Birds

On Friday morning, we woke up around 7:00AM and loaded the bus. First, we headed toward the Royal New Zealand Air force base in an undisclosed location. We took a tour of the base and were invited to climb aboard some of the training planes used for new pilots. At the end of our lovely tour, we had the opportunity to check out the gift shop and snack bar…which only Robyn took advantage of by buying new batteries for her camera.

After our tour, we headed for Nga Tawa School, an all girls boarding school located about an hour and a half from Makahika. The Nga Tawa prefects showed us a short slide show about their equestrian program. We ate lunch in their cafeteria before taking a tour of the school facilities. Our tour finished at the stables where we were all given horses to ride for about an hour. Team USA used a large dressage arena to flat and practice over one fence. We greatly appreciated the opportunity to ride!

Today, we were supposed to head out to the high ropes course at Makahika; however, to our dismay, we were unable to do high ropes due to the rainy conditions. After having a slow and food-filled morning, all of the teams participated in a personality type activity in the Makahika commons area. We all related our personalities to birds: the hawk, peacock, owl, and dove. We had a great time joking about being ‘in touch with our inner bird.’

The Makahika is accustomed to 14 year old boys, so our bird and personalities activity was less than intellectual. Once we had been separated into our ‘flocks,’ we were all given a bag full of household materials. Our challenge was to construct an egg protection device so that an egg could be dropped from a ladder onto concrete without breaking (imagine middle school science class). Each group was also supposed to come up with a name and slogan for their device. Unfortunately, we were not as enthused about this activity as the average 14 year old boy.

After our activity, we were all given sad news after our personality activity. The gymkhana was cancelled. Everybody was devastated as this was supposed to be our first fun and competitive activity on horses. As we got over the shock of our first horse-related competition being cancelled, we got ready for the afternoon rugby game.

At 2:00PM, we headed into Levin to watch a game at the Shannon Rugby Club. We had a really fun time watching the game and getting to know all of the girls…and boy… from the other countries! Despite the on and off rain, the game was well played and we were able to get some great photos. They even served french fries (or should we say hot chips) at the Rugby Club! At last we were able to get our fill of much needed salty and fattening American foods.


Tonight we are back at the Makahika. Tomorrow we will head to Wellington to explore the multitude of free entry museums that are offered. We have also heard that Wellington has a great variety of foods. Eating is one thing that we all seem to be incredibly good at doing.
Susan