Today is Wednesday, our last full day here in Auckland. As usual, I got up at 7, had breakfast with my host family, and then went to school.
At the start of school we met in front of the Upper Gym one of the school’s two sports halls, together with the Lower Gym. To our surprise, we actually had a German PE teacher. He first explained some handball basics and also told us why we were playing handball in the first place. The goal is to establish handball as a proper team sport in New Zealand. We warmed up with a few dribbling and throwing exercises and then got split into two teams. At first the game was a bit slow, but after a while everyone got into it and started working together really well. The players communicated nicely and everyone covered their part of the field so there weren’t any big gaps. I personally really enjoyed it because everyone was involved in the game.
After that everyone went to their Hui Mai classes and enjoyed the break.
At the beginning of the second block we met again in the Upper Gym for a K-pop workshop. The teacher was unfortunately sick, so we had a substitute, and the students helped organise the workshop themselves. We warmed up for dancing with some games, for example “red light, green light”, which most people found really fun. Then the New Zealand students showed us three K-pop dances that we were going to learn. We split into three groups and each group was taught one of the dances. It wasn’t just the German students, others joined as well, so we were a really big group. The dancing was a bit tricky but also really funny, and in the end everyone had learned something and gotten moving. Each group performed their dance in front of the others, and afterwards we voted on who did the best.
Everyone spent the lunch break however they wanted. I sat on a bench with my friends, ate, and chatted.
The last workshop of the day was a cooking class. First, everyone had to put their things away and put on an apron, then we split into groups of three or four. Our task was to bake two things: oat cookies and a New Zealand dessert called pavlova. Most of the groups divided the work to save ingredients two people made the cookies and the other two the pavlova. The only part most people struggled with was separating the egg yolk from the egg white, but other than that everything went really smoothly and without any problems. The teams worked well together and there were no accidents. One tray of cookies got a little burnt, but they still didn’t taste too bad. We got to decorate the pavlovas with sauces, fruit and edible flowers and of course everyone got to try them. In the end we cleaned up the kitchen, washed the dishes and hung up the aprons again which took a bit longer than expected.
That was the end of the school day, so everyone got picked up by their exchange partner and went home.
In the afternoon I went to the swimming pool and out to eat with my friends it was a really nice last afternoon in New Zealand. Back home, like most others, I still had to pack my suitcase and backpack, and I spent some time talking with my host family.
It really was a wonderful time here in Auckland.
