Our Engagement Weekend

Well, I think the title says it all- AARON AND I GOT ENGAGED! Needless to say, I might be a little excited… We had a pretty close to perfect weekend and I am REALLY not the type to use the word perfect willy-nilly. As most of you know, I am definitely a brutally honest person that doesn’t like to pretend everything is wonderful when it isn’t, but really this weekend was pretty close to perfect. The only way it could have been PERFECT is if 1) I would have felt better and 2) Aaron would have sang the male vocal part of A Whole New World (cue Aaron rolling his eyes). Because of that, it is also hard to separate the whole weekend from the proposal, so you will get it all. Here are the details you guys have been asking for (and probably more):

Aaron and I took a 3 day weekend for the west coast. We left on Saturday and returned back on Monday. So we started off around 9 in the morning on Saturday. After stopping by the grocery store to pick up some apples and what we would call Nutrigrain bars, we headed towards Arthur’s Pass. To understand Arthur’s Pass, the west and east coast are separated by a range of mountains. There are only 3 or 4 (I am not sure on the number…) passes through the mountains. Arthur’s Pass is one of the passes. It is actually a national park and is quite beautiful scenery through the mountains. One of my favorite parts of driving on Saturday was that Aaron wanted to stop whenever I said to. If I thought something would make a pretty picture, I would say so and we would stop. If we saw something that looked fun, we would stop. We were really in no hurry and had time to enjoy the ride.

For lunch on Saturday we stopped in Arthur’s Pass and ate at a little café. While we were there, we had our first encounter with a Kea, a bird Aaron came to hate. Keas are green birds with long curved beaks. All around the café were signs warning us not to feed the Keas and that they were not responsible for Keas stealing people’s food or any damage or injuries they might cause. At that point, we still thought the signs and these birds were funny. About a half an hour later, Aaron and I went up to the viaduct lookout to see the viaduct we would soon be driving on. While Aaron was taking a picture with me, the Keas got on top of the car we were driving. Luckily, we got to them fairly soon, but they did manage to tear a hole in the tire cover. We actually got off pretty easy. We have been told by some of the Kiwis that Keas will tear off windshield wipers, poke holes in canvas tops, and basically tear up anything they can get to. Although they are such pests, they are protected wild life so the most you can do is shoo them away. Aaron now harbors a hatred of these birds and has decided if he lived here he might end up going to jail for hurting one of them. Ha ha.

After our Kea adventures and more driving, I saw a jade shop and told Aaron to stop. The Jade Shop was huge and I simply thought it would be fun to look at. When we turned to go to the Jade Shop, we actually realized that we were in a decent sized town called Hokitika. We then spent a couple of hours walking around the shops. Apparently, the part of the west coast we were in has a lot of jade. There were jade shops everywhere and they all boasted that their jade was genuine Kiwi jade. In Hokitika I ended up getting a hat made by a local artist (the one I had before wasn’t mine and didn’t cover my ears), which you can see in a lot of the pictures of Aaron and I. We also walked down to the beach for a while. Hokitika was a nice place to walk around and take a break from driving.

After we finally arrived in Franz Josef, we looked at the 6 person cabin we would be staying in and then decided we were starving. We ate at the restaurant owned by the Rainforest hostel that we stayed at and later that night we went to the bar to watch the rugby game. Rugby is DEFINITELY the national sport of New Zealand and it was funny to see everyone get so worked up about playing one of their rivals, South Africa. Although I didn’t really understand the rules, I thought rugby was pretty awesome and it made the realization that when I get home football season will be starting that much more exciting.

The next morning (the day of Aaron proposing), I woke up and felt HORRIBLE. Well, first, I actually woke up at 4AM and could not convince my body to go back to sleep. I heard everyone in our cabin (except for Aaron) get up, get ready, and leave while I was trying to fall back asleep. My stomach didn’t feel good, my whole head was congested and I couldn’t breathe well, I was sore from skiing on Friday (I have a tendency to fall… I am sure this shocks you all), and I had already started getting a migraine because I had not been able to sleep the past couple of days (Which is REALLY strange; anyone that has been on a road trip with me and seen how much I can sleep could testify to the fact that I can ALWAYS sleep.). Despite all of those reasons for feeling horrible, I decided there was no reason for me to be moody (Aaron might have said something to same effect as well…). Aaron and I went to the store to choose from their meager selection of medicine so that I could find something that would make me breathe and the medicine helped a fair amount. Other than the fact that I didn’t have much energy, not feeling well really didn’t affect the weekend much.

Then Aaron and I went to check in for the helicopter ride we would be taking. Neither of us had ever been on a helicopter and we had decided that it would be an awesome experience. The helicopter flew us over Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, which are huge glaciers that happen to be placed in a rainforest. Seeing the glaciers from above was BEAUTIFUL. Part of the helicopter ride was a glacier landing. As soon as we stepped onto the glacier the pilot asked if I wanted our picture taken and took my camera. After the pilot was done lining us up with the helicopter and mountains in the background he took what was actually a horrible picture (I didn’t have sunglasses on and the sun was directly in my eyes). Then Aaron asked him if he could take on more picture. Although I knew Aaron was going to propose to me on the helicopter ride (he is SO obvious to me), when Aaron actually proposed I still was in shock. He came in front of me and asked me if I would marry him. For some reason, it seemed like he was saying it playfully and was going to say something goofy afterwards so I responded with “Uhhh… WHAT?” Then when I saw him get down on his knee, although it still didn’t feel real, I knew that he was serious. I, of course, answered with a yes. Then Aaron pulled out the ring and I leaned over him to say “ohhh” and then looked over towards the pilot to realize that the other couple that was on the ride with us was also taking pictures. I then came to the realization that I wasn’t even really acting excited about Aaron proposing and became super embarrassed. For those of you that might not know, I am RARELY embarrassed except PDA always embarrasses me. When I see other couples being all over each other it grosses me out and I don’t ever want to do that to someone else so I am uber embarrassed by PDA. AND I am really horrible with receiving gifts. I can genuinely love something, but I will rarely act like it when I receive the present. Because of these two reasons, I had prepared myself to not be embarrassed when Aaron proposed and show how excited I was. I, however, felt horrible and did not have the energy to act as excited as I was and was really embarrassed by that. So when Aaron stood up, I gave him a giant hug and hid my face in his coat for a while trying to get over being embarrassed. Aaron, knowing me, had already prepared himself for me to not react very well and told me it was OK every time I apologized.

After the proposal and talking to the other people on the helicopter some, we got back on the helicopter. When Aaron had talked to the pilot on the glacier, he had told the pilot he thought it was cool when we went over the glaciers and dropped down quickly. So as soon as we got in the helicopter that is exactly what the pilot had done. I didn’t know it at the time, but the whole way before the glacier landing Aaron hadn’t felt well and had continually told himself he couldn’t get sick. When the pilot had dropped down quickly when we got on, Aaron had put his hand up to his mouth. The pilot quickly gave him a bag and Aaron puked in it. At the time, I had considered taking pictures (it was quite a memorable moment after all!) but decided that would be mean and didn’t. Although some girls would hate that their fiancé (whoa- that’s weird) had just puked after proposing, it is my favorite part of the story. I didn’t like that Aaron didn’t feel well, but after I knew he felt better it became SO funny. It’s an extra little bonus to the story. The best part of it all is that after we got off the helicopter we ended up walking through town with a bag of puke for a while because we could not find a trash can anywhere. I really enjoy the humor to the proposal and it gives me more reason to tell Aaron that New Zealand is making him soft (he now gets motion sick when we ride on a boat, in a helicopter, or even drive through the mountains and he is now allergic to cats- none of which he had problems with before coming).

After the helicopter ride, Aaron and I had a lot to catch up on. We both agreed that the worst part of us not being engaged was not being able to talk about certain things to each other. I got to tell him about the nightmare I had of Aaron proposing and giving me a princess ring and talk to him about the purple tree (both of which are CLASSIC and if you haven’t heard these stories you should ask about them). He got to tell me about all of the time him and his sister, Leslie, had spent looking at rings and designing the one on my hand. He told me about asking my dad’s permission and how excited his family was about it all. It was SO good to be able to talk openly about everything again.

Aaron and I then took a 20 minute drive to the beach. We were on the coast of the Tasman Sea and, like every other beach I have been to in New Zealand, there was no one there. We saw MAYBE 8 people the whole time we were there. I took lots of pictures and we really enjoyed ourselves watching the sunset. Aaron likes to refer to this beach as the place we were engaged (the glacier is where he proposed). Later that night, I then got dressed up and Aaron took me out to a nice restaurant where we had a VERY good roast (with potatoes and carrots) and apple crumble with ice cream (while eating it the dessert I said, “Megan Jenkins would love this”).

The next day, Aaron and I checked out of “our first home” (this name came from a funny conversation we had) and drove up the coast to a city called Greymouth. Greymouth is a tourist destination, but there were only two things that Aaron and I really enjoyed there: 1) We went to Maggie’s Café and had what was called tea for two. When they brought it out they brought a pot of tea, a pitcher of milk, a pitcher of hot water, two teaspoons, two cups, and two saucers. Basically, Aaron and I had an official tea party. 2) There was an awesome art gallery that featured a photographer’s work. It summarized how I would love to decorate my house and it was fun to see his amazing work. Because we were tired of Greymouth (the really cold weather had a lot to do with it I am sure), we then drove up to what is referred to as the Pancake Rocks. We walked through a path surrounded by rainforest vegetation to look at rocks that had been formed by the sea to look like a stack of pancakes. The rocks and vegetation we saw there were very pretty and I took a lot of pictures (shocking). From there, Aaron and I drove back to Arthur’s Pass and our homes here. Along the way we saw some beautiful scenery and stopped to take some photos along with a miniature photo shoot on the beach.

So, now Aaron and I are engaged. Although it is definitely what we have wanted for a while, it is still often weird to think. Sometimes Aaron will see the ring on my hand and freak out or we will refer to each other as our fiancé and freak out. One of the hardest but coolest things about Aaron proposing in New Zealand where we didn’t have internet access was that for a while we couldn’t tell anyone. Aaron had told his mom the day we left that he would do it that weekend, but otherwise it was really our little secret for a while. It was hard because I wanted to tell my family and freak out with my friends, but then it ended up cool because it really made the engagement about us and not everyone else. Even having that time to really talk through it with each other, it is still very unreal and seems right but strange.