I have been in Invercargill New Zealand for almost 3 whole days now and have been through quite a lot since I left from LAX to Auckland. We flew NZ Air, which is a very nice flight service, and arrived in Auckland at 6:30 in the morning. We were the first AFSers to arrive and then came Iceland, France, Peru, and Bolivia. I spent about 20 minutes learning the names of the 2 icelanders, did not really talk to the french at all (HUGE language barrier), and did my best (with an epic fail) to communicate with Peru and Bolivia. Everyone was very friendly even as we had not had any sleep at all on the plane. All the americans fell asleep and the bus, so it was me, icelanders, peru, and bolivia all trying to communicate for an hour to get to our camp site. Icelanders spook perfect English while the peruvians and bolivian barely spook any. I speak and little spanish and the Icelanders speak none. So I acted as a horrible mediator between conversations of spanish, english, and icelandic. It was quite fun. We arrived at the camp grounds that was located in a very hilly area and is used as a religious youth camp. Not much to do there besides hang out with people that speak very little english, but I had a blast. USA, Iceland, Latvia, Peru, and Bolivia pretty much became a big team there. O, and for Americas presentation of our country we did not have a flag like everyone else. So I had to bust out my american flag running short shorts and team USA jersey. We described the flag on them and got quite a few screams and roaring laughter as I took off my clothes that were concealing the jersey and short shorts. I dont think any countries were offended but I cant be for sure.
When we left the camp grounds about ten of the AFSers from camp went to Christchurch via plane and then me and a Norwegian girl flew to Invercargill. I was picked up by my host mom and dad (my host brother was in Auckland for a touch rugby game) and then we drove to my new home. Its incredible, ill post pics soon. Windows everywhere, some that even cover walls. We have a really cool dog name Paddy and I think 10 chickens with a really cool hen house. AND we have a tennis court. Very "flash" as they say down here.
As for the accent... I dont think I understand half of what people are saying and I dont think they understand me sometimes. My family was planning games for the camping trip we are going on this weekend and they kept talking about how they were going to throw hammers at pigs. I thought that was kinda mean and I kept listening and then they said that they were going to put the pigs in the ground. I was like "huh?" But then it slowly dawned on me that they were talking about pegs not pigs. I told them my realization and they laughed saying cant you tell the difference between a "peeg" and a "peeg." I still have no idea which one they were talking about when they said this.
School starts tomorrow so I got all my school supplies today. This is the only thing I am really nervous about. I dont think I really like first days of school. Ill get over it though. then this weekend we are going camping in Naseby and then the next week right when we get back I am going to someplace with my year 13 class for some retreat. So i have a lot going on this next week that I am excited/nervous about but I know its all going to be great.
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