Last week and food

This week was another week of school and nothing really exciting. I went for a few runs this week and Friday I played waterpolo again. So much fun again. Saturday I helped filling some bags with goodies for the marathon. Today there’s a 20+ km marathon in the woods so that’s what it’s for. Furthermore I had some Dutch food this week: Poffertjes! My god, home made! Soooo good honestly. I took some to school and I ended up eating 1 because everybody wanted to try one haha.

This week I went on a mountain bike again for the first time since my accident. Thursday after school I decided to go with my exchange friend from my school (Josefina from Chile) to the Rotorua Night market in town. We had to go to her house first and she went on her bike but I was walking but it was a long way so she said that we should go both on the bike. In New Zealand everybody rides mountain bikes and they use helmets, when I tell them about the bikes in Holland they think it’s funny and cute because it’s such a movie old school thing to have bikes with a flower basket at the front. Any way, I sat on the seat with my legs in the air while she biked standing up! My god it was scary and I felt like I was going to fall but oh well. I sorta did it ;) Not that I am really scared of biking now I just don’t feel safe on mountainbikes. I just want my old Dutch bike hehe. Later at the nightmarket we went to take a look for some food to buy. There’s so much choice! Chilean, Indian, Palestinan, Chinese, Thai, Belgian etc. and owned by the people from the country itself! We went to take a look at the Chilean stand and talked to the owners for a while. We decided to buy some Churros con dulce de leche and even got one for free! Then I went to buy something delicious from the Palestinan stand. Yum 

Since I didn’t do too much this week I decided to tell a bit more things about New Zealand’s food.I would say that the typical dish here is ‘roast’ so mostly lam, potatoes, kumara and pumpkin. Especially lam is eaten a lot here because I never used to eat it. Then They have some weird lunch or even dinner ideas such as spaghetti on toast?! They buy canned spaghetti in tomato sauce and toast bread with butter and just put it on top. At school people take their spaghetti sandwiches and toast it haha. Baked beans on toast with bacon is also an option, I quite like that one to be honest. Then they never eat their bread soft. ALWAYS toasted. They say that that’s because they don’t have nice bread. I think it’s just average but I just toast it the whole time as well because well everybody does it. For breakfast lots of people eat weetbix. They’re like thick dried oat biscuits. You grab a few and add milk and then they sort of dissolve into a kind of porridge. They gave it to me at the hospital and it’s awful. But still NZ’s number 1 breakfast, god knows why. Then Up and Go a breakfast drink that I drank an awful lot from after my accident.
New Zealand has a lot of yummie stuff as well! They have the famous ice cream brand TipTop that makes really good ice cream. I already found my favourite one, a Chocblock. Vanilla icecream covered in chocolate and coconut. Then the typical ‘hokeypokey’. It’s this crunchy honeycomb candy that they put in ice cream or chocolate, yum! Also when they say ‘lolly’ they mean the chewy candy and when they say ‘lollypop’ it means an actual lollypop. Something else I see a lot is marshmallow. They have a lot of biscuits or chocolate with marshmallow in it, not my cup of tea.
Other than that lots of similar food just different brands and other taste. I don’t really like the chocolate here, it tastes fake. There are some good brands though but mostly nahh. I gave my hostfamily some hagelslag and they were so happy! Haha good.

I’m already recognizing this neighbourhood and feeling at home. Finding things at home is getting easier although I still have to open all the kitchen cupboards when looking for something but oh well. Yesterday I had lunch in my garden and we put two big chairs on the edge and had this amazing view on the lake, ahh beautiful! At night you can see the whole city around the lake lit up, one of my favourite things. I’m becoming great friends with my goat Nini and I found the cat sleeping on my pillow yesterday, I told him off don’t worry. Also I’m worried I might have too many things to take back. Well I’m not worried I’m sure. So if any of you guys fancy visiting me here and taking back half of my stuff that’d be good!

Next week I have a little trip with school planned on Tuesday. I have to be there at 06.45!!!! And come back at 18.00 I honestly have no idea what we’re gonna do but oh well. Then on Friday I have a Rotary weekend with the exchange students!! We’re going to a Rotarians beach house in Matarangi (Coromandel) and go waterskiing and biscuiting etc. So excited for that! I might go for a run now (I am not keen for this). See yaaaa. If you want to know anything about NZ or about me or just whatever. Tell me and I’ll write about it in my next blog! X