Borland Lodge and random things

Borland Lodge was the camp that my year 13 class attended the second week of school. It was a blast! If it was my class back home and around the area that I used to live in the camp would not have been that fun because we did not really leave the area to explore or do any outdoor activities. The days were mostly spent in classes where we had our 100 guys class split up into groups where we would learn about being a leader and mentor. Not very exciting but I got to meet everyone from my class who I really like and I learned how to play rugby and cricket just by jumping in the sport while everyone was playing. When I was going up to bat for cricket I got the american joke "hey batter batter batter" with everyone laughing which made me nervous and when the bowl came and I hit it I got over excited and went back to baseball ways and ran forward and threw my cricket bat behind me to the complete joy of everyone in the feild. Your not supposed to do that. You are supposed to run with your cricket bat... I am so american. They laughed for about 20 minutes but it was ok because I hit the ball pretty good and I stayed up for awhile before getting out. You really do need to prove yourself here through some sort of sport or at least try or everyone thinks your lame. There is this one sort of hipster kid in the class who would fit perfectly in to my old high school but he is seen as very weird here and kind of an outcast.  We also got to swim in a river which was fun, but the best part by far was when we all got in a circle in the grass and had a tap out competition where one guy who wanted to fight would call out another guy in the circle of similar wait and then it would be on. Wasnt too serious or anything but we definitely had some entertaining fights!

Commercials here are very weird. I guess there must be a lot of car crashes because all the commercial are about driving too fast, intersections, and drunk drving and they all involve someone dying. They are very creepy.

I saw the Prime Minister of New Zealand 2 days ago at the small Invercargill airport when we were picking up my host sister. That was lucky.

Invercargill is a very small town and much of it is rural like the place I am living, but it is known for its indoor biking track called the Velodrome. Its a 250 meter track with high steep banked turns. I am definitely going to start cycling there when the championships over the weekends stop in March. Over this past weekend I saw 2 new zealand records broken by a guy by the name of eddie dawkins who my host family knows and has been to out house. It was crazy, everyone in the Velodrome went crazy since he is from southland, the province Invercargill is located in.

Food here is delicious consisting of a lot of food that suits cold weather and a hardy eater: meat pies, toasties (bread with cheese bacon, onion, tomato, pineapple, ham, or basically anything you want) minced meat and spaghetti, sheep, lolli cake (cake with some sort of candy), and other hardy dishes. I eat ice cream everyday here too, its awesome. There is this thing called a crunchy bar that I had today... glorious 

I had a track race 2 days ago where I ran the 1500m. It was kinda a joke since there were only like 30 people at the whole meet, but it was still pretty fun. I think I might take off running awhile though and try more touch rugby and cycling. O, I am also getting back in to tennis. I guess my school team is not very good and I now have a court in my backyard so why not. There is a match in Christchurch which I am pretty keen to do so ill practice so i can make it. I might even do some soccer because our school also sucks at that and they need some more players. My friend says I dont even need to come to practice i can just show up for games lol.

Tonight I have an AFS pot luck tea, so that should be fun. I have been so busy here there is not really anytime to feel homesick which can only be good, but I am sure the day will be inevitable. I will just think about how lucky I am to be here and that this is a crazy adventure that will change my life and I will also remember it for the rest of my life.

Everything is amazing so far and I know it will only get better!

I will try to make the next post about the people here and how they react to me being american.