Sunshine in My Soul!

We had SUNSHINE today! Very exciting after a week of rain from Australia. The rain didn't stop us though...


Here is my walking group! We are the 4 "Colwill girls" (Jessica, Christine, me, and Heidi) because we are kind of far from everyone else cause we live just down the street from our practicum school, Colwill School. We walk to class everyday, 45 minutes each way with huge hills, so hopefully we are also soon to be the girls with the best legs. Yesterday we rode the bus to school to avoid the rain, but we had to wait outside the gates to the church for 20 minutes, so we were still pretty soaked despite the umbrellas, but umbrellas are just too fun so it was worth it (plus they make a great photo background)


On Saturday we went to the Chinese New Year Festival (pre-new years?) It is apparently a huge deal here, so we got our first little taste of it since we will be down south for the actual new year, but this was probably enough for me. It was little Bejing! Tons of people, chinese food, karate, and jerky to taste-test. I even drank straight out of this hut-shaped coconut! Not my favorite, but hey, exotic experience for me so I'm pleased. Plus I just liked the idea of sticking a straw straight into a coconut and drinking it, how tropical are we? Sheryl suggested that when I'm in Samoa (emphasis on the SAHH-moa here) to "ask one of those bronze boys with a machete to fetch you a coconut, then he'll shimmy up the tree..." so thats going on my samoa to-do list, try their coconuts: as fresh as possible.


We discovered this really great tree the other day on a little adventure/run. So many different palm trees here! We saw one on our run today that looked like a HUGE pineapple cause it was like this one but really round and plump, more pineapple shaped than this one :)


class is tough, but I'm learning a lot, such as how to make tapas mats (picture another time maybe) and how to make a rugby uniform out of newspaper and tape. We were challenged by our teacher to make an outfit of what we thought kiwi's were going to look like, and I'm proud to say we were the only ones who made a rugby player, the rest all made typical islander dresses. Here we are doing the haka, scary eyes are a must for correct technique. (I think this was just to entertain my teacher, I am unaware of any specific "learning intentions" that are usually so vital to any education class).


We are closer than ever to making the ultimate pavlova! Although we made another one yesterday with a different recipe and it was 10x better than this other recipe, however we were having a study-abroad party and some lady went ahead and served it up for the rest of the crew, even though it was just for us to taste later so we just narrowly snagged a piece and it was definitely the best one yet!

and I work so hard all the time, that's why I get to play so much :)