to the bathroom. 

We then got to milk the cows ourselves! Well we got to put the little suckers on the cows utters. It looked so easy when the guy did it, but it was not easy at all. You have to hold up the little contraption just right or else the others will fall off and you have ot start again. The cows are moving too which adds an extra something in there. It was kind of gross milking the cow because you never know if the cow is just going to poop on you. I think most of us got a little on us, but poor Natalie, she basically got sprayed. Thank goodness for hoses! Anyways, it was so fun that I did it twice! The first time I got some pictures and the second time I got a video! Check them out! You’ll get a good laugh at the video.

After we had gotten all smelly at the farm we had the YSA of Whangarei come over for a barbeque! It was the perfect time to socialize with people, fresh off the farm and smelly. OH well. The food was absolutely delicious and the dessert was heavenly! We played all sorts of games and even had a dance party! Woohoo!

Saturday: 

Saturday was so much fun! We had the chance to have surfing lessons!! It was an absolute blast. The instructors were so nice and funny. Simon and I talked up a storm while he was helping me catch a good wave. I’m so glad that we had instructors to help us figure out the real trick to surfing. Before we were kind of just thrown out there to figure it out as we went. We didn’t know when to start paddling, when to stand up or what waves were actually going to be decent. Thanks to our lovely instructors we were rocking it! After the first 3-4 times of getting it with help I could do it all by myself! I’m a big kid now! When we had about 30 more minutes left all of our arms were absolutely dead! Thank goodness again for Simon! He helped me get some good waves without having to paddle too hard. As a side note, wetsuits are the best inventions ever. The temperature outside was pretty cold due to lots and lots of wind and the water was really cold but with our wetsuits on it was delightful and a very pleasant experience. I have a new found love for surfing!

We started out by having a little lesson on the sand. Here are the steps to learning how to surf:

1. Lay down on the board with your feet touching or nearly touching the end of the board. 
2. Start paddling when wave is approaching
3. Three power strokes
4. Chicken wings (hands down with elbows sticking out)
5. Push chest up
6. Pull back knee forward
7. Front foot up
8. With your hands on the board in front of you begin to stand up
9. Stand up, knees bent, arms out, eyes forward!
10. You're surfing!

 Sorry Natalie..

*The man in the middle is Simon, our "coach"

James also had a boat! I had missed boating so much and then James told us he had a boat and I got so excited! I’ve been boating on a lake multiple times, but now I can say I’ve been boating on the ocean! I don’t know why but it is so much cooler. Unfortunately we did not have wetsuits so touching the water was really hard. I was a little nervous to get in and I didn’t know if I could get in so James just pushed me in to get me in. He got a good laugh out of that. He had a few things for us to do while we were on the lake. We had a slightly different version of a banana boat. Kirsten and I were on it first and it wasn’t blown up all the way. It was still super flat and it was so difficult to get on it! It probably took us like 7 minutes to get on it the first time. As soon as we got on it flipped and then had to do it all over again. Once again James was getting a good laugh at us trying to throw our legs over and pulling ourselves up and failing miserably. (We even tried getting on from the boat and we still tipped it over). We eventually just pulled it back into the boat and he blew it up some more. This helped a ton and it was pretty fun after that.

Then we hopped boats and got into James cousins boat. He was a funny funny man. He had a tube that pulled 2 people and that was super fun. He is kind of a crazy driver so at times I slightly panicked. Kirsten and I had tons of fun.

That night we had an enormous dinner! We had heaps of Chinese food and of course desserts. I wish I was exaggerating. See for yourself…

After all we ate as much as we did we worked it off by some intense karaeoke and Banana Grams. Not just the singing part of karaoke, but the dancing too.  I am proud to say that Brittany, Me and Kirsten got the high score of the night with My Heart Will Go On by: Celine Dion! I also sang It’s Tearin’ Up My Heart by *Nsync and Summer Nights from Grease (with parts and everything). It was sweet as!

I think every spare moment we had over the weekend we played Banana Grams. I really love that game. We had some free time and made all of our names out of tiles and the random pieces of paper. As lame as it seems it was really fun to figure out the puzzle.