We have made it to New Zealand safe and sound!
Our last few days in New Caledonia were busy and wonderful. On Wednesday we had another afterschool program that was messy but a lot of fun. On Thursday we helped out with a Womens appreciation night for some very hardworking New Caledonian women. They graciously let us apply yogurt facials that we concocted ourselves to their faces, and scandalously bright nail polish to their fingers and toes. We celebrated our womanhood by telling stories, eating massive amounts of pizza and chips, and watching The Devil Wears Prada in french. It was delightful. Angela and I busily tried to fit in as much as we could before leaving la Nouvelle Caledonie. We visited the cathedral and parks one last time, said goodbye to some friends we had made in the market and on the street, went to the aquarium and a musuem, ate our last ham baguettes, and spent time with our lovely church members.
On friday we were planning on holding a Family Fun night. We prepared to teach them some games like pictionary, scattegories, and charades and saw it as our chance to give back to this community that has so generoulsy loved and cared for us over the past few weeks. We shared short (tearful) speeches about how much they meant to us and how we loved and would miss them. Just as we thought we were sharing with them, they unbelievably shared with us. One by one, members of the congregation in the tahitian tradition of saying Bon Voyage brought shells up and draped them around our necks, kissing us on the cheeks for one last time. Angela and I could not contain our emotion as they layered us with shells, pearls, sarongs, shirts, dresses, and bags to remember them by. We wish we could have given them more in return, but they will always be remembered and loved in our hearts. We both feel truly blessed to have had this experience with such truly beautiful people.
Now we are in New Zealand! While very grateful to speak English with everyone we meet, we also have fallen in love with the warm and friendly nature of the people, the landscape, and the food. It is cold outside (it is there winter here!) But we have a warm and cozy cottage (complete with electric blankets) and a warm and cozy family to live with. Howard and Pam are absolutely wonderful and we are enjoying there company immensely. We are filling our short time in New Zealand up with seeing some of the sites of Auckland, visiting different church members, scrubbing down the sanctuary, helping to clean up the campgrounds, going to a meet and greet party, preparing some creative sunday school materials, and writing an article for their newsletter. We are also learning a lot about Maori culture, and picking up some colloquial sayings:
It is cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey
pinched-steal
shouting at us-paying for us
good on ya-very well done
blimey-goodness me
winter woolies- warm coats
Each person we have met here has been so friendly, warm, and accepting and Angela and I absolutey love it here just as we have loved every other place we have been priviliged enough to visit!
Tootles.
-Brittany and Angela
Monday, July 13, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Bonjour de la Nouvelle Caledonie
We have had an incredible (incroyable) past week in New Caledonia. During the work week we were kept busy by preparing for a wedding that was to be held at the Magenta church. We scrubbed, swept, and decorated the sanctuary until it was spotless and beautiful for a traditional Tahitian wedding. The ceremony was beautiful. The bride and groom were completely in love and everyone in the room could tell. Brittany sang a song in French and one in Tahitian for the service. Afterwords, we attended the largest wedding reception either one of us have ever been to. Around 400 people piled into the polenysian cultural center of Noumea in their finest island garments to eat, dance, and be merry. We feasted, laughed, danced with some very nice New Caledonian men and energetic children, and ate a slice of cake from a wedding cake that was about as tall as both our heights combined.
Our fifth of July (which was the fourth of July in America) was possibly one of the most wonderful days from our trip so far. We started out by going to a more rural Caledonian congregation that met in a house, called Immanuel. We were slightly terrified as we were going without a translator and had heard some slightly sketchy stuff about the area. However, we were pleasantly surprised when an array of all different people from different walks of life arrived and welcomed us with accepting and loving arms. The entire congregation was wearing blue tradition garments as a symbol of peace and welcoming for us. The service was lovely. We both shared short testimonies, Angela said a beautiful prayer, and Brittany served her first communion which was made up of grape punch and chocolate chip cookies, which seemed perfectly fitting.
After the service, we were blessed to see some local Melenysian dances, as well as some Tahitian dances and we listened to some of there songs in their local dialects. At the end of the service a group of young people with blue robes and face paint performed a traditional welcoming dance from the local culture. During the middle of the dance, two boys surprised us by pulling us out of our chairs, wrapped colorful sarongs around our waists and handed us palm leaf pom poms and sent us to the front to perform that very dance for the congregation. We went crazy and danced our hearts out, laughing the whole time. They prepared a marvellous feast for of us of roasted deer, noodles, rice, chicken, and baguettes. We ate and talked with them for hours, soaking up every moment. We both felt so blissfully happy that we could hardly keep from moving, and so we danced with some of the older women right until we had to leave. It was the most amazing experience and we were both completely overwhelmed with the spirit of joy, love, and acceptance.
Earlier in the week we were feeling slightly homesick and decided to celebrate our Fourth of July American style at McDonalds. Our boss, Kareva asked to join us, which we were grateful for. To our surprise, when we arrived at McDonalds, over 30 of our New Caledonian church members and friends were there to help us celebrate our Independence day. Some of them were even sporting Barack Obama t-shirts! Angela gave a small speech in french thanking everyone who came and how we felt like we had family with us on this important day. We chowed down on cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, fries, and cokes and talked and talked and talked. Finally, we took a group photo with Ronald McDonald, and said our Au Revoirs to everyone before going home for some rest. What a wonderful holiday.
We are both becoming very attached to this beautiful place, its people, culture, and love. It will be very difficult for us to have to say goodbye in a few days but the experiences that are we having here are unforgettable and we are constantly thanking our lucky stars for this summer.
Bonne Journee!
Brittany and Angela
Our fifth of July (which was the fourth of July in America) was possibly one of the most wonderful days from our trip so far. We started out by going to a more rural Caledonian congregation that met in a house, called Immanuel. We were slightly terrified as we were going without a translator and had heard some slightly sketchy stuff about the area. However, we were pleasantly surprised when an array of all different people from different walks of life arrived and welcomed us with accepting and loving arms. The entire congregation was wearing blue tradition garments as a symbol of peace and welcoming for us. The service was lovely. We both shared short testimonies, Angela said a beautiful prayer, and Brittany served her first communion which was made up of grape punch and chocolate chip cookies, which seemed perfectly fitting.
After the service, we were blessed to see some local Melenysian dances, as well as some Tahitian dances and we listened to some of there songs in their local dialects. At the end of the service a group of young people with blue robes and face paint performed a traditional welcoming dance from the local culture. During the middle of the dance, two boys surprised us by pulling us out of our chairs, wrapped colorful sarongs around our waists and handed us palm leaf pom poms and sent us to the front to perform that very dance for the congregation. We went crazy and danced our hearts out, laughing the whole time. They prepared a marvellous feast for of us of roasted deer, noodles, rice, chicken, and baguettes. We ate and talked with them for hours, soaking up every moment. We both felt so blissfully happy that we could hardly keep from moving, and so we danced with some of the older women right until we had to leave. It was the most amazing experience and we were both completely overwhelmed with the spirit of joy, love, and acceptance.
Earlier in the week we were feeling slightly homesick and decided to celebrate our Fourth of July American style at McDonalds. Our boss, Kareva asked to join us, which we were grateful for. To our surprise, when we arrived at McDonalds, over 30 of our New Caledonian church members and friends were there to help us celebrate our Independence day. Some of them were even sporting Barack Obama t-shirts! Angela gave a small speech in french thanking everyone who came and how we felt like we had family with us on this important day. We chowed down on cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, fries, and cokes and talked and talked and talked. Finally, we took a group photo with Ronald McDonald, and said our Au Revoirs to everyone before going home for some rest. What a wonderful holiday.
We are both becoming very attached to this beautiful place, its people, culture, and love. It will be very difficult for us to have to say goodbye in a few days but the experiences that are we having here are unforgettable and we are constantly thanking our lucky stars for this summer.
Bonne Journee!
Brittany and Angela
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Sweating in South India...
Hey. It is HOT here. We sweat a lot. I don't really even know where to start on an update. We have been all over the place. In Uthamapalyam, where we spent most of our time, we were both preaching and singing at 1-3 villages every single day for 20 days. We stood on top of a mountain, played with monkeys, went on a boat, ate A LOT of food, saw a lot of people pooping on the side of the road, we peed in the forest, learned some Tamil, took cold bucket showers (which we actually really enjoy), used Eastern style toilets (aka a hole in the ground), visited some tea plantations, saw more monkeys, met amazing people, laughed hysterically with our body guard (the host family's son), and then took a train 13 hours to Prathipadu where we will be spending our last two weeks. It is HOT here. We don't want to sugar coat anything though. We have been having a great time, but everyday have experienced the full range of possible emotions from "I LOVE INDIA!" to "I HATE INDIA. I am not going to make it out alive." haha. And we laugh with each other a lot... over everything... because what else can we do? Here are some "only-in-India-conversations" we have with each other:
Kory: I smell bad, I think I am going to put on bug spray
Katie: I can't tell if this is poop or dirt on my pants. Kory: Just smell it and see
Katie: I would change my clothes, but I am too dirty.
Kory: Please don't leave me here (After our host dad came in while she was sleeping and told me to leave her with them in Uthamapalayam.)
Kory and Katie: Don't leave those out. The monkeys will steal them.
Kory (to the host family): But really, what do you use to wipe? Yea, like your butt.
We have been living the fantasy of five year old girls under our pink princess mosquito net every night. And every day before we leave, we have to monkey proof our room. The family here is actually really worried about the monkeys taking our stuff, but we hope EVERY day when we come back that we will catch some sneaky little monkeys in our room. A cow yelled at us yesterday. And we get stared at... always... everywhere. We can't communicate with anyone except our host family, so all our cell phone issues have made us appreciate American cell phone companies for the first time ever.
Let's see... what else. We see a lot in the villages. We see things that surprise us, make us sad, inspire us. Kory held a baby (for the 2nd time ever!). haha. It has been a HARD trip... and really really good.
We probably should cut this one a bit short. There is plenty more to say, a a ton more stories to tell but thepower randomly goes out so we dont want to lose this post.
ENJOY!
oh yeah to put this in perspective....1 monthin India is like 5 months in America...so we are freakin EXHAUSTED!
Kory: I smell bad, I think I am going to put on bug spray
Katie: I can't tell if this is poop or dirt on my pants. Kory: Just smell it and see
Katie: I would change my clothes, but I am too dirty.
Kory: Please don't leave me here (After our host dad came in while she was sleeping and told me to leave her with them in Uthamapalayam.)
Kory and Katie: Don't leave those out. The monkeys will steal them.
Kory (to the host family): But really, what do you use to wipe? Yea, like your butt.
We have been living the fantasy of five year old girls under our pink princess mosquito net every night. And every day before we leave, we have to monkey proof our room. The family here is actually really worried about the monkeys taking our stuff, but we hope EVERY day when we come back that we will catch some sneaky little monkeys in our room. A cow yelled at us yesterday. And we get stared at... always... everywhere. We can't communicate with anyone except our host family, so all our cell phone issues have made us appreciate American cell phone companies for the first time ever.
Let's see... what else. We see a lot in the villages. We see things that surprise us, make us sad, inspire us. Kory held a baby (for the 2nd time ever!). haha. It has been a HARD trip... and really really good.
We probably should cut this one a bit short. There is plenty more to say, a a ton more stories to tell but thepower randomly goes out so we dont want to lose this post.
ENJOY!
oh yeah to put this in perspective....1 monthin India is like 5 months in America...so we are freakin EXHAUSTED!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
