1 Month!

I have now been in NZ for over a month. It has been an exiting month, full of new experiences and adventures.
I had the luck to be hosted by a great, great family. Karen, my host mother and Chris, my host father have been really welcoming and loving, I really apprecieate that. I also have, for the first time, an older sister: Georgia. She has been really nice to me and I really enjoy having her around. I've also had a very positive relantionship with Tim, my host brother. I think that in only six weeks we were acting like real brothers: in fact he even dared to burn my hair! Although I was really mad, I felt really good knowing that he had that confidence around me. Besides I know he was just joking. I was very sad to have to say goodbye to him as he left to Mexico for an AFS year too.
They have been very good to me. A few weeks ago we drove to Mt. Ruapehu where I saw the snow for the first time. Because NZ is the south hemisphere it is winter here now so we needn't go very high to find snow. I was very lucky for it snowed all day so it was a rather good snow for snowboarding. I had a really good time.
Also because it is winter here, I am not in summer break, which means I have spent my summer going to school. Not only does school run from February to November, but it is in many other ways very different from dominican schools: we ony have to take 6 subjects of your choice (or 5 and have a free period), and you have hundreds of different choices so you can find people studying horticulture, childcare, hospitality or food!

One of the things that surprises me the most about NZ is how athletes are considered to be almost like heros: much importance is given to sport in school and being a proffesional athlete is much of a privilege. The most respected and idolized personalities of NZ are, without any doubts, the members of the rugby All Blacks teams.

It is campaign time here in Auckland: soon the elections for Maire will take plce. Unlike in the DR, campaign here is much quieter. You could even not notice that elections are soon to come. There are not, like was used to, big caravanes nor trucks full of speakers with really really loud music with lyrics promoting the candidates. I quite like the idea of a more relaxed campaign.

This weekend I went to a camp with all of the others AFS students from Auckland area. We were about 40 students. It was a great chance to meet everybody and enjoy ourselves. I really liked the activities that we had to do. We had a design competition where a designer created a newspaper dress for a model. Filipe, a boy from Portugal designed my dress: I was a fairy. We won 4th place and got to eat some chocolate! We also had to do a concert and represent our country somehow. I would have loved to dance merengue but I couldn't connect my iPod, and it is hard to find a dancinc partner. I really miss dancing.

Today, since I had no school because is exam week, I went to a food exhibition with a friend of my hosts family. Those of you who know me from the DR would be very surprised to hear that I was actually cooking for the food show: I made some clams and some queen squallops. I passed from never having cooked at all to cooking for an exhibition that recieves around 3000 visitors a day! I must say I reall enjoyed being there: I got to walk around trying lots of different foods and meeting heaps of people.

So that's what I've been doing here! I do want to hear from all of you so please write!
Cheers,
Camila