Matt Rhine
Horn Player, Student
Traveler (I wish)
3
Hello all, things have been going slow, I've been trying to (unsuccessfully) adjust my sleeping schedule, but I've got this last bit before I go onto the second leg of the trip (of three) and then I'll hopefully get rollin' with this once again, enjoy!
Matt
We headed out from the venue and continued on our way to our host family's house. We took the long way home as I had hoped for, New Zealand, as I may have stated many times before, is absolutely gorgeous. We took a detour through a park. Obviously we weren't the only ones to go through the park from the hall as there were people playing Frisbee, jogging around and just talking in tuxedos. We kept on driving through the park and eventually made our way through (would you imagine, amazingly beautiful countryside) to the supermarket where we would pick up food for dinner.
Walking out to the supermarket had me remember America, Mr. Jordan had parked his car away from everyone else's car to avoid what he called "Supermarket dings." I guess, even from country to country, some things just don't change. Walking up to the entrance we passed a beetle, or bug, which can also be referred to as a VW, or best known as, a car. Mrs. Bug, a German car, was certainly not a passed by trend in New Zealand.
We walked into the supermarket, and the first thought that ran through my head went as such, "Wow, this place is clean." And it was. For those of us lucky persons to know of a Marc's, you can know how it has the amazing ability to feel as though you had turned into the wrong part of town as soon as you walk in, no matter how nice the neighborhood you are in. However, I digress, we walked through and checked the produce, which was funny to me, because everything was extremely expensive.
Unfortunately for me as an American shopper, I had to translate from kilograms to pounds, as well as do the exchange rate after this was done to get the "real" price, which turned out to be right on with ours. Of course, things such as the kiwi fruit were much cheaper (one could only wonder why…) while things such as apples were more expensive (For the record, I never had a good pear down under, however, that may be the catering companies' faults.)
We went though to the deli where I proceeded to ask Hannah (again) if she thought American accents were cooler than Aussie/Kiwi accents. She said yes, but reminded me that they don't have accents in New Zealand (which I know is wrong, because it is myself and my culture that has no accent… I think.) So I asked her again, just to double check. I got the same answer, so that question is answered; Aussies and Kiwi think we have cool accents.
We went to check out, and stopped at the candy counter. Cadbury makes everything that is candy in New Zealand. It was pretty sweet (pun intended) and there were a ton of things we got to try later (it was an eclectic collection of candy to say the least, Turkish Delight stood out in my mind the most.) We picked up a ton of candy bars and checked out, and of course headed back to their house.
Dinner had to be prepared, and as to be expected, it would take awhile to do so, so Jon and myself took our leave to put on normal clothes (yes, we went into the supermarket in tuxes, it was actually quite funny.) We then took the time to prep the home-stay gifts and to write the card to them, which took longer than we hoped, I figured they thought that we were either reclusive or half stupid because we were taking so long to change (don't bother asking me about the other half.)
After we had taken care of that business (mind you, we didn't give the presents to them straightaway) we went to a living area and cut up the candy bars and had a chance to try them all, they were good, and quite different from what I was used to seeing in a candy bar. We talked a wee bit longer about whatever had come to mind (ala: American and New Zealand relations and the like, I think I picked some bad topics to talk about, but at least nobody got angered.)
Jon, Hannah and I got onto their computer, exchanged e-mails addresses and showed her a map of our city and school, (alas the concept of showing her satellite images of our hometown didn't work to be as cool as I had envisioned it in my mind.) I took pictures of the house (It is a very nice house) and us as a group.
We were shown the basement by Mr. Jordan, which happened to be quite larger than either Jon or I had expected, which had a library (With literary classics, and… comic books!) and a guest room of sorts which had a full bathroom, and then a pool room, I noticed the map on the wall had more attention paid and accuracy given to New Zealand and Australia, whereas American states were horribly malformed (another interesting thing that happens when you go to another country.) We had dinner, and talked quite a bit more about whatever had come to mind.
After dinner, Jon and I got our presents and gave them to the family. It was a load of American things (as to be expected, but unfortunately, some of these things were made in China) we gave them such things as embroidered bookmarks, American geography cards, Beanie Babies, etc. They had gifts for us as well; we received a guide on New Zealand, our own miniature kiwi bird (which happens to be scavenging for food on top my monitor at this current moment.) some CDs and many other wonderful gifts. Jon and I were wonderfully surprised to get gifts, as were our host parents.
We went back to the living room and talked, and Hannah got dropped off back at her house. (I've noticed a pattern so far; we talked quite a bit with our family.) After Mr. Jordan had dropped Hannah off and we talked with the TV in the background. A show came on, Rome, a show with unprecedented levels of realism, gore and er… sex. We were talking and a sex scene came on and we all noticed it and it cut the current conversation short, I broke the silence asking, "Do you guys censor much here?" to which Mr. Jordan replied, "sure, just not that."
We thanked them for their humble hospitality and went off to bed (I still think we did not thank them enough.)
Along came morning again, with another amazing sunrise, and more Weetbix for breakfast. I realized at that moment, I like being in other countries, it was fun doing something different (I didn't mind the sunrises either.) We loaded up the car and arrived at our drop-off place to continue with the rest of our trip. After a sad good-bye, we went up to the bus to have our luggage loaded up so we could board and go along with the non-homestay portion of the trip.
We found the rest of our group and exchanged stories about how our homestays went. Becca and Kate O's family lit a fire and a bird simultaneously, while Jenny and Kate A's family had tons of puzzles and [didn't] have a "puzzle party." Needless to say, Jon and I were quite happy to have the group we had, while I'm sure (nearly) everybody had an amazing experience, Jon and I were lucky to have the one we did.
