South Island Tour

Hey guys!

How's it going? Did you have a good three weeks?
My last three weeks were incredible. As you know I went on the South Island Tour with the other Rotary Exchange Students from our district. We did so much stuff..
I will describe the highlights to you in a few sentences and I also will introduce the students I did the tour with to you. I won't be able to describe everything we did since that would be way too much but there will be heaps of pictures. I think pictures can describe the tour better than words.

Either way, I'll start off with introducing the other students to you.

South Americans: We had 5 south americans with us, they all will leave between now and January since they've been here for a year already.

Khawanna: Khawanna is our party girl from Brazil. She'd rather stay one more year in NZ than going home. Her nickname is 'dirty Sanchez'.

Henrique: Henrique is from Brazil as well. He usually doesn't start trouble with other people (but alone ;D !). Nickname: big turtle. He thinks I'm a bit scary :P. Henrique is a close friend of...

Beto:Alberto/Beto comes form Chile and is a close friend of Henrique. We cut his hair during the south island tour which was quite funny. His nickname is 'big rabbit'.

Xavier: Xavier is from Argentina and a good friend of mine. He's about half my size ;D. He already left NZ on the 10th. Xavier was one of my room-mates on the tour.
His nickname: Pedro.

Lautaro: Lauta is from Argentina as well. He was one of my room-mates as well. Nickname: Lauta.

Europeans: We also have 8 Europeans and one Canadian, I'll introduce 'em to you right now ;D.

Anne-Catherine: Anne-Catherine is from Belgium. She's pretty cool and speaks with an awesome french accent :D. Nickname: Aggressive alcoholic.

Jan: Jan is from Belgium as well. He can speak German, dutch, french and english. We usually talk in dutch. Jan is one of my closer friends.
Nickname: White Bob.

Nehir: She's from Switzerland and has dreadlocks. She's a good friend of mine as well and is into medievial festivals and artistic stuff. Her nickname: Marley.

Franziska: Franziska is from Austria and is a dance teacher. We danced together sometimes. Nickname: Franzi

Amy: Amy is from Canada and loves Syrup ;D. She's about 1.60 'tall'. Her nickname: think it's just Amy.

Carl: Amy's 'best friend' ;D. He comes from Sweden and is pretty cool guy. Can't think of his nickname right now.

Nick: Niklas is from Germany and a few days older than I am. He's a cool one. His nickname: Gorgeous. Nick thinks he is south american ;D.

Trine: Trine is from Denmark and has red hair. Her nickname is 'Ginga Ninja'.

And...me ;D. My nickname: Avatar.

Adults:

Mike: Michael Nightingale was one of our shepherds and he's just awesome!

Elizabeth: Mike's wife Liz is just as awesome, it's so good those two were with us!

Erwin: Our busdriver, he's amazing and tells great (dirty) jokes. His nickname: fast and furious.

So that's the people we went on tour with. Now let me start with telling you a bit about the tour...

We started off in Wellington, our capital. Nick, Xavier, Anne-Catherine and I went to see the german embassy. A random woman invited us to come into her house to look up the way for us, she was very nice to us!

The next day we went over to the South Island by boat.

We started our tour with a two-day kaya trip. It was pretty amazing and we kayaked to a seal-colony (just have to think of a joke Amy made: 'Hey seal, wanna go 'clubbing' with me?' Does anyone get it xD? ). I shared a kayak with Khawanna. She got a bit annoyed by me because I sometimes forgot to paddle when I talked.

After the kayak trip we went wild water rafting (and wild water swimming because they tipped us over ;D ).

On the South Island we visited Christchurch (you know where the earthquake was two months ago) of course where we did heaps of shopping and visited a museum.

We also went to the town Wanaka where we saw the new Harry Potter movie (which is a disappointment, by the way). Either way, the cinema we went to is amazing. It's like a private cinema with garde chairs and sofas as chairs as well as a car :D!

After that we went cruising on an overnight-ship on Milford Sound which has spectacular views. On the ship I did a spontanoues evening magic show with a pack of cards, a hello kitty sleeping mask and my shoes.

Of course we went to Queenstown. In Queenstown we did jet-boating and most of us went bungy jumping or on the arc swing. I went on the arc swing, the biggest swing of the world. It was really cool!
In Queenstown we alsow went to an ice-bar, which is made out of ice. Yes the walls and everything; really pretty COOL(D).

We then went to a sheep-farm for two nights. There we did a lot of hiking (during hiking I lost both of my rings when I was giving reiki to a friend) and wildpig hunting. That was a cool experience. After the hunter killed the pig and took out the guts he asked 'whos first?' and I shouted 'I'm first! With what?' - 'carrying the pig up the hill.' So I had to take the pig on my back (I had my white shirt on!) and carry it up the hill. Nearly at th top I fell and the pig rolled over me. Because it was cut open my head ended up inside the pig -.-

We also went to see another glowwormcave and an albatross-colony. Oh, and the Moeraki Boulders. They are huge stones on the beach and they are perfectly round.
What else? We did heaps of partying of course. And one day we saw a Kea, our native parrot. And we saw small ice caves.

I think I'll stop writing about the tour right here allthough there's so much more I'd like to tell you.

Saying goodbye to the south americans was hard of course...

Since I'm back in Hamilton I've been to two parties (Goodbyeparties of Sara and Felipe, two friends of mine) and today I'll perform two magic shows: One for the christmas parade and one for a magic circle competition, so wish me good luck for that!
Oh yeah, I did street-magic-theatre with a friend. I ended up sitting around, singing and juggling. It was fun :D!

So, enjoy the photos. Most of them are mine but some of them are taken by other exchangees.

See you soon!

Yours,

Timon.

PS: Some of the photos have no name since the internet went down just before I could save the names. I will rename them later, but now I have to prepare for magic!