Rainy Day at the Beach :(

Today was our first day at the beach with our whole group of girls and our BYU instructor Dr. Ramona Cutri. We were HOPING that it would be sunny and warm, but we did NOT get that lucky haha. It was rainy and cold all day; I could not believe it haha. A lot of the girls were daredevils and got in the water, but not me. I was going to, but I literally couldn't feel my toes because I was so cold!!!

So finally after about an hour and half of being freezing on the beautiful beach (with rain pouring on us) we went to this "water park" called Waiwera which was sort of like Seven Peaks with warm water. That was the best part about it, the water was like a hot tub in every pool. This was because the water was from a natural hot spring and so it smelled like sulfur (rotten eggs) but was SUPER warm. It was amazing after being so cold. There were also some fun slides that we got to go on which were SO FAST, holy cow, one of them like gave me whiplash haha. It was intense, but fun with all the rain and cold. It was also so pretty to be at this warm water park surrounded by beautiful big green trees and beaches! What a beautiful place to be :)!

Oh also, me and my four roommates have learned that we are NOT in the US anymore the hardway. We got home from the beach and each took a hot shower, like we are used to back home, and after eating dinner with our host family we were not able to wash the dishes because all of the hot water was gone. We felt sooo bad! Nisha and Phil were like, oh don't worry we'll just go lite a fire somewhere so we can try and get warm for our cold showers haha. They were just kidding, but still I felt HORRIBLE. For now we do not have any more hot water until, they are hoping, the morning. We are definitely not going to be taking as many showers as we are used to back at home, starting now!!

Our little friend that likes to sleep over with us in our apartment :). It is
a NZ insect called a Weta!

We have to drive 2 vans to fit all 20 girls for our outings like this. Here
was the van I was in for the drive up to the beach.

beautiful :)

You can't really tell but that's what all the land looks like over here in NZ.
There are just a bunch of trees and little colorful houses all packed together.

In heaven....especially if there was sun!

Boogie-boarding! I will try it next time when we go to the beach and
it is sunny :)

I don't know why it is digitizing some of these pictures, but at least
you can see us at the beach 

Yay for cold beaches haha!

Freezzzzzinnnggg

Yes I'm REALLY cold

Me and Brooke hid under the umbrella for most of the
beach time

Ramona's cute little pink car!

I'm so glad we were able to go here and get warm!

Margo did fine though, she said she wasn't even cold the whole day

This place had a movie theatre pool!!

It was so warm! The little hot tub waterfall in the back was so hot that it
like burned you, no one could even put their feet in it because it was
so scalding hot that it just BURNED

The sulfur made every ones silver rings turn gold. It was crazy!!

Goodbye Orewa Beach. We will come back to you when it's warm :)