Loyola at Leigh, Overtime (aka pt 2)

March 20, 2016

The next morning was the beginning of another busy day.
We started at Omaha Beach, where the water was amazing. It had a really strong side current though, which I'm starting to see is super duper common here. I wonder if all of the Pacific is like that? Apparently it's been too long since my last trip to California or Hawaii. 2009 to be specific. Yeah, I'd say 7 years is too long. Autumn and I are planning to fix that soon, but that's another story for another time.
So anyways, the beach. I brought a beach ball but it was super windy so it stayed under my towel until I un-flated it. But there was volleyball and boogie boards and ocean and waves and sand and fun and such. A beach. It was lovely. I was in the water a majority of the time.
I also made sand angels. Most people come to New Zealand and there like "lol sorry mom" for bungy jumping or skydiving. My "lol sorry mom" is for making sand angels because that's like, well, typical me but also feels like it's in need of an apology to those that raised me. I'd say it was a very good sand angel though, but you can be the judge of that on the picture to the left.
The water was full of the mini jellies that haunted our Ocean City beaches this past summer. For the life of me I couldn't remember what they were called, but they were in our weekly Beach Patrol bulletin for like 3 weeks in a row because they were such an infestation. My grandmother read all of our bulletins, maybe she'll be kind enough to comment on what they were (eh hm). But yeah so they were everywhere, which kept a lot of people out of the water, but not me.
Eventually about 5 or 6 other Loyola kids came in with boogie boards, but the current kept taking them out of the swim zone. I was torn on joining them or staying in the swim zone because there was a 50/50 chance they'd just have fun outside the area or they'd become a party pool and I so was not about that party pool life. So I stayed in the zone debating if I wanted to join them or not, when of course the guard went in after them. It was literally like less than waist deep so he just told them they needed to move back into the area but still, glad he didn't have to come in for me.
Also, let me comment on these swim zones.
So in OC, we have designated surf zones (thank God or I wouldn't've had that job last summer). In these zones, surfers must stay between the flags and swimmers have the rest of the beach. Here in New Zealand, the surfers have the beaches and the swimmers must stay in between the flags. And they're flag area is less than ours. I'm still not really used to it being opposite like that, but I've only been to like 15-20 beaches here so I guess it's all in due time haha. But yeah I guess that also says something about the super awful side currents that seem to be everywhere here.
So anyways during one of my oceanic breaks, Lin and Bianca were doing some acro-yoga. It looked seriously cool. Then Lin asked if anyone wanted to try, and I was all up in there. I was like "I'll try!" and jumped up. I'm so glad I did it was like the coolest thing ever. I was literally in the air being held up by nothing but Bianca's feet. Lin was spotting so I didn't die, don't worry. I only did one cool thing and no one got a picture of it, but I did a few other boring things that Celeste took pictures of, and Aissa took a video of the first "plank", so when I make my video for this weekend be sure to look out for that :)
But like seriously it was super fun and now I'm obsessed. The main (possibly only?) yoga studio that I can find in Auckland (it's about a 40 minute bus ride away according to Google) doesn't have regular acro-yoga classes but they do have two workshops/classes coming up, one Saturday in April and one in June. Hopefully I can find someone that wants to go with me but I'll probably go to them because it was so fun! Besides, I need pictures of me doing cooler things than anything I got to do at the beach that day. Hopefully I can do it. I believe I can and if you can believe, you can achieve. (Also that was a Suite Life of Zack and Cody reference btw - the believe and achieve thing.)
After the beach we had a picnic lunch in the park then headed to the local winery where yours truly worked the vineyard as seen in the opening picture to this post (jk we all know I don't work).
We went for a wine tasting. I'm not sure why I keep insisting on going to wine tastings when I do not like wine. Maybe it's because wine makes me feel classy. Maybe it's because New Zealand is apparently known for wine (? although each wine we taste comes from a different country even though it's grown here in the Land of the Long White Cloud). Either way I keep insisting I participate in wine tastings! This one though, clearly is acceptable because it's with the Loyola group at a Loyola sponsored event (although we did have to pay our own $10 for the tasting, which we weren't even warned of beforehand - how rude!!).
So anyways we self-explored the vineyard for a few minutes while they prepared the tasting for us. Once it was finally our turn for the tasting, I guess they suspected I wouldn't like it because they gave me the littlest amounts every time. Like probably less than a shot of wine. But as each shot is $6-8 and the whole tasting was only $10, and we got to sample 5 wines, that'd be $2 a "shot" of wine, so mathematically it was a solid deal, even if I didn't like it so much.
Dani or Marina (I forget which) said that I kept making a face after each sip that tasted like I'd just taken a "sober tequila shot". Maybe it's my familiarity with Mexico and their willingness to give away free tequila, but I can guarantee no such face is made when I take tequila shots while sober (and totally legal in my beloved Mexico). On the third wine I understood they were correct in the fact that I was making faces, but it totally was involuntary and totally not on purpose. Guess I can trade my high society wine and cheese life for my coconut and mango island life, as if it's not too late. But hey, at least I tried. And I drank all of the little shots they gave me anyways, bc even tho it tastes like sour poop mama didn't raise no quitter.
After the tasting we went back to our Auckland accommodations to prepare the next few days until Easter Break.

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha