Day 5 and 6
By Megan Crumpton, Kirstin Smith, and Nikki Prock

Hi Dan!!!! We woke up to another airport. We boarded the plane where we were then welcomed with a glorious breakfast of eggs, corn, scary sausage, and a croissant. Then we were further entertained by watching “Glory Road”. We laughed, we cried. 

We then took a bus to the hotel in New Zealand, settled in and walked to the mall. New Zealand welcomed us with rain on our walk, so we ended up staying in the tiny mall for at least five long hours, until we ended up walking to McDonalds to entertain ourselves. The McDonalds was cute. It had a “McCafe” where we ordered coffee and sat around and chatted about important things such as the meaning of life and what Dan was doing right now. We eventually wasted enough time that we were hungry again. We went to a Mexican restaurant across the street where we ate burritos and nachos. We exited the restaurant to find more rain. We ran off those delicious burritos through the rain. There were a few mishaps on the way back though and Megan was the unfortunate one.  One bloody toe and and a piggy back ride from Jodie and we were ready to go to bed after the hard day.

A rooster crow arose us from our deep slumber. The breakfast in the hotel consisted of toast, fruit, blueberry muffins, and an assortment of different cereals. For the first time on our adventure we had coffee available for us. The parents were over elated with this new addition. Following breakfast we took the bus to downtown Auckland and were entertained with our bus driver Graham’s insight of the city. The next leg of our trip was experiencing the Sky Tower.

We bought our tickets and met our tour guide for the tower whose name also happened to be Graham. We entered the elevator in two groups. The sky tower is 338 meters high. The elevator we entered had a glass floor so we could see the ground the whole way up. Some of the girls on the trip have a fear of heights so the ride was quite entertaining. When we got to the observatory deck we could see all of Auckland and many other parts of New Zealand. The views were spectacular. As we were admiring the view from the deck we were surprised to see a woman flying down the tower. She was taking part in the tower jump.

This jump is from about 258 meters in the air. The jumper is attached to two cords on either side of her body. It had to be a great experience. One day if we come back we would definitely have to try it. After our tour of the tower we descended back down to buy some souvenirs from the gift shop. After about an hour at the tower we boarded our bus again and headed to our practice site.  The gym is at a brand new YMCA in a traditionally urban neighborhood.  Both teams practiced together, along with our coach Jodie and help from Chris our Bring It guide.  We went through a couple of drills, learned what its like to play volleyball with a rock, a rubber red playground ball, and a net that only had 2 heights, way too high and way too low.

One of the unique things about New Zealand is that variety of weather. We have experienced many different types on our trip. Today New Zealand was very chilly and needless to say so was the gym. After practice we headed to the Victorian Market. At the market we ate lunch and shopped. The market specialized in New Zealand jade jewelry, local art, and other interesting handicrafts.  Of course some people went to the Nike store where they bumped into some All Black Rugby players, the national team of New Zealand.  After a few hours in the marketplace we were all  shopped out and with 20 girls that is hard to achieve.

So we then got back on the bus again and drove around the city to see the sights. Our match was on the west side of Auckland so it took us some time to get there. On the way we saw The University of Auckland. It was a beautiful campus.  We also stopped at Albeit Park which had massive Kauri trees, the second largest tree in the world, and like all other trees in New Zealand, it stays green year round.

Later that evening, we arrived at our match playing site, a small secondary girls school.  The gym was tiny, and reminded us of some of the gyms we have experienced before in Europe. We only played one match because the other team had three players available, Tora, Bo, and Fa.  All three were well skilled and with the addition of our girls they proved a formidable opponent.  The gym was freezing but we made it through the match. The game scores  were 18-25, 25-18, 25-17, 16-25, 15-9.

After the match we had to be fed. We went to Denny’s for dinner. Although it is an American restaurant the food is different. It is much more fresh and there are different selections. There was even a fish tank in the middle of it. It was definitely the nicest Denny’s we have ever seen. At 10:30 we were finally done with dinner and on our way back to the hotel. We were serenaded on the bus by Kelly Sadler to pass the time and were soon off to another night of sleep.