walking on water, with a touch of weird

A few thoughts that have stuck with me this week:

There's a story in the Bible about Jesus walking on water; not surprising since Jesus can just do those kind of things.
To recap the story: Jesus had insisted his guys, (the disciples), get in a boat and go to the other side of a body of water while Jesus went on a mountain to pray. The disciples take off and it says they were far off from land when a storm came up. It was only a few hours into the morning and Jesus started walking to them in the midst of the storm. Of course, only being human, they freaked out. My Bible says "they were scared out of their wits".. I'm sure it was a good thing they had some big waves around because that deck would have been wet one way or another.
Anyway, Jesus tells them not to be afraid, that it really is him. This guy named Peter has a sudden wave of courage and says, "if it's really you, call me to come out to you". Jesus tells him to come ahead, Peter gets out of the boat and walks on water to Jesus BUT he had a moment of doubt, looked down, and started sinking. As any person would, he ask for Jesus to save him and it says Jesus didn't hesitate grabbing his hand. Jesus then asked why Peter doubted and they got back into the boat.
With all the questions and awe that can be brought out in this story, here's mine:
How did they get back to the boat?
It says Peter walked out to Jesus so he at least had to be a few steps away from the boat. I want to know if Peter swam (given the storm, not too plausible), Jesus carried him, he walked on water again back to the boat, or Jesus did some kind of teleport thing (probably not, but if he wanted to, I fully believe he could).
I was just thinking, if it were me, I would want to be able to walk on water again to show my trust for the One who called me out. I don't know that it would be easier the second time around given all the doubts that we as humans are prone to have. I wonder when Jesus INSISTED the disciples go without him, did they have enough faith to believe he could get to them again? Or did they think he was sending them off, not to rejoin them? I probably won't know that until I get to talk to Peter myself, and then I'm sure I won't care since there will be a lot better things going on.

My second thought is more of an English question. The word weird. The majority of people hear "I before E, except after C" which I honestly don't understand the C part, I think it was only added because it rhymed. However, with the word weird, it's not I before E because then it's just that: weird.. and incorrect. I'm sure there's more of an explanation for that one, probably that it's not always I before E. Still, people shouldn't teach those things if it can't apply for everything. That leaves people with all kinds of spelling errors.

Any suggestions or thoughts on these questions are welcome!