For Mardi Gras break
our family went to Florida to visit our grandparents. On the Saturday of our
week-long stay I was playing out in the yard and I got poision
ivy. That night I was feeling terrible. Everything hurt, I was crying,
sniffing, scratching all over, and the worst part of it was that I didn’t even
know I had poision ivy.
My dad and I had planned to go to New Zealand a day
after we returned from Florida, but there was no way I wanted to go feeling like this! So I told my parents I didn’t want to go to New Zealand
anymore. My mom prayed over me and bought me some pink lotion and I started to feel a bit better.
Three days later, I took plane rides from Texas
to California to Auckland, New Zealand to Dunedin.
At first I was quite itchy and uncomfortable, but then I
realized there were screens on the back of all the seats on the plane. Right before my eyes were all the newly released movies. The very first one
on the list was Jumanji, The Next Level. All of a sudden I felt like I had to
watch it, and it was a life saver. After that I looked for the first Jumanji
movie and sure enough they had it!
Anyway, I watched both of them like four times over,
and with nothing left to do on our last 13 hour long flight, I fell asleep. By that time
it was our 9pm at night, I slept well through the plane ride and when I next
opened my eyes it was 7:30 am and over the speakers it said: “approaching New
Zealand.” I could see all the sheep and mountains. About half an hour later we
landed. I was so excited to be in New Zealand!
Our friends Cooper and Drew and The Schmidt Family welcomed us at the Dunedin airport and took us to their home in Port Chalmers:
Right away I noticed
something: the car we were about to ride in had the steering wheel on a
different side! It seemed strange at first, but I got used to it.
One night after church I heard the Schmidt Family talk about glow worms. At first I thought they were
talking about a movie, but then they invited us to come with them to go see the
glowing worms! My dad said he didn’t want to go, but I sure did!
So they took
me to a walking trail, and after walking a tiny bit the missionary mom realized
something. There were blue glowing lights in the mountain side. We looked
closer and we saw worms with blue glowing faces. We saw a sign that said they
were nocturnal. We stayed there from 9pm till
11pm. When we got back to the house we were staying at, I was so exhausted I
fell asleep right away.
In the morning, after breakfast and morning prayer, we
went to a beach called Aeromoana. It was amazing! I even made a sand Kiwi, from
sand and sea shells, (the New Zealand national bird). When I went
to wash the sand off of my hands there was a bluff full of so many sea shells
you wouldn’t believe it. There was also a large lump of sand close by on the
same beach. I ran over to the sea shells past the sand lump.
My dad called out
to me, and I turned around towards him. He told me to turn around and the huge
lump of sand turned out to be a large sea lion, who had put sand on itself to
keep bugs and flies off of it! My dad took like a million pictures, and then we
went to go get the other missionary
family to come and see it.
We passed a car on our walk to go get them, and as
we passed a man jumped right out of his car and started speaking to us with a
funny German accent. He said “Do you want to make a good picture? Yes? A good
picture with your camera? There’s a penguin right over there, behind the tire of
that trailer.”
He pointed to the other mobile trailer next to him and there was
a small blue penguin behind the tire! And again of course my dad took some more
pictures. We then ran off to show the other family the two things now! When we
caught up to them walking down the wharf we realized they had stopped to look
at something as well. There were two fur seals right in front of them!
You can
tell the difference between fur seals and sea lions because the sea lion is
more aggressive and has a lighter color and is much bigger than a fur seal.
Anyway, the fur seals were sunning themselves and sleeping, they were so cute. We
showed the penguin and the sea lion to the Schmidt Family.
Three days later it was time to go back to the United
States. I said my goodbyes and got back on the plane. It was so hot in Texas when we got
back. I was so tired I fell asleep on the car ride back to Louisiana
.
If you ever get the chance to go to anywhere in the world,
go to Port Chalmers, New Zealand!
By Mallory
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