Thursday night, May 13^th through Sunday morning, May 16th

Driving to Tauranga: The shockingly curvy and very rainy drive was not pleasant. All the roads are curvy here, but this was the worst yet. Sarah made the drive in the dark with rain and fog! It was scary, but we made finally made it. The next morning we spent on the beach in Tauranga and it was a beautiful day.

There was a huge island off the coast filled with trees. The sand was incredibly soft underfoot. The waves were rolling in and the ocean was a beautiful greenish color. It was great. Our couch surfing family told us we had to go to the beach and get fish n’ chips, so that’s what we did. It was amazing! (f.y.i., when someone from the UK or New Zealand says chips, they really mean fries ;)

We sat at the café right next to the beach and a big mountain, or well, that’s what they call it, was to our left with some low clouds hanging over it. The fish n’ chips was very good. The fish was snapper, I believe, which we had never had before. I now know I love snapper! After we had our fill, we went on to Waihi.

It was…yep you guessed it, another beautiful drive. Once we got there we headed straight to the beach and it was a bit different than the Tauranga beach, but equally amazing. I mean, I’m not much of a beach/ocean kind of guy, but these were pretty amazing beaches. We walked for a while and then we set up the lawn chairs close to where the waves were coming in and Sarah read while I attempted to video myself chasing a bird. He never saw it coming, but he was still too quick for me! Grrr.

Because it was such a beautiful day, we never expected the monsoon that night!! There was so much rain and it was so loud it made it hard to sleep in the crazy van. Then the next morning, bright and early, a group of Japanese surfers decided to park right next to our van, pull out their surfboards and lay them in the grass, and scrape and wax their boards. Of course they couldn’t park in the 100 other spaces not even close to us, it was logical to park next to the ONLY CAR THERE!! Haha…it was quite annoying since we hadn’t slept well the night before because of the rain…oh well. After getting ready, we began our drive back to Auckland so we could turn in our crazy van and swap it with another since ours had to be back that day for a check up.

On the way there, we stopped in Paeroa so we could take a picture by the 20 ft tall bottle of L & P. This soda is New Zealand’s national soda. L & P is to the Kiwis or New Zealanders like Dr. Pepper is to most Americans in the Midwest. It’s served everywhere you go. It takes a lot like Sprite, actually, with a little Coca-Cola-like zing. Our couch surfing family said that this giant bottle was the Eiffel Tower of New Zealand. I think they were exaggerating, we hope, but it was funny. After the photo shoot with the big bottle, we continued on our journey. When we arrived in Auckland, traffic was horrible, which caused us to miss our turn…well…actually we had no idea where the turn was, but traffic didn’t help us in our effort to find the turn. Once we realized we had passed the turn, we found a place to turn around and got on the right exit, only to find ourselves heading down the wrong road off the exit, which lead us back onto the highway!! So we had to get back into bumper-to-bumper traffic and start all over again!

We finally made it to the crazy van rental depot and it was closed!! Of course they would close early on Saturdays and fail to tell us. We were able to get a hold of someone from the place and they told us we couldn’t swap and had to just turn in the crazy van. So, we were excited and super bummed at the same to as we now had no ride and no place to stay…We spent the next 3-4 hours sitting in Starbucks depressed and not sure what to do. But we finally decided that everything was ok and we would just book a hostel and have a good date night. And so we did. We went to Denny’s! Haha…well, we figured since Denny’s got us cheap meals in Niagara Falls on our honeymoon, we could give it a go on this one. It wasn’t very romantic, but man, the breakfast was good! Then we walked downtown to the movie theatre and watched Letters to Juliet. (Apparently it came out over here before over there.) It was actually really good. Once we walked out of there we saw that Robin Hood was about to start so we thought, what the hey, let’s go to another one! So we did and it was an excellent movie as well. What a great end to a roller coaster kind of day!

The next morning we went to a really neat Anglican Church downtown, St. Matthew’s, I believe it was. The architecture was beautiful, huge vaulted ceilings, and the service was beautiful as well. It was a liturgical service, which was different, but we really enjoyed it. If you haven’t been to a liturgical service, I would highly suggest you go at least once. Everyone had a bulletin with the order of service with the words of the songs and readings in it and we just went through the whole thing during the service. It was unique and different, and hearing everyone singing and reading together in different accents was really amazing. It seemed even more powerful to me because it was in different accents, not sure why, haha. The preaching was amazing, actually quite in line with what we learned at SNU, and the rest of the liturgy and songs went right along with the sermon. It was very refreshing and just what we needed for sure. I hope we get to go back at least one more time before we leave!

Until next time…

Hope everyone is doing well!

Grace and Peace,

Aaron

One of the prayers we prayed together:

God of grace, in whom we live and move and dance for joy, guide our steps through the complexities of life; widen our vision that our sight be not limited by what we see, nor our wisdom by what we know, nor our love by what we can accept. Amen.

Curious thought of the day: Why do so few people comment on the posts...or become followers...?