I stink at posting and keeping you guys updated

Just want to say I am very sorry for not keeping you guys informed on my life here. For the past month and a bit, I have done a lot of things. Problem is, now that I've been a slacker, it's harder to remember what I've done. I shall try and inform you of my adventures, none-the-less.



Starting in December I did YMCA volunteer work. It was fabulous and fun. I got to work with such great people and the kids were amazing. We did things like going to the movies, swimming, and beach days. I've officially gone to the beach more in the last 3 months, than I have in my whole entire life. The one thing I found, was that kids cry a lot more than you'd think, and mostly it's for attention. I had a girl who would cry anywhere from 6 to 10 times a day. Everyday. Anyways, my time at the New Plymouth Y was great and I would love to do it again.

The photos below are some I took on the train ride in Waitara (why-tra). This was a very cool day!

 

 

 

My last day of YMCA was January 29th. I started school on the 30th.

As I've told you before, I think, New Zealand has 13 school years. Last year I was in year 11. This year I'm in year 13. No I did not get my math wrong, for the first time in my life, I skipped a grade! Technically, I am a year 12, but I've been but up in all year 13 classes, and do the year 13 stuff.

School has been easy and fun (except for Chemistry). I am currently taking English, Statistics, Biology, Chemistry, and History (along with a free period).

I've found this year to be better, because along with the more challenging classes, I have also made some more friends.

Last week on Wednesday, I went on a year 13 leadership and team building activity day. It was at a place called Vertical Horizons, which is a high ropes course area. We got to do a lot of fun activities, although it was quite hot and we got a bit irritated at the end. Our day consisted of a swamp man challenge, where we had to work together and get a carrot from the opposing island. That was messy and we didn't work well together. on Flying Kiwi, we had to pull each other up by a rope, and we "flew" in the air.

Later we had to make a raft and float our patient across the lake to the jetty, that was difficult and we spent 3 long hours in the sun. After we went for a mud run and had a blast, although I sunk becasue of my shortness.

The day, overall, was fun and I slept well that night.

 

On the 8th of Decmeber, our family friends, Jim and Melissa, got married. it was on a beautiful day and we had a great time.  It was at a little historic cottage and the day was amazing.



 

Also at school we've been having school sports days. Which are the school tabloid sports. It's so much fun, and we all have "house colors" that we dress for. The activities give us points and we try to win the tabloids overall. I'll post some pictures soon!

 

Festival of Lights- New Plymouth, New Zealand

Every year, since 1993, in New Plymouth a festival called "Festival of Lights" takes place at Pukekura Park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pukekura_Park). The park is lit up with thousands of lights and is beautiful. They have a bridge that has drop shaped lights above it. Everything there is breathtaking! They even have row boats that you can take around the lake! Danni and I had a lot of fun and laughs trying to row, we eventually got the hang of it though!

 

Christmas, New Years, and this week!

Well a few weeks ago was Christmas, as we all know. This year's Christmas was great and sad at the same time. The families of both Glan and Suse came to our house and spent Christmas with us. We got up and had breakfast, which was toast and bacon, then opened our gifts! I got many nice things and Mom even sent over gifts for us. After opening our gifts we had lunch at 12:30ish. It consisted of a lot of yummy things including chicken, ham, and even a very large crawfish (caught by Danielle's boyfriend). I think this has been the hardest Christmas for me, because I wasn't with my Mom and Grandmother (and my extended family).

After Christmas, we went to the beach for New Years. We went to a beach called Opunaki which was only about a half hour or so away. The weather was so so, it was really hot, but we had a lot of showers. We ended up going down to the beach only once. While there we camped. Our tent was quite large and I have a better perspective of camping.

Today we did house work then we had a swim in our pool!

 

 

My life for the past couple weeks

For the past couple weeks my host family and I have done some cool things.

For Thanksgiving I cooked my family dinner. We did this on the 25th of November, on the Sunday. I started cooking at 8am and did not have a break until at least 3pm. It was a lot of hard work, but it paid off. I cooked roast chicken, rolls, mashed potatoes, 2 types of casseroles, and more!

Glen's parents, Bert and Karin, also joined us. We had a large meal, that left all of us full at the end. My favorite part was learning how to make from scratch Pumpkin Pie. It was also one of the more rewarding dishes, because many of my host family had either never had it before or had only had it once.

My host mother, on Facebook, also said this...

"

Well the Fisher family just had there first ever Thanksgiving dinner, Lily (our exchange daughter from America) has been preparing food for the last couple of days and tonight we got to get together Karen and Bert Fisher Glen, me and Danni and taste the fine dishers, we had cream cheese and herb stuffed chicken, Green bean casserole, broccoli and cauliflower casserole, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, homemade stuffing (yum yum yum) made from scratch bread rolls and then to top this all of we had pumpkin pie, mini apple pies and a fruit platter made into the shape of a turkey. Now I feel like I'm going to pop lol. This is a meal we will always remember thank you so much for the experience Lily Manis love ya heaps sweetheart"

Overall, this was a great experience and finally let me give part of my culture to them.

 

 

 

 

After that our family went down to Napier/Hastings which is in an area in Hawkes Bay. We watched Suse's oldest brother Trevor run a half Iron-Man, which was called an Iron-Maori. It's an event that's been put on for the past four years and in those four years the amount of participants has gone from 400 to over 2300.

It was a cool event to watch, and we all had a nice time.

After that we also went to a water park called Splash Planet. It is in Napier. They had a lot of cool water slides and activities. We went on these racing cars, where you're not supposed to hit others, but that didn't happen. There was a gap between me and the side and Suse decided to try and go through it. I got spun out! It was still fun and it was a great time!



I am also starting YMCA volunteer work, my first day is Tuseday. I am so excited and happy that the YMCA has taken me as a worker. I cannot wait!

Sorry for My Lack of Updating

Hi Aunt Kathy, I got your card today and decided I should probably update my blog! : )

I know it's been a while since I've written a blog, and honestly I didn't realize it had been this long! I've been out of school for about 3 weeks now, due to exams and summer break. I haven't been every busy, but we have done some fun things.

The other day our family went to a circus, it was called Zurka circus and they did a lot of cool acrobatics. It was about 2 hours long and there was this really cool act where the guys drove motorcycles around a metal ball! It was very neat.

I am planning on volunteering at the YMCA here, for the summer programs. It would have been quite expensive to do if I wasn't a volunteer, but since I will be (most likely) , it's free to do a lot of fun things. I have my second interview in a few days.

I am also going to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my family. It's a couple days late though, we're going to have ours on Sunday, which is tomorrow. I spent 2 hours the other day, making place cards and napkin rings (although I forgot to buy napkins...) and today I spent most of the day making pies. I made 12 mini apple pie/tarts and make one big pumpkin pie. I'm also cooking dinner rolls! Overall we will be having roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, honey glazed carrots, dressing/stuffing, rolls, broccoli-cauliflower casserole, and pies. I am very excited to make it!

Busy Week!

I know it's been forever since I've written a post, but I've been a bit busy.

Last weekend our family went to Rotorua, a city in New Zealand. We went to a luge place where you ride on tracks on little luge vehicles. http://www.skyline.co.nz/rotorua/ssr_luge/ This is the site for what we did, I couldn't get any pictures.

We also went to a hot springs place, where people go and sit in hot springs pools.


After that I went on a 12km hike up part of Mt. Taranaki. It was a lot of fun, but I'm so out of shape that we had to stop twice just because I couldn't breathe! Very embarassing!

We had a lot of fun going up and coming back down was even better!

While going up, I fell into knee deep mud, shin deep mud, and foot deep mud. My life was peeerrrrfeeecccttttttt!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My friend Klara (end left girl in the group picture) was leaving this week, to go back to Germany, so we had a going away party for her at a place called Marbles (a buffet). We had so much fun and I'm going to miss her soooooo much!

 

 

 

 

Australia Trip

My host family and I just got back from our Holiday in Australia. To say the least, it was an amazing trip. For the first week and a couple days we stayed at Glen's sister's dairy farm, which was in Heywood. It was a neat experience. I was able to "help" milk the cows, granted I wasn't actually any help at all, but anyway... I got to put the milking pumps onto some of the cows (3 cows to be exact). I was a little afraid they would poop or pee on my head, so I didn't stay for long, gladly none of them did their bussiness on me.

While in Heywood we also went other places, such as Portland (not in Oregon) and Warrnambool. We basically went shopping in both of these areas, which was fun. I did manage to find some shirts, a skirt, and a dress so overall I did pretty good.

We also went back to Tower Hill (which I may have talked about before) and saw about 30-40 kangaroos, it was so cool and it was awesome to see them in the wild.

After that we drove up to Mebourne. We did a bunch of stuff there, including (but not limited to), going to the Werribee Open Range Zoo, Souvereign Hill, and a show called Witches in Britches.

At the Open range zoo you got to be within feet of dangerous animals. My family and I were the only people on the open range bus and it was amazing. I'm glad that we did the open range one, because it lasted longer and the other bus (a closed bus) barely stopped, where-as we stopped at every animal and our tour guide explained a lot about the animals we saw.

 

Souvereign Hill was also fun, it was a bit like Hale farm (for those Ohioans), but it talked about the gold rush in Ballarat, Australia. We went for the day and got to look at the "old shops" and one of the actual mines the miners used back in the day. We got to go on a Horse carriage around the town, a tour of the old mine, and then went to a light show that night. The light show wasn't what I expected but it was neat, and you were able to learn about the history of Ballarat.

We also went to the dinner show Witches in Britches when we very funny, the dinner was great, and the actors/waiters were very nice. They also had people come up on the stage (they were chosen from the people who were celebrating things). Overall it was a really great time.





Now I'm back in New Zealand and we have school Monday. I basically only have 4 weeks left of this year, as the Senior classes (years 11, 12, and 13) have exams.