Homestays - Kiwi Style

Homestay weekend through the eyes of Sandy and Morgan.

Morgan Lister (Messiah ’12) writes,

My homestay family was right next-door to the old convent, with Michael and Hilary.  They have two grandchildren living with them, Louie and Alice.  Louie is a very talkative three year old while Alice just turned one.  To be perfectly honest, I was quite nervous going into this experience because I’ve never actually done something like stay with complete strangers for the weekend.  But, this situation, I realized, was very good for trusting God.  I had to trust that He was with me and after I reminded myself about that, I was able to enjoy myself and open up to the family. I spent much of the weekend playing with Louie in the dirt pile in the backyard with his Tonka trucks, and reading the same book to Alice over and over again.  On Saturday, Hilary took me to see a plot of land that her daughter Bridget and her husband were planting flowers on, and getting ready to build a new house for their family.  She also took me to a remote sandy beach off of Beach Road where we walked along the water line and looked for interesting rocks and shells.  I only found one shell which surprised me, since the New Jersey beaches are full of shells.  I decided that this part of the beach would be good to go back to when I am in need of a time of relaxation and reflection.  Sunday was a full day with a service at the Angelican church (complete with a budget meeting as our sermon) and then back to the house to play for about five hours in the dirt with Louie.  Boy, that kid can talk and talk and talk.  One thing that I learned about Kiwis is, the food is really bland.  I missed Jess’s cooking so much this weekend as the food had really no spice to it at all.  We had green beans at every meal; a whole heaping.  I must have eaten four pounds of green beans.  But, other than the blandness, I could not complain about the cooking as it was very good.  I also realized that Kiwis drink so much tea.  We would have tea in the morning during breakfast, a mid-morning break with tea, tea with lunch, a mid-afternoon break with tea, and then tea after dinner.  That was a lot of tea!  Overall, I would have to say, living with a local New Zealand family was quite a new and exciting experience for me.

-Morgan

 

Sandy Dzielak (Messiah ’12) writes,

“Lance Clevinger and Sandra Dzielak (aka me, Sandy), went to the Kevin and Sandy Topp’s sheep farm for our home stay weekend. (Note there are two Sandy’s, Sandy Topp and me, and yes, it made for an interesting weekend when someone’s name was called) Kevin and Sandy live in the Puhi Puhi valley right between two gorgeous, towering mountains.  They have a variety of animals such as cows, working dogs, dogs as pets, cats, two wild boars, chickens, roosters, and of course sheep. 

As soon as Sandy picked Lance and I up from the Convent she was talking about all of the fun plans we could do for the weekend.  We divided up our chores, Lance was going to take care of the dogs and the puppy, and I was going to take care of the chooks (aka chickens). Not too long after we arrived we got ready for dinner and chatted up a storm during the meal.  We all ate way too much (at least I did) and we decided to play tennis before dessert.  I had heard from CCSP staff that Sandy can be pretty brutal playing tennis and will tease you if you mess up, but she really just remembered making fun of Abe and we laughed about that.  Sandy and Kevin have a great sense of humor and it made the weekend fun and light-hearted.  The next day Lance and I worked a lot with Kevin and the sheep.  We watched Kevin sheer the sheep and Lance and I went through the wool to pick out the dirt or short pieces and put them in one pile and the good long wool in another.  The stacks of wool were well over our heads but Lance and I tackled it by the afternoon. Oh and how could I forget, Lance and I also got to sheer a sheep!  And of course we have pictures to prove it!

After lunch Lance and I tagged along to gather up sheep, which actually took quite a while.  Kevin also brought a dog along, Sky, who is one of the working dogs and it was a really cool experience to watch Sky and Kevin work together to gather up the sheep.  It was also a lot of fun to watch the sheep scramble around. That evening we watched rugby, took a walk in the rain around the pond, gave Kevin and Sandy our home stay gifts and looked at family photos.  It was quite a long, but very fun day.

The next morning we all went to church together to the Anglican Church in Kaikoura. It was nice chatting with new Kiwi’s and experiencing the church for the first time.  After the service we went on a picnic and of course had fish and chips for lunch, the infamous Kiwi picnic meal and then took a long walk around the Peninsula.   It was quite a weekend, it was filled with a lot of long talks, both deep and silly, of course lots of laughs and a lot of new experiences. Lance and I both really enjoyed our weekend at the Topps and we look forward to visiting again soon.”

Photo Credit: Topps with Sandy & Lance – Sandy Dzielak