its time for new news!

hello everybody.

its time for me to set up a new post. i had a lot of fun the last week!! one week ago we had an introduction camp up in taranaki which was organized by AFS. we drove in a van up to taranaki. it was a beautiful voyage with landscapes ive never seen before. all exchange students who live in the southern part of the northern island were there. therefore i met lots of people from all over the world. we learned lots of things about new zealand and how to behave within our host family. lots of things i already knew from our introduction camp back in switzerland. one great thing about the camp was the haka. the haka is a traditional maori war dance which is very aggressive and good to let out all you anger against anything. this dance was originally danced by the maori before attacking an enemy tribe or the english settlers. its purpose was to strengthen themselves and simultaneously frighten the enemies. but it was only the boys who learned the haka for it is a thing which is not be practiced by girls. the girls learned an other dance which is less aggressive and contains a ball on a rope which they had to swing in a certain way. I also learned how to properly throw a rugby ball. this is not easy at all because you have to give it a spin in order to make it fly in a straight line.
i was in wellington for the first time last wednesday. i went there with my older host sister because school end early on wednesdays. we visited the tepapa museum which is according to her the best made museum in the southern hemisphere. and according to me to. now that ive been there. it is a museum which contains everything from art and history (new zealand and the whole world) to flora and fauna. it was really awesome. it takes me about 45 minutes to get to wellington by train. but it is a very comfortable ride and its only 3 dollars!!!! imagine that. i really love wellington its a real big city with high-rise buildings and lots of people and a beautiful old-fashioned european looking train station.
last saturday was the spring festival in upper hutt. this is comparable with a mixture of a big street market and a fairground. there were lots of stalls selling art, food, toys and clothes from china. i had to be there for AFS. our stall was an old ambulance car from WW2. because AFS means American Field Service which was the community of american medics in WW2. i had to distribute AFS-brochures among the visitors of the festival. It was the same day on which our cinema opened in upper hutt. it is a beautiful cinema with 4 screens (i havent watched a movie there yet but i wanted to see how it looks like). before that we had to go on a 30 minutes ride by bus to lower hutt. well ive never done that but ive been to lower hutt (i went to a chinese store with johnsons who is from hongkong) and its quite a long ride. after my service at the AFS-stall cherise and micaela took me to the skate park which is on the other side of the track system.
at 7pm. we left for the beach house to spend the night and the next day there. on sunday it was fathers day and tonys birthday. it was a beautiful but windy day and i swum in the tasman sea for the first time in my life. well you cant call it swim because it was very cold and it had a lot of waves. but i was inside it.
this week is exam week and i dont have to go to school because i just arrived here three weeks ago. thats why i have lots of time to write new posts.

so have a nice day all you swiss people and others. kind regards DARIO