Perfect Weather

Hello family and friends. I just wanted to catch you up on how life has been for me since I left for New Zealand. In a nutshell, it has been fabulous! We had a layover in Fiji, which was absolutely beautiful, and super fun as we were greeted in the airport with four Fijians playing the eukalalees and singing to us as we waited in line for our transfer check-in. Then we flew the three more hours to NZ and got to the airport. Nobody was there to pick us up, and we didn't really know what to do, so we just sat around and waited. I suggested we stand up and sing I Am A Child of God to attract any members, but my traveling companions weren't too fond of that idea. So we just kept waiting, until our family found us!They are SO wonderful and super fun to be with. Monique is Maori (the natives to NZ) and Farren is Samoan--they are the Fitisemanu family. Farren is the bishop of one of the family wards here. They have five children: a 19 year old girl Shahn that lives away from home, a 17 year old girl Klyne that lives at home for now, a 15 year old girl Raven, a 9 year old son Mosiah, and a 4 year old girl named Shantell, but they call her Mini as a nickname. Except when they say Mini, it sounds like they're saying Money. It's pretty funny. We started our BYU classes, which we take at the chapel. Our teacher comes in and teaches us for three hours in the morning, we get a lunch break, and then our other teaches us his class for another three hours. It is pretty intense way to do school, but I am grateful for it because we will only be doing BYU classes for the first month that we are here.
Last night we joined one of the families in the ward for their son's 21st birthday (which is a big deal here). They rented a big party bus and we drove the bus around downtown Auckland which was really fun. I think we met most of the guys from the singles ward, which was really fun. Apparently singles ward activity increases immensely when the BYU girls come.
Today the other girls all went to the beach with Dr. Jacobs, but Monique invited us to come with her to the market and her niece's first birthday party. So we decided to go with her. The market was so fun, and I got a bunch of cool things that I'd love to tell you about, except for then all your presents won't be a surprise. So just trust me when I say it was really fun to go shopping at the market. Then we went to this one year old's birthday party, which I was excpecting just to be some small little family party. Um, no. It was like a quinceanera. They decorated and set up the cultural hall in the chapel like a carnival with games and prizes and even had a jumping castle outside. There were a bunch of people there, and it was almost all just family. Whanau (pronounced fahn-oh) means family, extended family. So it was a huge party, and they had TONS of really great food. It was so awesome. I was in charge of the bowling game and so I spent most of my time setting up bowling pins, and resetting up bowling pins. It was super fun! It is really fun to hang out with our mom, Monique. I'm really sleepy though. I fell asleep in the car on the way home. And tonight we're just chillin', trying to digest all that food! Hope everything is well with ya'll!