Kiwi Paradise : American Dinner and Easter!

Happy Easter! The Easter Bunny came to visit us all the way in New Zealand and left us a trail of chocolate eggs :). I guess it was more of a chocolate egg hunt. Chocolate for breakfast- yum! Church was at 10am and we had to ride the passenger ferry to get there. I've never taken a ferry to church before. Our professor and his wife opted to come with us to sacrament meeting because recently their church closed down since there wasn't enough people going to sustain the church so now they are "shopping for a church" as we say in the South.

It was a really small branch of maybe 30-40 people but they were all very welcoming and kind to us. They even used one of us to play the piano (not me this time). It was a good Easter service but to be completely honest we stayed in the same room for all three hours (our professor and his wife left after sacrament meeting) so things got kind of long towards the end.

The rest of the day was pretty lazy except for the fact that we told our professor that we would cook an American dinner for his family. I some how got roped in to being in charge of it all... so what did we have? Chicken fried pork chops (which turned out very nicely thanks to Brittany), biscuits, funeral potatoes, and salad. It took a few hours to prepare and cook everything for 14 people but it turned out to be a pretty good meal. Our professor and his family said that they enjoyed it very much. After dinner we went for a nice walk on the beach and found a dead sea horse, some crabs, and some pretty cool shells.

That night we put on a brief Easter fireside for our professor and his family. Some how I was put in charge of that as well. So I asked a few of the girls to share their testimony about Ester and then we sang How Great Thou Art. It ended with some hot apple crisp and vanilla/hokey pokey ice cream. It was a really nice way to spend our Easter holiday.

As for sleeping arrangements we all slept in what would normally be a garage but that was converted into a room. There were couches, cushions, and whatever else we could use to sleep on... it was an adventure cramming all 9 of us together but by this point in our study abroad it didn't really matter to us. All in all it was a great day!