So New Zealand was great. Our ministry contact, Brenden, was super cool. We are now in Darwin Australia doing work with the Christian Outreach Centre (no I am not spelling it wrong, thats what the sign says). So our internet access is fairly limited so today I’ll do a quick list of the things I learned from the people we met in N.Z.
#1: Everyone everywhere at some point has played Half Life. The last thing I thought I would do on ythe World Race was connect with youth by playing video games but sure enough they all love playing Half Life…crazy…
#2: The worst thing you can do is to “break the bible”. Our contact has 3 kids and we spent a lot of time with his youngest, Judah. He would make up words to popular kids songs like “the oldman is snoring”. At first he would add in things that weren’t that bad but they progressively got worse. The last thing he said was “It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring. He went to bed and broke the bible…” We then asked hoim what happened to the old man and Judah said, “He didn’t get up…” wow. 5 year olds know whats up!
#3: Everyone In NZ is laid back…everyone. We got the chance to talk to a view gangbangers and they were totally awesome. They were acually impressed with Brian when he told them he was from Los Angeles. After the initial shock they said “your gangs are ruthless…we aren’t near as bad” then they proceded to ask Brian if he wanted to watch an underground fighting match between rival gangs…what?
#4 Slang in New Zealand is waaaaaayyyyyy cooler than slang in America. If you’ve read anyone’s blog on my squad you know that people in this region say “sweet as” meaning “sweet as something thats really sweet”. I’ll give you an example. “Man that car is sweet as!” Where as we would say man that car is really cool! you get the picture? It gets even more complicated though. You can replace sweet with any adjective. So you caould say “loud as” or “strong as”. They also use the word “munter” which apparently means “someone who is irresponsibly destructive, usually in a rage”. That is a sweet as word!
#5: NZ is the best place to live. seriously. laid back people. NO poisonous insects. NO snakes at all. In fact the only dangerous animal are the wild pigs that you never see. also landscape is amazing. So If you are going to move anywhere you should probably move to New Zealand.
Anyway NZ is old news and Australia is where its at. I’ll post a blog soon about everything thats going on here. Our contact has some very progressive ideas.
