Sunday funday! In the morning Chelsea, Anna, and I got up and walked down to Waikanae Baptist Church and got a warm welcome from our team members. After the church service and minglings ended, one of the daughters of a different host family offered to take us down to the "Dairy" for ice cream. Here in New Zealand, the Dairy is a small convenience store where you can buy drinks, ice cream, and lollies (candy). i had passion fruit ice cream and it was THE BOMB!! super yummy! After we got back to the house, our host parents offered to take us to Nga Manu nature reserve for a while. While we were there we fed ducks, took a nature trail hike, fed eels, and saw a kiwi bird in captivity. Chelsea was very brave in feeding the ducks, heaps and heaps of them would just come running to get some duck feed out of our hands. I was slightly less brave when it came to feeding them and I usually just ended up throwing the feed at them. While on the nature trail, Chels and I learned about the Tui and fantail bird, two of the natural birds of NZ. feeding the eels was pretty gnarly as well! we held sticks that had pieces of duck at the end and the eels would just tear it to pieces! After our fun at Nga (pronounced Na) Manu, we went to a river where the rest of our team and host families were. We spent the afternoon swimming and jumping off of small cliffs into the river and getting some sun. unfortunately, we also spent the afternoon getting eaten alive by sandflies....the most evil of all the bugs! They just take one little bite and all of a sudden you have a huge, red welt that itches for several days. We learned that further down in that same river they filmed a section of the Lord of the Rings! it was the part where Frodo is being rushed to Rivendale by Arwen and the ring wraiths are chasing them. They have to cross a river and Arwen conjures up a spell to wash away the enemies...so it was pretty cool being in the near vicinity of such an epic scene. After we left the river, our host family took us to all get fish n' chips to eat on the beach. It felt like we were in a movie! It was my first fish n' chips experience...lets just say that I was NOT disappointed. Eating on the beach and watching the sun go down was such a blessing and I was taken back by the beauty of the country and the kindness of its people.
