Today was a great day. I met Viki at the train station and we walked to Mission Bay from there. It was a stunning day and we got some strawberries to eat along the way. We spent the whole day together just talking and laughing which was really nice. She's a great friend and our friendship is already very strong.
While we were lying on the beach I actually got a message on Instagram from a girl called Grace. She is from Australia and had messaged to see if I was an exchange student going to Denmark next year. We got to talking about the exchange it was just so cool. She managed to track me down because she saw a post of me fundraising on my rotary district's Facebook page and decided to reach out. I just thought it was so cool because she's in a completely different country and still tried to find me and others going to Denmark. So far there are 6 of us, 4 from Australia and 2 from NZ.
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The days leading up to this weekend I found hard to concentrate on because I was so excited to go. I would get to meet all of the current inbound students in my district and I was really keen to finally meet the girl exchanging from Denmark. During break time at school, Lily (French Exchange student) and I would talk about the weekend and both complain about how slow time was going. But finally Friday came around and before I knew it, I was standing outside the Marae with all the outbounds and inbounds. We were then welcomed onto the Marae by Nan (elder Maori woman) and another lady called Corina. Once inside, a man called Kevin, who was one of the original men that helped build the Marae, told the story behind it. Then we sung a waiata (song) for them called Pokarekare Ana before we settled down to listen to the useful presentations our outbound coordinator presented to us. This was followed up by the really interesting presentations of the current inbound students. It was very cool to see where everyone was from and how different each of their lives were as well as the similarities. This pretty much concluded the first day and we all headed to the dining room with stomachs grumbling, eager to scoff down some tacos. After dinner and clean up for some of us, we played some games with some students that are part of Rotex. At 21:00 we had supper and free time and I think this was everyone's favourite part of the day. The one moment that stood out for me was when Viki (Austrian Exchange student) and I had set up our beds and were chatting about anything and everything. We laughed for a solid 5 minutes just over our different descriptions of what noise a rooster makes. I have no idea why we were even talking about this but we had so much fun. By 22:30 no one was objecting when they were told it was lights out and time to sleep, we were all exhausted. Unfortunately for some of us it stayed that way. I woke up every hour in the night because I was hot or cold and then someone was snoring so I couldn't sleep or I'd wake up because of it.
In the morning, with the wake up of 6:30, those like me who got no sleep looked like zombies. None the less, the idea of hot breakfast drove us out of bed and to start the day. Saturday was going to be a busy day. We learnt 5 songs as well as the actions to go along with it. For one of the songs we had to learn how to use the poi and for another we were paired up and had to learn how to use sticks to form a beat. It was hard but so much fun. Everyone was out of their comfort zone because it isn't a language we are familiar with speaking but we all gave everything a go, laughed at our mistakes and made the most out of it. Everyone's favourite song to sing and perform was Te Aroha and E Papa (with the sticks). Learning all of these songs and actions easily took up half of the day. After this, we were taught how to weave flax flowers which was very difficult but still a lot of fun. When we all had finished, lunch was ready. After lunch, all of us outbound students had to do our 10 minute presentation to the inbounds and "judges" that would later give us feed back. I was so nervous because like a lot of people, I hate public speaking but when I spoke to people after my presentation (I went last) they said I sounded really confident and like I had practised it many times. The rest of the night went very fast and like the first night we had dinner then Rotex games and free time. The next morning we were woken up at 6:15 because we had lots to do, but technically it was 5:15 because overnight daylight savings came into play so the clock was moved an hour forward meaning we lost an hours sleep. The morning consisted of setting up for the day, practising our songs over and over again before putting on the real performance for our parents when they arrived at 9:15. It was so much fun and the parents loved watching it all. The rest of the day was basically just a meeting about travel insurance and information about our departure. Over all it was just so much fun, I made friends with a lot of the inbound students and got the closest to Viktoria or Viki (Austrian Exchange student) and the Danish exchange student Maria. |