BBQ

A month ago we were invited by Br. Davi, a Marists brother to his holy day house in Cooks beach. We spent three days over there for holiday. It was an amazing moment. With his friend, James we visited a lot of beautiful places like Coromandel, Cooks Beach and hot water beach. We had a great time w at that time. Hopefully, we’ll have another time to repeat this fun moment.

Yesterday we were invited again for a BBQ at Jim’s house in Otahuhu. We went there with Oan, another new student from Indonesia who just arrived the day before. It was a nice day when we had our BBQ. We started our dinner with some hot buns and some soft drinks. It was my first time to have a hot bun. Normally they have this kind of bread on Good Friday. In Indonesia, we didn’t have that kind of culture. We have Easter eggs which were made from real egg. But here they have also that one, but probably it is made from chocolate, so it is not really a real egg.

We had lovely chat with them. We were so grateful because with them we had a great and might be an expensive chance to improve and practice our English. I loved talking with Kiwi’s especially when they use some expression, it was amazing to learn English from the native speaker. For the first time, I found it was difficult to talk and to understand what they were saying. It's quite different when I had chat with my classmates from overseas, with them I found it was easy to speak and to understand, could be because of none of us is a native speaker. So, that’s why I said I was lucky to have such nice friends like David and James who help me wherever and whenever I need help.

There was also another Samoan guy who got gathered together with us, his name is Patella. He was a friendly guy. I think he loves singing and dancing because when I played my guitar I saw him pick the tone easily and start to sing. Therefore, in my opinion, it seems that in some aspects, there are many similarities between Samoan and people from the Eastern part of Indonesia, especially when I hear their kinds of music, songs and when they singing. For example, even though there is no notation it’s easy for them to create harmony. I witnessed these bot in Flores (Indonesia) when I was doing my pastoral work as well as in Mangere where the biggest community of Samoans and Tongan live.

Having a wonderful time, make us think to have another celebration. We are looking forward to inviting them also to our holiday house. I think that will be nice. We’ll try to find a good time for this planning. Hopefully, we can make our dream come true. Because that the one way to repeat what they have done for us. I just want to say thank you to you, David and James. You’re very kind to us, even though we never met one another before, but you treated us very well like brothers. Thanks to you my brothers.