Sunday, 8 August 2010

The Beginning

So, three weeks in, and it has been a real whirlwind of a time. The kids have come back from holiday, my hockey has won their first game under my leadership, and I’ve discovered the joy of book covering.

All the staff at the College have been really friendly, and made me and Mitch feel very welcome. They have made settling in very easy. Even on our first day, before term had even started, a teacher had invited us to a local rugby match. To further this point, Mitch and I were invited by one of the houses to go on a trip to some ‘local’ hot springs (an hour and a half away) last Sunday.

The campus of the school is very pretty, as can be seen by the pictures.

Mitch has been adopted by the P.E. department because he did A2 P.E, and I have been taken on by the music department to work with them, because I have a GCSE in music! This means I get to audit instruments- making sure the department hasn’t lost any instruments by checking the labels and crossing them off a checklist. Fun times! I guess the plus side of this is that I get my own eMac and desk, and so I’m going to get really familiar with OS X, because the whole school runs Mac, and I haven’t ever really used a Mac properly before.

We’re booked to go to Roturua during an Exeat this term. This will give us a few days to see a different part of New Zealand, and give us a chance to try out a few different activities. We’re going to book ourselves to go Zorbing, which will definitely be a unique experience. Apparently you can have ones where you get water put in with you, so it is like you’re in a washing machine! We’re also planning on going mountain biking whilst in Roturua, because the surrounding area is meant to be quite good for that sort of thing.

Last weekend we did the bungee jump off Auckland Bridge, which is about 40m from where you jump to the water below. Although I didn’t touch the water, Mitch got submerged to his chest. Hopefully the video below will work, and there are some more pictures as well.



Tonight (Saturday 7th) we’re meeting up with the gappies from another school in the Auckland area. Hopefully this will mean we can start to meet all the gappies at all the other schools in the area, so we can share our experiences of where to go.

That just about sums up the first few weeks, so at this point I’ll sign off.