Sixth Week

Tuesday: It was pretty hard to come back to class after this long, adventurous weekend, but I did my best to go forward in my learning process. Our teacher this morning was Dillwyn, because Ali was sick. In the afternoon class there were only Charles and me this week. This was a great opportunity, the lessons were pretty intensive.
Wednesday: Instead of Yoga, I went to a self-defence course. I could participate in a workshop for teachers, because there weren’t enough teachers. We were introduced to some techniques to defend ourselves from an attacker and also talked about the right behaviour that you shouldn’t even be attacked. The discussion at the end about the content of the self defence course for students, which will take place in two weeks, was pretty interesting and a great opportunity for me to speak English. One of the instructors was a guy from Switzerland, what a coincidence, so we talked about Swiss and New Zealand Ski fields. Well I’m looking forward to going skiing!
Thursday: Today I indeed went to the Salsa lesson after school, but I didn’t even try to go dancing in the evening, because I expected it to be the same as the last weeks: Nobody from school would be present. And Catherine, our Salsa teacher, announced a social salsa night at her home for the next Friday, so I’ll probably have some practice then.
Friday: This afternoon I heard three Koreans, Kelly, Moogan and Roopie talking about a trip to Golden Bay. As I asked them if I could join them, they agreed and so I decided not to go to the tree planting activity on Saturday, which for I already subscribed. We went to a car hire company to book a car for the weekend and then we agreed that the others would pick me up at about half past nine Saturday morning.
Saturday: The first thing we did on our trip was going to Richmond to the shopping mall to buy all the food we would need at the weekend. Then we went to Marahau in Abel Tasman National Park. We went to the backpackers and could get a four-bed room in the separated hostel-house. After booking a boat-trip to Anchorage Bay, we cooked lunch in the hostel’s kitchen. Well I probably should say the Koreans cooked lunch, because they thought I couldn’t help them cooking Korean-style. So while they cooked, I was using the Internet. I not only checked my email and read some news, but also talked to Michael in the United States over Skype. After that I had to hurry up, to eat something before our excursion started at half past one. What a strange way to start a boat-trip: We were sitting in the boat and our Captain drove the boat with a tractor to the beach. There he put the boat into the water and was driving us through the beautiful landscape to Anchorage Bay. On the way I took a lot of pictures and I hope I can put them online soon. There was a French couple with us in the boat, but they were going further than Anchorage Bay. After taking a lot of pictures at the beach, we started our trek back to Marahau. They told us it would take about three and a half or four hours to get there. The landscape was simply stunning and the beautiful weather did the rest for a perfect trip. Unfortunately Moogan didn’t bring any shoes. He thought he would be Kiwi enough to walk without shoes, but after some hours his feet were sore. But what could he do? Just go on walking and hope to be back soon. But walking went on and on, and it was already getting dark when we saw Marahau across an enormous beach. We decided to cross the low-tide beach to get home faster, and that was a real adventure, because there were a lot of streams of water flowing into the sea and the sand was often wet and plashy. A few hours before, there must have been water. As we arrived at the other side of the beach, we felt a little lost, no one had an idea were to go now. So we decided to ask somebody in a house near the beach. We found out, that we were only a few hundred meters away from the Water Taxi car park. But what can you do if you have never been in a place and it’s almost dark? Back home we were all kind of exhausted. I had to take a breath first and drunk a beer. Fortunately there was nobody else in the house, so we had the place to ourselves. And in the oven, some pieces of wood were burning and heating up all the living room and the kitchen to an pleasant nice and warm temperature. Just the ideal thing after a long walk which turned out to be pretty cold in the end. After a shower I could savour a Korean-style dinner and I really appreciated it that I was served with everything without doing anything. For me very special was that you don’t have your own plate, you share plates with everybody. Also, you have no knife (in Korea it would mean that you would want to kill somebody, if you had a knife at the table). So all the food is prepared in little pieces and you can put them, as well as rice, onto a leave of salad, before you roll and eat it. I enjoyed it that much, that I once again pigged out. Also, the wine we bought was very good and did a great job for the mood. We were all just happy and played Scrabble together. I was completely surprised, how many words we could create. You can see the result on the picture! With the intention to stand up early on Sunday to have a lot of time to explore Golden Bay, we went to bed pretty early.

6. Week

Sunday: Originally we wanted to get up at seven o’clock. But Kelly and Roopie were too tired. While Mogan and me were looking for a good place to admire the sunrise, they were still sleeping. Mogan expected them to have prepared breakfast when we got back home, but they were still in bed. That’s why we finally left Maharau only at twenty past nine. Today I had my first driving experience in New Zealand. I felt confident enough to drive on the left side pretty soon and enjoyed it to drive over the Takaka Hill, which is a little pass. We went to Farewell Spit first, where we looked at the long trace of land with beaches on both sides. Unfortunately the beach we walked along wasn’t very clean and it naturally would have taken too long to walk the whole 24 km of the beach. Kelly and Mogan returned to the car park pretty soon, whilst Roopie and I scrambled on a hill, where we had an even better view. After this, I wanted to see the lighthouse near Cape Farewell. But we only went to the Cape Farewell, the northern most point on the South Island of New Zealand. I wanted to walk to the lighthouse and saw three guys trying to surf in the water, which must have been very cold. After another ten minutes walk, I decided not to go to the lighthouse because it was still too far away and I didn’t want the others to wait. Now I gave the car keys to Mogan who took over the driving. We were looking for a mountain Kelly heard about, from which you can see all the Abel Tasman and Golden Bay region. But after driving ages on a small rumbling dirt track, we still couldn’t find it and decided to drive back to Nelson. I was very anxious when Mogan drove over the Takaka Hill. He seemed to have only a little experience and went to the opposite lane in tight curves for several times. It was really scaring, but how could I tell him, that another person should drive. Well I just hoped that everything will be fine and fortunately there was never a car coming the opposite way at the wrong moment. And while filling up the tank in Motueka, I talked to Roopie that he should drive the last kilometres. Back in Nelson at about seven o’clock I went to the English Centre to watch the Swiss football team playing against the Czech Republik. I could only watch the last forty minutes and unfortunately the Swiss team lost their first game of the European Championship. I had to walk back home and finally got home at about nine o’clock.