Whangarei: Cows, Surfing, and Feeds

What a FUN FILLED weekend.

On Friday morning, after a long week of teaching, we all piled into the vans to head up to James Ah Mu's house (our NZ guide) in Whangarei. We all love James to death. He has been with us on every adventure, drives us to EVERYTHING, feeds us treats all the time, shares funny stories, and now to top it off, hosted all 20 of us (plus Ramona, Chris, Atticus, and Tiare) at his house. 

Whangarei is about a 2 and 1/2 hour drive from Auckland, so we drove quite a bit to get there, but BOY was it worth it. They have this cute little house that is tucked into beautiful trees and greenery. They even have a big avocado tree that we got to get fresh avocados from. He had set up 2 big tents in his backyard to fit us all in, and we were very spoiled because we each got little matrices (we were sleeping on rocks at our last camping trip). Brooke and I got a little area of the tent where our matrices were smashed together, so that was fun to have like our own little "room". 

While we were whangarei we got to. . . 

-play games with the Whangarei YSA 

-eat FOOD FOOD FOOD and more FOOD

-have surfing lessons for 2 hours

-go boating and tubing

-sing our hearts out during karaoke

-play games (including bananagrams)

-eat more food and food and food and desserts

-go to church with the nicest ward ever

I felt really bad for Jame's wife Janet. She was worried about hosting the big group of us, but everything was amazing. Their house was so nice, the tents were an upgrade from last time, and we even had flushing toilets! And the food....don't even get me started. It is Jame's family culture to always have big FEEDS for company, so naturally that's what we got every night. A feed is where a lot of food gets served, which usually includes tons of different types of meats, veggies, and then a feast of desserts. I'm not even kidding, there was so much to eat for dinner and dessert every night I think we all gained like 20 lbs. One of the nights I was so full I literally couldn't breath. Yumm, haha!

Church was a neat experience. The people were all so loving, kind, and welcoming. There was no pianist in the ward so when I got there I got to play the piano for sacrament meeting and relief society. haha. Good thing they didn't choose too hard of hymns. I'm a little out of practice, having not played since December. But it went well! The funniest part though was how everyone kept getting up to bare their testimony and they ALL talked about us "Americans". One older lady got up there and bore her entire testimony on how she loves America, got to travel to America, never met a bad person in America, loves to see us girls from America, oh and loves America (she said that like 100 times). haha. Another lady even tried to hook us up with some of the YSA boys in the ward...during her testimony. It was very interesting, but such a sweet experience. 

We also got to go to one of Jame's relatives farm. It was cool to see the cows all line up on their own to get milked. They just followed each other and got ready on their own. Then the guy would hook up the machine to their utters to get the milk. We all got to try and hook up the machine to pump the milk. It was hard to get them on while the thing was spinning, some girls even got pooped on, but it was cool to actually get to try. It's probably the closest thing I'll get to milking a cow :)

By far though, my favorite thing was the surfing lessons. 2 hours of getting taught, and being able to try on our own, was SO MUCH FUN!!! I LOVED IT. I was able to get the standing up thing down pretty easily, so the instructors had me start turning my board into the wave once I got up. The hardest part for me was figuring out when to paddle on my own so that I could hit the wave just right to get up. I could do it fine when they would tell me to "start paddling", but I could never quite hit it on my own. I'll have to keep trying!!!

And here are pictures from the trip:

finally there!

our tent

the other tent

Brooke and I in our little tent room :) (I love this picture)

James Ah Mu's house...it was so cute on the outside and so NICE on
the inside. 

his side yard....the avocado tree is there on the right

getting more YUMMY real/fresh fruit ice cream. I'm
addicted...it's A.M.A.Z.I.N.G

moo

milking a lot of cows at once

i thought this was all so crazy how it works

We met Sid, the All Blacks Rugby player that was mentioned in a
general conference talk and was in a mormon message video!!

the thing spins around and the cows just shuffle in one at a time. once
it goes in a complete circle the lever lifts and kicks them out of their stall.

here I go

wahoo..got all four on!

this building was all built out of ONE tree...crazy huh!

playing games with the Whangarei YSA. first up--volleyball!

first feed....LOTS of food!

look at that chocolate massive dessert. luckily for me 95% of the desserts
were chocolate....so I guess I might not have gained AS much weight
as everyone else lol. I just ate vanilla ice cream. 

Ramona and the lady that made this big chocolate
dessert

dance party with music blaring from the van

next up. . .SURF LESSONS

these literally saved us as the weather was raining and
cold at times

our group of 10 for surfing first

we literally match ALL the time and never even mean to

yipppppyyy

love these girls :)

getting instructed on land

here. we. go!

biggest dork

SO BEAUTIFUL

FAVORITE PICTURE....look how beautiful that all is!!!

I like this one a lot too...I LOVE SURFING!!!

I have no idea why I have my dancer hands here...I swear dance will always
be apart of me for the rest of my life (even when I'm surfing)

love Margo :)

Our group and instructors...such a fun day!

This was our main instructor Simon....I don't know how I missed the
memo for folded arms. . .?

boating on Jame's boat in the ocean

this was so FUN! When we got back from the beach we
had limited time to get us all showered because they
don't have a lot of hot water...or water in general cus
it's on some pump system. So we all crowded in the
bathroom and showered 4 at a time, then rotated.
It was funny having everyone just watching us
that was waiting to go in! We got 8 girls done in
5 mins though...pretty good!!

JUNK....FOOD

we ordered noodles one night and this was all that was LEFT OVER...
we ordered WAY too much, and wasted WAY too much money. We still
brought home a bunch of those to eat for lunches. NOODLES are coming
out of our ears now (well out of my roommates ears haha...
I don't like Chinese that much)

JUNK food!

Karaoke. Everyone was getting way into it. It was way fun :)

Yes I got a lot of SUN on my face. Today at school the kids kept saying,
"Miss Welch, your face is PINK"

playing bananagrams. This game was SO fun...and afterwards Tiare
made all of our names out of the pieces. So cleaver.