Here comes an update from the couple last weeks in "Down Under"!!
There were lots of cool things happening, such as heaps of day trips with the international students from my school, excursions with my hostfamily and friends, etc. ((:
Let's start with this lovely family here:
This is Tafoy, his wife and their little son. Tafoy is the adopted son of my hostfamily and now lives with his own little family in Australia. They were staying at our house for a few days, they're real nice! (;
Another day I went to 'Willowbank', a zoo in Christchurch with a friend of mine, Ines, and her hostmum. That was very nice, we got to see a lot of native animals (:
The highlight for Ines and me: We got sooo close to the wallabies that we could feed and touch them!! They were real cute and not that shy (:
Since I'm here in New Zealand I've really enjoyed baking! In my homecountry I never found the time, but here I bake nearly every week:
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| macarons - I have to admit I only made the filling :D |
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| German apple-pear-crumble-cake |
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| German "Laugenbrötchen" - a special kind of bread roll |
With our Outdoor Education Programm we, the internationals from RHS, had some cool wee trips!
One of them was to Quail Island, therefore we went a couple of minutes by boat till we arrived at the island:
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| the harbour from where we headed off |
There we had a walk around and could see all the mountains surrounding Quail Island and its wildlife. Unfortunately the weather wasn't sooo nice that day, however we had some good views - aaaand fun! :b
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| our walk |
Later we stayed at one place of the island, had lunch, rope skipping in a bigger version :b , and a 'blind trust walk (which was pretty funny because everyone of us was waering tops around our head, covering our eyes, and we were walking along the beach and beside trees and stuff in a row, laughing and screaming :D)
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| all of us in the air! :D |
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| Ines, Julie and me |
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| Kimberly (: |
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| our group! |
The next trip with our international group was an Ultimative Challenge Course and Paint Balling!
The Ultimative Challenges included activities like climbing onto that construction, about 15m high:
...running, getting over baricades and going through hoops :b
...balancing and swinging from bar to bar like monkeys
...and other challenges :)
To master the different activities and to make it a challenge, we were separated into teams - that was ours:
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| xoxo |
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| hahaha found a new buddy |
Another trip was to the 'Adrenalin Forest' :))
Climbing ladders, ropes, managing barricades till 20 metres height!
Paintballing!
With pink balls this time :D
We're ready to go!!
Enjoying the nice days, Clemens, Tjada and me went to Waikuku Beach, the local beach, after school a few times :) Very handy because we had access to the beach just by school bus!!
I'll miss that, sticking my feet into the water and relaxing on the sand after a stressing morning:
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| ...what also belongs to a NZL beach :b |
A big ♥ to lovely Aotearoa!
Yeah mate, that's what we think! (:
Our way home :D
Kiwi style - walking barefoot!
On the 17th of March we had St Patrick's Day here in New Zealand, an Irish feast day mostly English speaking countries celebrate. The significant colour of this day is green - that's why people dress green, colour themselves green, etc. Ines and I decided to do our own thing! :D Yummy homemade muffins with green decoration!
This year we had no long Easter Holidays as I knew it from Germany, but we had 5 days off school over Easter. (: I spend my days together with 4 friends of mine at Easter Camp!
This is a massive gathering of more than 4000 young people!! That was 'just' the southern camp, there is one at the North Island as well! From Thursday till Monday teenagers from all those different places are coming together in their little communities. Our local community we came with was called 'Gateway'. Every community had a specific spot at the camp where they could set up their tents and everything.
Gateway also had a tent for everyone of us where we could come in whenever we wanted to. On this pic for example, the boys just got their guitars out and played songs :) There was always something going on in the tent and it was open to everybody, that was pretty cool:
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| us on a hot day on the hay bales :) - Briar, Talya, Brianna, Molly & me |
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| Briar, Molly & Laura |
You could do a whole bunch of activities at day- and nighttime. Here Molly and I were doing a game where you had to attach a little thingy to the middle lain, and you were pulled by an elastic rope on your back :D It was harder than we thought to reach out far!
Molly and me having a war :b haha
Going down the water slide - which was rather a mudd slide after a few hours :D
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| before sliding |
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| Molly coming down |
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| me sliding down |
One day there was a photo challenge! In a group you were given 20 tasks telling you which kind of photos you should take - for example of the whole group standing close together:
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| ... all of us being in the air jumping |
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| ... or giving a stranger a 'gift' :D |
We took heaps of weird and original photos, it was a lot of fun!!
Found also something German at Easter Camp :b
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| saying: 'the roling hotel' |
We were so lucky because we had great weather every day at Easter Camp! The weird thing was just that in the morning, when the sun wasn't out yet, it was freezing, but around 11am it got so hot that you could only survive in summer clothes! :))
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| ♥ |
The biggest gathering place in the camp was 'Big Top'. As you can guess by the name, it's a biiiiiiig tent which fits in all of us 4600 people!
This is what it looked like when all the groups were streaming into Big Top - sometimes even with matresses and blankets to sit down on the ground :D
inside the massive tent - we found a spot to sit :)
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| selfie of Ines and me before heading off to Big Top :b |
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| a 'picture of the day' of Molly and me |
This was always a very entertaining part for everybody: You could write a little note to the people who run the camp saying who you want to punish and for what reason. There was for example a community youth leader who had called a kid's mum from his phone to pick him up immediatly - but as is was just a joke, the poor mother was driving all the way to the camp for nothing to find out that her son was all well and didn't need her to come... The guy's punishment was drinking a big bole of all the remaining food of the day mixed together, yuuummy. :b
Beside the punishment there were games played on a little stage in the middle of the tent, projected on big screens, such as 'Angry Birds' in life-size:
On top of that we had a 'camp band' who played their songs every night, like on a concert (:
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| Molly and me in the first row (: |
You could not only come to Big Top at night, there were a few workshops at daytime organized for us as well. If you wanted to, you could come and listen to people coming from NZL and the UK talking about subjects concerning todays' youth, such as 'Sins - and how to get away with them':
Easter Camp was just amazing and such a cool experience with all these young teens! I've met lots of nice people and had a great time!
However that can't stop you from having fun, aye? :D
Molly and I went swimming with the dolphins:
Unfortunately, we couldn't actually swim with them because they were moving too much and not staying at one spot which would have enabled us to go into the water and swim next to them, but anyway - we saw hector dolphins!!
It was stunning! I had never seen a dolphin sooo close in the wild before! They were just next to our boat, nearly touching it, it was amazing!!
After our excursion we drove back to Rangiora where I had invited some friends to celebrate with me in my hostfamily's sleepout. My parents from Germany had sent a package over for my birthday, insisting that I'll open it when my friends are around, not telling me why!
Later I found out the reason...
... They had sent me a proper outfit for my 16th Birthday! :D
My parents are the best haha ♥ I had to laugh so hard when I opened the package - this is just too typical of them!
I had a lot of fun with these guys: :)
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| Philipp, Clemens, Ines, Frankie & me |
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| blowing down my birthday muffins' candles d: |
looooove
My Kiwi friend Bella offered me the opportunity to have another celebration of my birthday at her house! Together we planned it and invited our closest friends from Rangiora High :)
After a few hours of work we had finally finished our unique home-made cupcakes for everyone:
The highlight was that Bella's family took all of us to Hamner Springs the next day!! That's a thermal reserve with a lot of different pools! The best thing is: All of them are heated - some of them more or less, there are very warm SPA pools and less warm swimming pools :D
We had sooo much fun!
There are heaps of different water slides as well! It's fantastic!!
1,2,3, juuuuump!
I spent many weekends with Bella and her family, they're just lovely!
One day they took me to a beach near Amberley, we went down there with her parents, her sister Georgia and their dogs (:
... When suddenly we discovered a - umm yeah, what is this?! - at the beach:
First guess: a dead sea lion.
Pretty close ... but, wait a second - is this animal moving? :O All at once this huuuuge sea lion began to move and to turn his head around in our direction! He was directly facing us from a very little distance!
We quickly stepped away a few metres :D
Fortunately he was not in the mood to attack us or anything and later he went back into the water. However this was a very surprising and stunning encounter!!
On one side of the beach you can find rocks to climb up. There are little caves where people have engraved their names.
Bella and I engraved ours - in hope that they'll stay there forever, no matter what the sea and the waves will be like -
friendship :)
Amberley Beach Forest:
We, the RHS internationals, had another wee trip - to the indoor climbing walls and the ice rink in Christchurch!
Frankie and me getting ready to climb:
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| Kai abseiling |
Shopping Shopping Shopping!
As there's a very easy and good bus connection to town, my friends and I go to the malls quite often. We don't always buy stuff, but we also like to just hang around, have fun and dress up!! :D
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| Angry birds :D :D |
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| The Palms |
Bella has been playing netball for many years now, is part of two teams, leads her own one, and has games almost every Saturday and Sunday:
There are different positions in this game, such as GA (Goal Attack), GS (Goal Shooter), C (Center), etc. Each game lasts 60 minutes, separated into 4 quarters with short breaks inbetween. At the end the team with the most goals wins. Obviously there are more rules, but I'm not an expert. :D
Another weekend, a very warm and nice one, Bella's dad took me and Georgia (Bella had netball practice) to a friend's place in Lyttelton, a lovely little city at the harbour - the sea in beautiful colours surrounded by the mountains. :))
On the way there we saw something else on the road but cars... :D
Normal encounter in New Zealand?
Maybe - there are not 10 times as much as sheep in this country as people for no reason! However for me it was something special to see! :b baaaaa
The friend has a gorgeous view from his house!! It must be beautiful to wake up, step outside and look at such a landscape!
In the afternoon we had a little walk to the friend's shed where he had canoes:
Canoeing with Georgia :))
Post from Germany:
Every few weeks I get a little package from home :) That's so cute! Most of the time it's from my parents or my grandparents sending greetings to me, and sometimes it's also a small 'thing' I miss from my homecountry, such as typical German chocolate or cosmetics (which are soo expensive here o: )
I honestly had some awesome last weeks and can't realize there are only a couple of days left here!!!
I'll be back with the next post soon :)
See ya,
Yoko xoxo
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