Magic Night, Chinese Food and Mount Doom

Hey there ;)!

How's it going?
I'm pretty good and I have heaps of stuff to tell you about. And, guess what? I'll upload photos today as well and they're really cool!

The weather over here is quite good at the moment which isn't surprising since it's summer.

I'll just start off with the beginning of last week, so here we go!

Monday:
Monday was pretty normal last week I guess so I won't talk much about Monday. Well...yeah.

Tuesday:
Tuesday (at least I think it was Tuesday) at school we finally had that sumo-competition that was postponed a few weeks before. It was really good, I competed against Parham. It was a pretty good fight, in the end he just pushed me off the mat and won ;D. Rory, another friend of mine, won the complete competition.
After school I went home and had a sleep. I didn't go dancing
Tuesday after school I quickly went into town to talk to Gordon, the owner of the Irish Pub. On Thursday (last week) I would perform the first magic night in his pub.
After that I went to Jerry's place, his Dad invited me over for a real asian dinner :)(yes, they're asian). It was really awesome, it tasted so much better than the european-asian-takeaway food.
Afterwards John and Jerry (they're twins) offered me a game of chess and many other things, it was really cool.

Wednesday:
Wednesday I had a headache and didn't go to school, I also didn't go to the dance-center that night.
So Wednesday I pretty much just stayed at home and that's it.

Thursday:

Thursday was quite a stressful day since it was the day of the magic night. So after school I started organising all the stuff I needed (table, headset, etc.), made a sound-check at the Irish Pub (fortunately my host-father Bryce could organise a headset for me!), had some dinner and then went back to the pub again.
At 8 the Magic night I started and my show which was very good. There weren't quite as many people as we expected to come but we might try again next month and try to build this thing up slowly. All in all I'm quite satisfied with it.

Friday:

Friday I chilled out during the morning, in the afternoon I started packing my things because Justin (my counsellor) made me go on a hiking-trip, the famous Tongariro Crossing. Well, Justin himself backed out a day before we went of and I was really angry about that xD.
At around 7 Murray and Shona (the one's I went with to Kinloch before, they're awesome :) ) picked me up and we went to Kinloch again to spent the night over there. I met their other son Tod (Karl is the one I met before) and his partner Elouis (I think I probably spelled both names wrong ;D ) and we spend a cool evening.

Saturday:

Saturday morning Murry, Shona and I went off to meet the other Rotary guys at some lodge near the place where we would go hiking. We arrived there quite early and then went for a little hike (only 2 hours) to warm up for the big hike on Sunday.
In the evening we celebrated Betty's birthday, she's the wife of one of our club-members.

Sunday:

Sunday we got up early to go for the big hike, to Tongariro Crossing. It's considered one of the three best one-day-walks of the world. It goes between to mountains (they formed a super-vulcano which exploded 20000 years ago in an explosion big enough to cover New Zealand completely) and is 19.4 km long. It's supposed to take 8 hours, we made it in about 6.5 I think.
Allthough the first part (3,4 hours) is really tiring and exhausting - it goes steep upwards - it's worth it in the end. We got really good views on the red krater and the blue an green lakes (you can really see that one lake is blue and the other one green ;D ). I got some great photos but for some reason some of the photos seem to be deleted from the cam.
By the way, one of the vulcanos next to the walk was used as 'Mount Doom' in The Lord of the Rings, I might be able to climb up there one day ;).
My legs hurted pretty much after the walk.
In the evening I just wen to church and then to bed.

Monday:

Yesterday we had rehearsal for the prize-giving in the evening. Everyone who did something special at school would get a prize. We played with the Jazz-band. It was about 3 hours long and boring most of the time, allthough the traditional chinese lions-dance and the reflection of the past headstudents were quite funny. The principal also announced the new head-students: Danae (my future-host-sister) is the new head-girl and Rory, my friend, is the new deputy head-boy. That's awesome :)!

Tuesday:
Today was the last normal day at school. Tomorrow is the last half-day at school and then it's summer holidays! Heaps of people are leaving to go to another school but I might also see some of my friends for the last time (ever?). For example Sara and Mario, two Exchange-Students. Sara is from Columbia. They're going home soon and I might not see them during the holidays and after that...? And Charlotte and Jerry who are doing the Rotary-Exchange-Programme soon. Fortunately Jerry goes to Germany so I might be able to see him again. But it's a really hard to describe feeling to know that you'll say goodbye to someone who's important to you and then probably never meet that person again. Really weird.
After school I just had a sleep because I have a heavy cold.

So, now I'll quickly upload some of the photos I took and then go to bed ;).
If you have any questions or anything to tell me just leave a comment ;).
See ya!

Yours,

Timon.