I'm Back!

Hello again.

For better or for worse, I'm back! Back on the blog that I haven't touched since early 2015, back on campus for my second semester of college, and back to my usual self (because I just shaved a 6-week growth of bristly brown and red stuff off my face, allowing my laptop's face recognition to finally sign me in again 👍)

The idea is for this to go back to being a weekly occurrence, and hopefully week by week I'll be able to catch up on the major events from the last 4 years, and simultaneously paint a picture of the main factors in my life right now.

Okay, so update number one: My Family. Quick recap on where everyone's at. If ya can't tell, we're still in New Zealand. Well, all except Danny and me...

I'm freezing my left buttock off, about to start my second semester at Harvard. And Danny's freezing them both off as a volunteer for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Moscow, Russia.

Oak's living away from home for the New Zealand summer, working on a dairy farm on the South Island and living the #ooshlife

    

and Mercy (14 as of today, WOOT!), Sage (10), and Joyce (7) are all just starting another year of school. 

Life is good, God is great, and people are crazy. See ya next week!

Back to Utah

There's so much I could say about this trip that I'm not fully sure how to best post about it! So here goes, but just know that there's no way I'll be able to mention all the awesome things we did.

the view of our mountain and town on the coast as I flew past going straight from a volleyball tournament to Utah!

I left straight from a week-long volleyball tournament, lost my luggage on the way and came within seconds of missing a connecting flight, but eventually made it into good old SLC airport. This was a trip I'd been planning basically since first moving to NZ, and the main purpose was to catch up with all my friends one last time before everyone leaves on missions and college and all that other grown up stuff. And I would say that I certainly succeeded! The amount of fun I had in those short 11 days was seriously insane!

Everything from holding puppies...

to decorating Easter eggs,

and surprise parties...

to bike rides...

Hiking the Y, playing frisbee, basketball and volleyball, Mexican food, Just Dance (never again!), classic skating, a choir concert...

seminary, missionary prep classes, lots of smoothies and shakes, a stunning piano concert, visiting old teachers and ward members, and general conference...

sunrises and sunsets, bacon-wrapped hotdogs, some very impressive chalk art, watching march madness, family scripture study, trying sushi for the first time...

waterfall hikes, frozen yoghurt, mission calls, Irish tacos, faulty trampolines and swing sets, mickey mouse sandwiches, swing dancing...
 

camping, tunnel singing, fishing (for a few minutes anyway), prom planning, ping pong, a couple late night talks, bubbles that bounce, french toast, and lots of country music!

 

 It was trip jam-packed with fun things and amazing people. And a special thanks to everyone who helped me out, especially the people who let me stay at their houses, I couldn't have done it with out you!

Volleyball!

Earlier this year I guess you could say I went through a bit of a volleyball craze. The volleyball season is only 6 weeks long, but it's pretty full on. We had two big tournaments and a bunch of regional games, and I loved every bit of it! 

I only started playing competitively last year, when the coach approached me in the hall after math class and said they could use me due to my height haha. They taught me how to block, run C's and middles and A-deads but I didn't actually get much playing time until this year after a summer of practice with Oak in our backyard.

Our team had a record season for NPBHS this year, where volleyball has traditionally never been that big. We came second in the Super 8 tournament with the other North Island boy's schools, and made it into Div 1 (top 16) at the national tournament. Because of this, 5 of our senior boys received volleyball tiger jackets :D

Noah's ARC

Our first actual adventure race of the season, the ARC! (Adventure Racing Coromandel) For this race, all the adventure racers from New Plymouth split to make 3 even teams to give everyone more experience for the bigger races coming up. I was captain of our team, which included (from left to right) me, Bronwyn, Hannah and George.

George's dad is pretty much a pro photographer, so most of the pictures in this post are from him.

My ARC this year went pretty much like this:

Friday night:

Check in and race briefing

receive maps

plan route and final packing

Studying the maps and planning a route

sleep

Saturday:

Race kicked off with a raft building and paddle leg

   

then a short bike

  

a run/trek on a sick coast trail, including a stream bash to a waterfall

 

a long bike section, including a optional section through the local bike park, a rifle shoot, and a 300m tunnel!

 

a run/trek, including a zipline thingy across a river and a swim to get 2 checkpoints.
 

This was by far the most exciting part of our race, as the trail we took ended just short of the zipline due to a rock slide, and rather than run back and around to the track on the other side of the river, we decided to slide/fall down a 5m cliff/bank, cross the river and climb a equally as foreboding cliff on the other side. We made it with only minor scrapes and bruises, but everyone was pretty scared, because we dislodged some pretty big rocks, I caught the two girls after falling down the bank, and then we had to use a rope to get up the other side! It certainly made for a good post-race story though!     

one last final bike

finish!

dinner and debrief

The three teams from New Plymouth took first, second and third, and Danny and Oak's junior teams cleaned up as well, so we were all pretty happy and exhausted on the way home :D

A massive thanks to our support crews (i.e our parents) and our amazing coach, Mr. Hewlett. We couldn't have done it without you!!!