Waitangi Day Weekend

What a weekend!

So much fun stuff and I feel like I have a little bit of energy to start this week off right! I got up and Jared dropped me at the grocery store on his way to work. I walked home and got to see all of the school children in their uniforms walking to Hokowhitu School and St. James School. It was really neat to see all of the parents that walk their kids to school. The moms were dressed in their exercise clothes and trying to look all cute even though you know they went home and went back to bed. :) Okay...that's just what I would do.

My favorite part of the walk home from the grocery store is when I pass the Hokowhitu Lawn Bowling Club. There are enormous hedges that give it a 'secret gareden' kind of feel. When you pass by, you can hear conversations and hear them playing but only when you peek through the gate, can you see them. There are proper older men dressed in all white with their sun hats and everything, having cups of tea and lawn bowling. posh.

By the time I got home, I ate breakfast, did laundry and skyped with mom and dad and thought I would write down everything that happened this weekend before I forgot it!

Saturday we left early and met our friends Carl and Adeline in Marton. We headed to Taupo and got there around lunch time. Two things you must know about me and road trips...1) I get sick if it is curvy. 2) I can sleep through anything.

This will explain how I slept through the curves and had a successful extremely curvy ride.

They kept laughing because we would all be in conversation and then I would be asleep. It happens :) I would rather do that than get sick all over them.

We got to Taupo and went to see the house Adeline had booked for us. It was such a neat house and was perfect for the four of us.

As we were investigating the house (which happened to be up for sale), a car parked at the end of the driveway and sat there looking. We thought maybe we knew them but when we went out, they were just looking at the house. We let them inside to see it and while we were talking to them, they asked if we were in town for the music. They told us that the Doobie Brothers and Little River Band were in town for a concert. We didn't go but it seemed like everyone else in town did. The town was extremely busy with concert guests, vacationers and people who had come into town for the triathlon that was being held around the lake.

We had lunch at a small Turkish cafe that had kebabs. I tried Baklava...which was on my bucketlist to do in Greece...but Taupo will do nicely. After lunch, we went to book our cave tour for the next day and then went to Art in the Park. There were many local artist who had come to sell their creations. I tried to convince Jared to buy a huge metal anglerfish to go over our fireplace but for some reason, he didn't like that idea. lol. It's a good thing that I was joking!

After Art in the Park, we had decided to go to Huka Falls. It is where the water flows out of Lake Taupo and into a river. The President, the Queen and celebrities stay at Huka Lodge when they come to this area of New Zealand. It is a beautiful area and I can see why they would stay at the lodge because security is tight! Not that we tried to get through the gates or anything ;)

Huka Falls is beautiful in pictures, but it is even more breathtaking when you are there.

The picture speaks for itself on this one.

Following Huka Falls, we went to Lava Glass. It is a gallery where you can go in a watch them make blown glass. I really enjoyed the experience. I never knew how hard it was to make blown glass goblets...but now I do. There were two glass blowers. One has been working 16 years and his co worker is a girl from Sweden who has been working for Murano in Venice, Italy for the past 3 years. They didn't wear gloves or anything...which made me a little nervous.

 This is a picture of her adding glass the already made bowl so that he can create a stem for his wine glass.

They are making an embryo...which has many different colors of glass within that shows on the surface when cut. They rub the glass with old yellowbook pages. It keeps him from getting burned but he can rotate the glass without the carbon coming off onto it. The new yellow pages don't have enough ink and newspaper is too thin.

We went to the grocery store to get something for dinner and then after that was put away, we went to take a swim in the lake. It was FREEZING. I don't know who had this idea but some crazy American decided that it would be fun to challenge her husband to a race. The end idea being that she would stop at the shore and he would continue into the freezing water. Unfortunately, this ill thought out plan led to her being thrown in and coming out in a block of ice. You guessed it...I am the crazy American.

Because Lake Taupo is a volcanic lake, there are places where you can dig into the sand and find hot water. Further down the beach, we found a thermal spring and warmed up a bit.

After drying off and having  dinner, we decided to go for a walk down by the lake. Some one had been messing with the 'DANGER' signs near the cliffs overlooking the lake. I found them quite funny.

 

I guess it's all fun and games until someone gets angry and dances off a cliff.

Since there isn't a congregation in Taupo, we held our own worship on Sunday. That morning, we got up and drove two hours to Waitomo. We visited 3 different caves which were all really neat. The pictures from the visitors centre and inside the caves are from my phone but the ones of the glow worms are from the internet.

 

 Visitor's Centre

 Aranui Cave

 Ruakuri Cave

 Waitomo Glow Worm Cave

These are the sticky fishing lines that the glow worms put out to catch their prey. They only live over rushing water so insects are plentiful.

Monday, we headed home even though we could have stayed a lot longer. Carl and Adeline came to see the house and then we all headed over to Kent and Rachael O'Donnell's for a potluck barbeque. It was so great to end the holiday spending time with friends. I am so thankful to the Lord above for my friends in America and my kiwi friends. He has blessed me more abundantly than I could ever imagine. I have gotten a little sad over the past few days thinking about all of the people in the States that I miss. It is so awesome that God knows that and takes opportunity to show me my family and friends here and how amazing they are. God is good all the time! All the time God is good!

Have a great week!