day of flies

oh man i missed all of friday. there was no february 20th, 2009. clearly i’m ok with it because i’m in new zealand now. i’ve met my new brothers and sisters, and they are awesome. especially the brothers. it’s weird cuz its been unconsciously split up between genders.. girls are quiet, and we guys are talkative and often dousing ourselves in pingpong. i’m sure we’ll all come around and mix soon, its just weird that it didn’t happen on the first day. but who cares! girls are trouble anyways. right?! right. i’m so very stinking excited for whats gonna happen here. its an amazing place… the drive from auckland was alright, nothing special… farm land upon farm land. but once we got here to crystal springs it was clear that being surrounded by farm land means your little area of solitude is going to be awesome. just awesome.
the flight was pretty sweet too… no it wasn’t that’s a lie. but it surely wasn’t bad. from detroit to san Francisco was a breeze… I was not awake at all except for sniping some pics of flying over mountains, which I had never seen before in all my experience flying. it was great. then the airport was alright… a solid 4 -5 hours of reading blue like jazz while hiding in the shade of my gate. then getting on a super huge 747 for the first time and witnessing the three rows of seating that i had always seen on movies but never in real life. my faith in the 3 rows was waning up until this point.

we got to auckland international airport around… early in the morning. our whole team arrived (the ones who were arriving at that time) and we were gathered by our school leader chris… he’s pretty cool. God’s gonna speak a lot of wisdom through him. i could name names and I will eventually… joanna didn’t get her bags. she is from switzerland and she speaks french. sad for her, but cool for all of us who have only chilled with north americans for 99.999999% of our life. i’m sure they will come for her in a few days bringing clean clothes and mebe shampoo or something.. that smells nice I’m sure.. cuz NZ is sweaty. there was a storm here and so its super humid. there are a lot of flies. But that’s ok too. They’ll die if I lose tolerance. we waited all morning at another YWAM base in auckland, where a korean DTS was taking place. we played ping pong all morning and stayed away from the cooty filled girls. for now. we also started playing a game… a very fun and challenging game. if you say the word ‘mine’ after being asked a question, you must do ten pushups. i’ll run you through how i was introduced to the game.

‘who’s hat is that?’
‘mine.’
‘wait, who’s?’
‘mine.’ (thinking he just misunderstood me. His name is kristen and he’s from Australia and he’s my roommate.)
‘yeah, but who’s hat is it?’
‘mine!’ (thinking he was an idiot for not understanding, but thinking I was an idiot for mumbling but then realizing my error.)
’30 pushups.’

i’ve done 60 pushups today.

the drive included riddle games similar to the broomstick game. but way better. i like it. no, i love it. Crystal springs is amazing too. Lots to explore… soon. and pictures will be stored. not shown… internet is super expensive here if pics are involved. we had a night of getting to know about crystal springs/matamata and who are leaders were. then we prayed a lot, about our roles as students, about our staff’s roles as leaders, and about our leader’s roles as teachers. we sang better is one day to cap it off and then played more ping pong. i'm the oldest male student, but its not like age matters one bit. some of the staff and leaders are younger than me, and i think that’s great. another weird thing is i’m the only surfer/boarder signed up. all the rest (16) are music/worship. but since its such a small group we’ll be able to mix it up a lot. the staff who surf will have plenty of time to show me how its done. and in the meantime i get to listen to a 6 other guys constantly playing guitar and showing each other new things. it’s a good community to be involved in i think… oh yes. i could type several dozen more paragraphs, but then i wouldn’t have anything to write on day 2. oh yes i would, i love ranting.