Kerikeri: Cradle of the Nation 2

LET'S GO FOR A SWIM.

Sunday, the day that we need to go to church for service. So waking up at 8.30am, we managed to make it in time for the church service at Paihia Baptist Church. The service in this particular church is similar to Patani Baptist Church, the church that i attend and grew up in at home. However, one interesting fact about the church is that Janine is the youngest of the whole congragation. Besides us, all of the other members of the congregation are elderly people. But they still know how to worship and praise the Lord. The sermon of the day was a bout making God the priority of our lives. And interesting enough, I needed that reminder.

After the service, Janine drove us around the town area just to give us a glimpse of what is it like there. We managed to shop for souvenirs before we headed home for lunch. Lunch was simple but very filling! And since the day looks gloomy and cloudy, we decided to be on the safe side and get Janine to show us more things in Northland.

First stop, the famous Stone Store and the Mission Station. There is nothing much to see there except for ancient stuffs that you can buy like old fabric, wooden pegs, barrels of gun powder and all the other stuffs that people rarely use anymore. As we walked along the river right in front of the store, Janine told us about her high school stories where they use for their sports day. (Another interesting fact is that their school included water sports such as kayaking, canoeing and sailing as some of the sports events, hence the use of the river)

Our next stop was my favourite out of the activities we did the whole day. We went swimming in Charlie's Rock! Charlie's Rock is a bottomless pit near a farm where Janine and her friends used to go to every summer she was in Kerikeri. You must be wondering since its winter now, what are we doing there. Well, to swim of course! Yes, we are a bunch of crazy people that swam in a bottomless pit, infested with eels during winter just for the fun of it! It was a beautiful waterfall and we couldnt wait to jump in the water. Janine was the first to go in and Myn was next. They re-surfaced and told Anita and me that it is very cold! Thanks to them, Anita chickened out and changed back to her clothes. Believe it or not, I just jumped in! *Heck, I came all the way here! I even changed in the open for this! I aint gonna chicken out!* Oh, if you think you know what cold really means, then you have yet to experience swimming in cold waterfall water! But man, it was refreshing! And since we get to jump of the cliff for this, I had extra fun =)

After the short swim, we dried up for our next stop. Janine drove us to yet another waterfall called Rainbow Falls. Anita looked at us like we're crazy and asked if we're gonna go for another round of a swim. Myn and myself was eager since we're already wet but Janine burst our bubbles. Rainbow Falls is twice the height of Charlie's Rock and nobody tries to swim there. Or at least, doent make it alive to tell their tales. Seeing the place with our very own eyes, we slowly chichkened out and talk ourselves out of our stupid plan. In the end, our photographer just made us strike a few poses as she snaps away with her camera. As we were leaving, droplets of rain fall on our heads which kinda ruined the day for us since we had so much planned.

Sitting in the car, the three of us felt very cold since we're soaking wet. Janine then came up with an idea of taking us to a kauri sanctuary. Kauri is a type of tree that is used for timber. What is so special about the kauri tree is that the whole tree smells good! Like really good! How do we know?? We smelled it! Just like that... and it smelled good! We walked around the sanctuary, sniffing each and every tree (well, almost). Walking around in the sanctuary remineded me of the time when the whole Cohort 5 went on a trip to FRIM. It felt the same with addition to more moist here in the sanctuary. Seeing that it was already late, we drove back home just in time for dinner.

We had a dish from South Africa (which I already forgot the name to) and it was delicious. Gran lived in Zimbabwe before and travelled to South Africa often. She had her first taste of the dish and fall in love with it. She learned how to make it and here it is, for us to savour! After dinner, the girls (Janine, Myn, Anita & myself) showered and got ready to go for a youth event. Its called the Tribe gathering because the youth fellowhip of the church is called Tribe. The Tribe band played a few songs (some was written by the bass player, Steven) and the band was good *or maybe only the drummer, Blake, was really cute* The singers suck *they sounded like cats being slaughtered* but the rest of the band has amazing skills! Then they had a couple of games which was really random and 'unplanned'. it was all over the place which makes it much more fun to watch. Janine met a lot of the buddies here and she had a ball with them. As for us, we had a ball laughing at Ang Mo's dancing! :)

*to be continued*