This post features student writing.

On Tuesday, we sadly had to leave our homestay families, but we got to celebrate my 16th birthday! After saying our goodbyes, we got on the bus and headed to Wanaka. We made a pit stop to take photos at the Elephant Rocks, which is where some scenes from the Narnia movies were filmed at.

After that, we drove to lunch and visited Puzzling World, which was a maze and illusion center. While we were at Puzzling World, one of our leaders, Jaimie, and our bus driver, Mike, went to the supermarket to pick up ingredients each cooking team requested for taking turns making dinner for the next three days while at our lodge in Wanaka. When we got to our lodge, group one got right to work on dinner. I was super excited for this dinner because it was tacos! It was a perfect birthday dinner. Then we celebrated my birthday by eating a delicious chocolate cake, singing happy birthday, and surprising me with presents. Everyone made me feel very special. This was definitely one of my favorite birthdays ever.

On Wednesday, we got to explore more of New Zealand by going to Queenstown. We started the day by going up a mountain on a gondola. The view of the mountains and the town from the gondola was absolutely gorgeous. Once we reached the top, we rode on gravity-fed luges. It was a lot of fun, but it made all of us feel bitter cold so we drank hot chocolate to warm up. Then we took the gondola back down to explore Queenstown for a few hours. We ate lunch, shopped, and got dessert at a place called Patagonia, where we ate popsicles, churros, and ice cream.

Then we were picked up by our bus driver and headed back to Zula’s. On this day, it was my group’s turn to make dinner, which didn’t go exactly how we planned! We decided to make breakfast for dinner, and the menu consisted of eggs, bacon, pancakes, fruit, and toast. Our group assumed it would be easy to make, but the pancakes gave us a lot of trouble because we burned so many. We were a bit discouraged at first, but everyone surprisingly liked the finished product!

Today we went skiing! We woke up at 6 AM (a.k.a. the crack of dawn) and headed to Treble Cone Mountain. I personally love skiing so I was super excited to get on the mountain. On this trip each student has a passion project that they have to work on and my passion project was to help anyone who felt uncomfortable skiing. I didn’t think anyone would actually want help, but I was happily surprised when my friends asked for some advice and help to improve their skiing. After skiing for a few hours, a group of us went up the chair lift without our skis so we could walk around the top, take photos, and enjoy the glorious views. This was such an amazing and beautiful day. I had so much fun skiing on a different and more challenging mountain because I was able to push myself and learn more about skiing. I am so excited for what’s to come on the rest of the trip.

— Grace C.