We started off the weekend with some rugby, I still have no idea what’s going on but we know some of the players so we just cheer for them and pretend we know what’s happening. After the game we head over to our trusty chai tea and fresh juice cafe. We’ve seem to have gotten to know the people working there enough for them to tell us about a BBQ on the beach that evening. The girl gives us basic directions and we thought it might be something fun to check out on a Saturday evening. In true Holly and Janna fashion, we get lost along the way and get home just as it’s getting dark. We have learned not to leave our cottage after dark as we don’t want another possum incident to happen. We have enough people in town who still remember the first one. We went back to the beach the next day curious to see if we could find the place in better light and as it turns out we had to go through the woods to get to the beach we were looking for. We should have known after the English trip.
Monday is the big Coromandel Clean Up which all the schools in the area participate in and ours was no exception. We all put on our hi-vis vests, our Michael Jackson glove and picked up a garbage bag and headed out onto the highway. Some of them are really into it, especially since there was a treasure hunt involved and whomever finds a certain bottle wins a prize. Our group seems to find theirs quite quickly but thankfully that doesn’t dull their clean up passion. There was a giant spider on a piece of garbage early on in the day so I’m mainly carrying the garbage bag while Holly fights off the giant bugs for garbage. You’d think that carrying the garbage bag may result in something a little less messy then picking up the garbage but that didn’t seem to work out so well. One of the students missed the bag and the garbage ended up all over my arm, it left sort of a pinkish tinge so at least it was pretty. Two of the students find this place on the side of the road that seemed to collect garbage so they’re pulling it out while Holly holds the bag and I take pictures. Apparently that’s not safe either because one of the students (incidentally the same one who turned my arm pink) was flinging sludge off a bottle before putting it in the bag only to be flinging it on me. So the other side of me was now a bluish grey. At least I was colorful.
We end off the day with a BBQ on the beach with the surrounding schools who also participated in the clean up. It was a fun afternoon, some of the students went swimming, others had a guitar, and I even learned how to throw a rugby ball. Still don’t know how the game works but I can now throw and catch it. The afternoon ended up with some singing by the students from our school. They were amazing as always. They have so much heart and passion when they sing you can’t help but be amazed by what they do.
We make it home, exhausted and covered in dirt and ready to jump into the shower. Holly had set up a skype date with Devin so I thought I would take advantage of the free shower and that was all good until I get out and notice something on the floor. My first thought is that it is my hair clip that must fallen on the floor. Oh how I wish it was my hair clip but of course this is Holly and Janna’s adventures where we both despise spiders and bugs of any kind and yet they all seem to find us. I think they can smell the fear. So instead the “hair clip” turns out to be a white bummed spider. I am already terrified of these things just from hearing stories about how they can be so poisonous that they can put you into a coma. One of the students had told us a story about waking up to two of them on his ceiling when he was in Australia (among being told about the many poisonous bugs, spiders, snakes, grass, etc that Australia brings) and I make sure to check my room every night before I go to sleep just because of that story. We just happened to be talking about that (or rather the student and Holly laughing at me because of my paranoia) on Friday again, I believe that is what brought the spider to our cottage.
Anyway I obviously freaked out but it’s pouring rain at this point so instead of running outside in my towel I just head to the side of the living room as far away from the bathroom and spider as I could get. Holly is done talking to Devin and sees the look of panic and the fact that I’m still in a towel and asks what happened. I can’t even speak because this is seriously the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life and I just point. Finally I manage to get out the words white bum without freaking out and all Holly can say is, “No, it can’t be” and I tell her that it has to be. She sees it and also proceeds to freak out. Meanwhile this white bum is just hanging out (not literally because they don’t make webs, they’re predators as the students so kindly point out) in the bathroom, not moving. They’re supposedly quick buggers so this makes Holly believe that it could already be dead. We’re not taking any chances though and Holly starts spraying household cleaner on it to see if it will move. About half a bottle later we believe that if it wasn’t dead before it has to be now. She gets out my trusty bug killing sneaker and squishes the already dead spider like no spider has ever been squished before. After transferring the unrecognizable spider onto a broom pan she flings his dead carcass where the beetle was just in case any other bugs decide to challenge Holly. We think that if teaching doesn’t work out, Holly can always be an exterminator. Let’s hope for my shoe’s sake that teaching works out.
To Be Continued...
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