The BEST Day Yet!

So today was definitely my favorite day in New Zealand so far!  One of the girls, Shannon, that I met at church last Sunday offered to show me around Hamilton.  She picked me up this morning and we headed to town to get some coffee and a “cinnamon twirl” at Starbucks.  We walked around town a little bit and stopped in a few shops then headed out to the lake.  I didn’t even know there was a lake in Hamilton! This lake is about the size of Furman’s and we ended up talking and walking around it.  Our next stop was Hamilton Gardens, which is a free attraction with separate garden sections for different areas of the world (China, New Zealand, Italy, America, Japan, etc).  The American garden was hilarious!  It was set up with beach chairs, a little pool with a mod/abstract sculpture in the middle of it, cacti, and a pop art picture of Marilyn Monroe (the giveaway that the theme was America).  I’m pretty sure that a non-American designed this area.  After the gardens adventure, we went over to her part of town.  After Shannon found out that I had been Dr. Pepper deprived over here in NZ, she was determined for us to find some.  We stopped at a dairy and got some Dr. Peppers (Yes, finally!) and then got some Sub-Way to take up to “the hill”.  She drove to this place in her neighborhood and we walked up to “the hill” and ate our lunch!  We improvised and used one of those foil-y sun keeper outer things that you put in the windshield of the car as a blanket ha!  It was SO beautiful up there; on one side was the view of town with mountains in the background and the other was rolling hills with mountains in the background too.  I am getting SO spoiled with the scenery here!  THEN, Shannon took me to her house!  It was so cool to get to see a NZ neighborhood and house!  I looked through her photo albums of her trip through the south of the US last year when she went on a screening tour with Invisible Children.  It was really cool to get to talk about the US (the south especially) and hear all about her experience and her stories.

A view of the lake

Shannon and I at the gardens!

DR. PEPPER!!!!!!

Shannon's cute house!

It was SO awesome to get to spend time with Shannon today and hopefully there will be more hang out times in the future!  She is one of the sweetest people (even though she demanded to take solo tourist-y pictures of me haha) I’ve met here and was so unselfish to spend her day showing me around and spending time getting to know me.  I am so thankful for new friendships, laughter, and such generous people like Shannon!   It is so overwhelmingly awesome how God has continued to show me that He is indeed watching over me over here and has complete control of who I meet, where I go, what I do, and the little things along the way.  So comforting!

Also... last night, some American girls (from Hawaii!) who go to school in Oregon with my friend Megan invited me to come along with them to a New Zealand vs China national team volleyball game.  We walked about 15 minutes up to the Hamilton Boys’ School and unfortunately watched NZ lose 3 games in a row.  All 3 games were neck in neck all the way until the end.  Even though NZ couldn’t pull it off, it was really neat to watch such intense volleyball.  These guys were SO good.  There weren’t many rallies though because they just pounded it into the ground every time.  They hit it so hard that I feel like it would’ve caused a concussion.  Intense-as bro! 

Interesting Observations:

-Yesterday I had SPAGHETTI on my pizza at lunch instead of pizza sauce.  I guess they either ran out of sauce or had extra spaghetti? Or maybe that’s just how they do it over here?

-My geography professor wears an Elvis shirt to every lecture.

-Kiwis pronounce the T in fillet, aka “fill-it” instead of “fill-A”.

-I think this country has some sort of nation-wide fascination with Michael Jackson.

-Cars making a left turn (aka a right turn in the US) have to give way to the cars making a right turn (aka a left turn in the US).

-The sky here continues to amaze me.  It just seems SO close!

-THIS ADVERTISEMENT: “CHOC-AS” hilarious!