Laura's Email Update!

kia ora everybody!

i have been missing my community back home, and i have been away for 2 weeks now, so i'm thinking it is time to write an email.

christian and i are now in wellington, new zealand's capital. they say it is summer here, but you could have fooled me. yes, there are times when in the sun you feel a bit warm and want to take off your sweatshirt, but it is pretty windy and chilly here! they call it windy wellington.

we were planning to be in wellington in the middle of last week, but much has happened to delay that. we bought ourselves an ancient camper van from a car fair in auckland. we were very happy about it, and it is big and blue, so we decided to name it "the big blue bug", to remind us of our beloved providence. we even named our blog after it - currently featuring some lovely pictures: http://www.bigbluebugblog.blogspot.com/. it is a very comfortable place to live in, and it would suit our needs quite nicely, if it weren't quite so lemonlike. it took us 4 days and 5 mechanics to get it down to wellington! part of that we knew when we bought it, so we were not completely surprised. despite the delay, we had some really nice days in crazy little towns with the one mechanic for the town fixing our car. one guy reminded us of crocodile dundee, and another, the most talented mechanic out of all of them who actually knew what the problem was, looked like he was 70 years old but races motorcycles as a hobby.

we are busy touring our new city. there are a bunch of festivals going on since it is "waitangi day" - celebrating a treaty in which the maoris sold their land to the europeans. the treaty happened to be translated incorrectly so the maori did not know what they were signing. also, the first night we arrived and the next, was "sevens", the biggest party the city celebrates each year. it is an international rugby tournament in which the teams use 7 players instead of 14. i like sevens better than the superbowl because everyone gets dressed up in matching costumes, kind of like the price is right meets halloween, and walk around the streets from bar to bar.

finally, we had out first Landmark class on saturday. this class is focused around completing a community project. it seems a bit hard to do it in a foreign country where we have no community, but i think it will be a good way to feel more at home here. we will see how it goes.

i miss you guys, please write and fill me in on your lives. i have a lot more time on my hands lately, so i could even write back.
love
laura