I ran out of original titles...

christoph was very right when he told me in an email i got from him lately that i promised you a bit too much when i said i would write in my next few blogs everything that happened in the time from november to now. but i also think that i owe you an explanation about what really happened that day after we visited the paua shell factory. so- where was i? ah, yes.
all the other international students and the teachers that are responsible for us drove back to upper hutt in a van leaving anna, johnson and me behind at the souvenir shop of the factory. now the spy story is a rather small thing. we were sitting at a little table in a corner of the shop and drunk some coffee we got for free when an elderly man presumably a tourist came up to us and started talking. so we had a little conversation and he gave us advise on how to live our lives and such things. luckily he noticed himself after about ten minutes that this might be quite boring for us and so he stopped. somehow we came to speak about his profession and he told us that he used to travelled around the world for his job and that he worked for the british government but he wasn’t an ambassador. so we thought he must be a spy then because he wouldn’t tell us what exactly he was. and that was the spy story.
andrew my support coordinator and some of the other AFS students from upper hutt picked us up from the factory in masterton(for all google earthlers) and drove us to 'castle point' at the beach where the AFS mid-stay camp took place. Again a great event like the first AFS camp loaded with different games and activities. including races, tournaments and swimming in the pacific ocean.
so, now enough of long past events and back to some very recent happenings.
first things first.
After Julie i went to stay with Andrew, Cathy and their daughter Kate(14). very nice funny people. i enjoyed my time at their place very much. they have a dog and a cat and a small messy house but are very loving and great fun. a laughed a lot with them. they all work and go to school in wellington and therefore leave the house very early in the mornings which left me alone with the dog i had to put in the bathroom before i left to school. this is because she barks when she is outside too long. and the neighbours don’t like that.
kate goes to a catholic school in wellington and her school was chosen to carry the flags at a big rugby tournament opening ceremony. this gave me the opportunity to go and have a look when they practiced at the westpac stadium in wellington. i didn’t have tickets for the tournament itself though. the event is called the sevens. it is played with rugby rules but only with seven players and seven minutes of play time each side. this makes it a very quick event of only two days. two days in which all young adults in wellington dress up and get drunk. i did neither of them because police controls of younger-than-eighteen looking people are of a high frequency during this two days. and i didn’t feel like dressing up either.
and then on the second day of the sevens there came the reason why i couldn’t stay at andrew and cathy's house directly form finland. OLLI. he is a very nice guy and we had and still have a lot of fun together. we shared a room for about two weeks and it was really messy in that room.
on sunday two weeks ago we had a AFS chapter meeting at andrew’s house with all the students that arrived last august (johnson, anna, annie and me) welcoming all the new students (wendy, olli and paulina). the janssens were there too with their daughter rebecca who left last friday to germany. right after the meeting when they were at home they called sue the upper hutt valley chapter president and responsible person that they would like to have me as their new student and before i knew it i was in another family again. THE JANSSENS
family janssen live in a very nice house in silverstream another suburb of upper hutt. and again i can still go to school by bike. i live here with john, christine, michael(14) and sophie(11). very nice people! the son is just a bit quiet. but i think that’s just how he is.
i started back to school about two weeks ago with a new subject that immediately became my favourite one. DRAMA. i love it. good people and a good teacher and its just great fun to improvise in english. i won’t be here for the big drama production at the end of the year but there is an assessment before that which contains performing a monologue. today we got our monologues. all of them about one A4 page long. we have to perform them on stage and design and direct the whole little scene for ourselves. a big challenge but a good one.
i am still member of the dragon boating team but i have been promoted. remember how i said that I’m in the second team and that i think that they don’t take any international students in the first team? however, i was wrong. last week my trainer came up to me and asked me if i wanted to join the first team. of course i said yes which means that i can go to the nationals in auckland. isn’t that great. you go to another country, to another school and after 6 month you’re in a team and can compete for the whole school at the nationals. something i wouldn’t even have dreamt of in switzerland!! that’s just great.
now tomorrow i have training before school and after school. first muscles building in the gym and then paddling on the boat in wellington harbour. the last training on the boat was great. you forget about everything. nothing matters anymore. just you and the paddle and the team in the boat. and you have saltwater all over you and it might be cold but you don’t care. all you think is 'keep paddling'. that’s just great. i never had this experience before.

i live at

22a Chatsworth road

Silverstream

Upper Hutt

New Zealand

greetings from new zealand
dario

Time machine

It is time to once again send some news back home to Switzerland. A lot of things happened here despite the fact that I didn’t write a blog for a long, long time. Luckily I write my diary every day so I can easily look up all the major events of the past few weeks. So come and join me on my little voyage through time.

Friday the 30th of November:
It was a rainy cloudy spring day.we international students from upper hutt college went to Mt. Bruce just past Fetherston with mrs. Howes and her Japanese husband who came to the Tongariro crossing with us too. Mt. Bruce is more like a hill than like a mountain and it was also not the actual reason why we went there. The reason was a little wildlife park with enclosures for native bird and plants, some creeks and ditches and of course a Kiwi tunnel. Because the kiwi birds are nocturnal they always get to stay in tunnels and caves when they are captured and living I a zoo or wildlife park. So we spent some time there watching what the live nest camera captured(in our case a lonely egg in the nest). We had a something to eat and drink in the park café and looked around in the souvenir shop before hitting the road again to Masterton. On the way there we stopped at a war memorial which commemorates the Japanese soldiers that where looked after by the surrounding community in the second world war. Very interesting for the 4 Japanese people we had with us. Not so much for me. In Masterton we went to the ‘Paua shell’ factory. Paua is a very big sea shell with a hard thick crust. But the if the crust is removed it reveales a very nice fragile shell which shimmers in turquoise. Jewelry and all sorts of souvenir is made out of it an the traditional Maori carvings are often decorated with it. For a certain reason I didn’t go back to upper hutt with all the other international students.
In my next blog your gonna hear about a British agent and why the Paua shell factory wasn’t even the third most exciting thing this day.



Greetings from a sunny country down under



dario

say 'welcome' to finland

hello my dear friends and members of the family.
i would like to announce in this little blog which is soon to be followed by a bigger one that i have again changed to another host family due to complications with julie. because the upper hutt valley chapter has much to do with the searching of host families for the international students that arrive at the beginning of february they were not yet able to find me a new place. this doesnt mean im living on the street. no, im living with andrew my support coordinator his wife kathy and his 14 year old daughter kate. i have a very good time here. but im not able to stay here for very long because one of the students that arrive in february (olli from finland) will be living here for one year. i might still be here in this family for some weeks with him. but i dont mind and i hope he doesnt either. i can go with the others to pick him up form the airport and experience the other side of the game too. something not many exchange students can do. great!

so this would be my new address:

24 liverpool street
upper hutt
new zealand

greetings dario

AGAIN A NEW ADDRESS

Hello my dear friends and relatives,

i have again moved to another house. but this time with my host family.
so if anybody wants to write me a letter or a postcard please send it to:

dario brander
1073 fergusson drive
upper hutt
new zealand

i had many things to do lately and will soon write a new
blog

kind regards dario

JESUS IS THE REASON OF THE SEASON!

ah my dear friends and family members. christmas time is arising all around us. christmas trees in shopping malls and the windows. mannequins dressed up as angels and santa clauses. woderful. last sunday i was in wellington with some friends to attend the chrism's parade. the main road was closed for cars to drive through so it was a bit like fasnachtsomzog in lucerne. different groups of society dressed up and performed their little show. but most of them just sat on their wagons dressed as santas and dancing around more or less motivated. but that was understandable for it was very hot. the range of groups was very wide. it reached from 'a' for amateur cheerleader to 'f' for fallun gong brass band. it was very entertaining.
last wednesday i went to a three day tramping trip with the school. this was one of the many things we do during the time we have the alternative school program with the other international students that dont do the exams. we where about 7 international students that went on the trip. with us where three adults. mrs. howes (she teaches japanese at our school and is in charge of the program) a japanese man and kiwi man (they are both into photography so we stopped at different places on the way up to national park to take beautiful pictures of the scenery). it took us around 6 hours to drive up to national park because as i said we stopped at different places not just to take pictures but also to buy vegis and sweet potatoes for the barbecue we enjoyed this evening. the little motel we lived in in national park was very comfortable and it reminded me of a swiss ski hut because there where old pairs of skies attached to the walls and an old fireplace stood in the middle of the living room at a wall. this is because close to the place is one of the big ski resorts of the north island. the one on mount ruapehu. a volcano which erupted recently. national park itself is a very small village with not much to see. for those of you who read my blog regularly: this is the place where i had the long break on my 12 hour train trip to auckland. remember? just a little restaurant at the train station and then a long, long road and nothing else. yes, that's the place. national park is a village but as the name says also a national park. this park was a gift to the nation by the local maoris. they gave the land to the nation in 1880. and the only condition for the nation was to make it a national park. the maori of course didnt just voluntarily give up a beautiful peace of land. but they believed in group ownership rather than in individual one. they where afraid that the english settlers would split the land up in many, many small compartments for farmers and private persons. thats why the maoris gave it as a gift and made it the 4th national park in the world at that time. the second day was the day of our great tramp. the 'tongariro crossing'. people form all over the world come here to do this tramp and now that ive done it i know why!!
we got up at 7am to eat some scrambled egg and to pack our clothes and lunches and big water bottles. the owner of the motel drove us to the starting point of the tamp in a white van. we got off the van and surrounded by a volcanic landscape with small bushes on infertile soils we put some suncream on and started off at 8.45am. the tramp was incredible. i have never seen anything like that before. to be so close to a volcano is amazing. we walked passed blue lakes and mineral pools and through moon like landscapes. and johnson touched snow for the first time in his life. we made snowballs and fought each other. eight and a half hours later we arrived at the other car park where we were picked up again. not willing to do another step on this day i went to bed early after the chicken curry because i had a head ache. maybe because of the heat we had the whole day long or maybe because i didnt sleep enough last week or maybe because of both. the next day we got up at 8.30am i had a shower ate breakfast and packed my things again. we put our stuff into the red van we had come to national park with. we headed to tauronga first. a small village close to lake taupo which is a huge volcanic crater. we went to a hot mineral pool there. but it wasnt excieting at all. it was indoor on a camping site and a hot pool was the last thing i needed with my head still aching. so i just lay on the soil outside the pool, enjoyed the sun and listened to the birds that enjoyed the spring with me. after that we headed back home. stopping just to eat something at subway and for a toilet break. i was back home on friday at 5.30pm where a happy family waited for me. im really part of them now. juhui. ah yes and i cook every week. and they really like it. even the fuzzy kids.

i wish you all a merry christmas season

dario

Fireworks, stock car racing and more...

OK, this is gonna be a long blog again. you are going to read about many things ive done recently. and i might even add some pictures of events ive been through and persons ive bee with. i dont know if im gonna finish this blog tonight but i will publish it before wednesday. i promise. ok im gonna start just about around the time i left my welcome family. maybe even a bit further back.

about one week before i left them micaela and cherise had a home party. because all clubs are just for people 18 home parties have taken over the role of the place where younger people get drunk. and so did i. it was nothing bad. i mean i had a great time. everything was very funny and i had probably the best conversations with young people ever since ive come here. so i leaned to know many people. it really makes talking to people easier. another thing i learned about being drunk is that the best place to get drunk is at home. because you can just go to bed when you feel like and you dont have to walk home with a head ache. but no worries i had my self under control i was just in an extraordinary good mood and i didnt vomit(gall eliane :) . so really no reason to worry for all parents and grandparents.

i spent the weekend with johnsons family because fiona and tony where at the beach house. it was a long weekend thats why and johnson had asked me before that if i want to come camping with them. so of course i said yes. the time with his family started at their friends house with a BBQ and a board game named 'cash flow' on saturday evening. it reminded me of an advanced version of monopoly and took a long, long time. but if was fun. the plan was to go camping in paekakariki on sunday but jenny, johnons host mother, had a cold and so we choose plan b which in this case was: drive to paekakariki, examine the camping site, go to the beach ,collect shells build a dam with drift wood to hold a little river back then eat the lunch we had made, drive another 20 minutes to paraparumu go to the indoor pool and play on a playground before driving back home again. hui, that was a busy day. i still wonder how jenny managed to keep up with our program. the next morning we went to the movies in lower hutt and i saw 'hair spray' (what do you think about it, peter?) for the second time in just one month. it was still good but ive had enough jhon travolta in the role of e woman for a while now. after the movie (dont ask me why we went to the movies on this beautiful day it was) we of course drove back home where sue (siehe personenliste) was waiting for us right in front of the red brick house johnson lives in. in her car with the pink steering wheel and the pile of blankets. she followed us into the house. had a quick talk to the family. she recommended the 'spirit of adventure'-trip (sailing trip) to me and johnson just before she took me for a ride through upper hutt and beyond. now that we were alone she told me what was really going on. she had a conversation with fiona about me and it turned out that... too much pressure... too much... too less space... privacy... tony moving in... finance... just welcome family... anyway. after this i must say beautiful (as i said wonderful weather this day) ride through the 'lord of the rings' landscapes we both agreed that it would be best for me to change the family now.

and now im gonna tell you some things i did in the last few week. i dont exactly remember when they where(i could look it up in my diary, which i now write every day) but i think it is that you know what i did rather then when i did it.

i was at a stock car racing in palmerston north with johnson and his family. there are stock car racings in upper hutt too but they are later in the season. the stock car racing started at 7 pm. and we left upper hutt at 11 am. johnsons family has two little daughters thats why they often do excursions like this and on the way to places like palmerston north they get off the car at least 2 or 3 times to visit a new playground or an old one or a special one with a little train with cheering kids on it. in palmerston north we had enough time to walk around through the city. its a nice little place. like all cities in new zealand the shops are arranged around a park where all international and new zealand students eat their lunch. there are often some old buildings that look very european on the main road. from there the buildings start to decrease in height and youll soon find your self in a labyrinth of neat little houses. most of them wooden with a garage and a mowed lawn. industry is concentrated on little spots spread throughout the villages and so are cricket and rugby fields, characterized by the very high poles of the goals. we went to an exhibition about a cookie factory which is close to palmerston north because the national rugby museum was closed(what a pity). the stock car racing was great fun. there were several disciplines from big cars that sprinkled us with little mud pieces from the track to small cars. and from motorcycles without breaks to motorcycles with two drivers. a great variety. johnson and i used to bet which car is going to win and we couldnt stop laughing when a car we picked didnt start because its engine shut down before the race even begun. to evening was celebrated with a big firework at the and of the show. after this breathtaking, loud event in the stadium of palmerston north we drove back home. a wonderful two hours ride through the night with nice music from my ipod. oh how i love it to drive through the wonderful landscape with some good music in my ears. those are always my happiest moments.

what else did i do recently? hmm... ah, yes! i went to wellington to see the parliament building from the inside. i was there with many afs students from around wellington although i just planned to go there with johnson and anna. but somehow we were not the only ones that wanted to use this chance. the parliament building it self was a bid disappointment because we were just allowed to walk through the hallways that looked all the same. and no pictures where aloud to be taken. luckily it was fro free. but it was cool to see al our friends but the group split up soon after the visit in the most important building in new zealand.

a week after that we were again in wellington. this time to see the big firework in wellington harbor. the atmosphere reminded me of the seenachtsfest in lucerne. it was very nice. but short too. the started it with firework fired off a helicopter that flew over the harbor and then continued with 18 minutes of consecutive colorful explosions shot off two barks. the firework was on a holiday on which the whole nation celebrates a man who tried to blow up the parliament many years ago. but he had been stopped. now i still dont know if we were celebrating his attempt to blow something up or the people that stopped him from blowing something up.

during my time at julie walters house ive been to the marae which is the maori's holy/sacred place. a marae contains several buildings like a community room or better a hall a big kitchen and some have a kindergarten too where they speak only maori with the children. and there is the actual marae which is the house where they actually have their services and their funerals. ive never been in this building yet but ive been to community dinners. a wonderful experience.

everything is fine at school. today was my last school day because the other students start their one week study holidays on thursday an then two weeks of end-of-year exams follow. the school provides all international students that dont do these exams with a program containing bone carving, horse riding, history lessons(NZ, Maori) and several one or more day trips.
something im really happy about in the moment is that im now in a dragon boating team. after three weeks of evaluation training they finally named the teams. a great opportunity to make friends because we do a lot of teambuilding work. almost like in a theatre group.

so i hope you have a better idea of what im up to now.

have a nice day. dario from new

Finally...

hello,

nice to finally see you again. :)
i know its been a long time since i wrote my last post. many things happened in this period of time. to make it clear for all of you: i changed my host family. this of course is nothing bad even though it sounds very inconvenient. it might be bad for some people that break up with their family in anger and after arguments. but it wasnt form me. it was just something that sneaked up from behind and one they it was clear for both parties. there were several indicators that pointed into this direction. i dont want to explain this here on my blog. it would be far too long to describe ind im sure i will still remember when im back home so for all of you who want to know details about how exactly it all happened just ask me and ill tell you verbally.
now i do have a new address and thats the following one:

Dario Brander
11 Kentucky Street
Totara Park
Upper Hutt
New Zealand

my new home is only about 5 minutes by bike from my old one. so thats a very good thin and i can still go to school by bike and i can still go there with johnson. my family is very nice. i would say nicer than the first one because thei never had an student before. well they had annie before a girl from check republic but only for 3 month and it didnt work out with her because she was too quiet. and i think this wont happen with me. it is again a mother with two children without a partner this time. the kids, caitiann and marshall are 12 and 10 years old. they were very shy at first and are now opening up. i integrated very well in the two weeks ive been here now and we have lots of fun. i do well at school :) and improve my social contacts rapidly.
so thats it for today because i feel tired and my head aches a bit. i didnt sleep much last night because was in wellington last night to see the fireworks. but more about that and other things i did lately soon this week.

greetings dario