Sweet As!!

It has been almost two weeks now since my last blog so it’s time for a new one. While writing this I am still a bit tired after an awesome weekend, but I will get to that later.
First I will tell something about the weekend before that and last week. On Saturday 19th of September my roommate Nils and I joined a group of other interns (what turned out to be a really nice group of girls and lads) on a trip to Rangitoto Island (a volcanic island near Auckland). Some of you may already have seen the photos of this trip, if you haven’t you can check them out on my Facebook page. You have to hike for a while but once you’re at the top of Rangitoto you have an amazing 360 view. Before we went to the top we also went to check out some of the caves that are on the island which was also pretty cool I must say. The rest of that weekend I didn’t do much really so I will go on with last week, what was quite a fun week.

On Monday I first had an appointment at the bank to get me a New Zealand bank account, because I needed it if I wanted to get a membership at the gym and I will probably need it anyway in a while if I want to make some extra money. Directly after my appointment at the bank I had a meeting with Roger to discuss some new assignments. On Tuesday I finally got my gym membership and later that day I had my first work out in weeks and I can tell you all the travelling and not working out for a while didn’t do my muscle strength any good. So I have some work to do to get back in shape again, but looking at the gym and the available equipment that shouldn’t be a problem.
That night I went to Fencibles United to watch one of Roger’s trainings for the under-19 year old boys so I could see some of Premier Skills’ method of training for myself.

Thursday there was a rooftop barbecue planed and all interns where invited and quite a big group showed up. After the barbecue I joined the group that was going to the pub crawl and it turned out to be a pretty fun night. With a weekend trip ahead I didn’t do much on Friday besides some work and packing for the next day.
Saturday morning, getting up early, because we needed to be at the pick-up spot at 9 am for our surf trip to Raglan. I have two words to say about the surfing trip and that is; Sweet as (which means something like very cool)!
After a 3,5 to 4 hour bus trip we arrived at the hostel in Raglan. Here we would stay for that day and spend the night and was also the place where our surfing adventure began. When everybody got his stuff to his room and changed and packed for surfing it was time to begin with the instruction part of our surfing lesson. After a short introduction by the instructors and everybody who was going to surf, all of us get to practice when and how to get up at the surf board to catch a wave. Once the instruction part was finished it was time to go to the beach and surf (or at least try to surf). Because we were with quite a big group the group was divided into two smaller groups for the surfing part. Being in the second group that got to go surfing the others and I had some time to enjoy the beach and the nice weather by playing some football and rugby and having a nice cold beer. So after a while, when the first group was finished surfing, it was time to put on a wetsuit and go to the water to get a surf board and start surfing. I must admit at first I really sucked at it, but after some help two times by the instructors I finally got to stand up at the board and catch a wave. After that I managed to get on the board by myself a couple of times as well and just at the moment I was getting the hang of it we had to leave the water, because our time was up. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t have more time, but the surfing was sweet as. Before we went back to the hostel we stayed at the beach to relax some more and watch the sunset.
Once we were back in the hostel it was time for the barbecue and the party. The party itself was a little bit disappointing, but I had a great night after all. Only too bad the clock went an hour forward at 2 am which was a bad surprise since I didn’t knew that.

The next day we would leave Raglan to see the Waireinga/Bridal Veil Falls, but not before we went on a hike and made a stop at Raglan town to get some lunch. After lunch we went back on the bus again to go to the water fall, which turned out to be really nice. Before we went back to Auckland we would make one more stop in Hamilton to see the Hamilton Gardens. Apparently these gardens won some prices, but to be honest they didn’t look really spectacular to me (but who am I). After the gardens it was time to get back to Auckland and in the bus you could really see that everybody was pretty tired from the day before, because more and more people fell asleep during the ride. Two hours later we were finally back in Auckland and my first weekend trip was really over.
I really had a great weekend with a lot of fun people and considering most of them will also join the other trips I have booked I am pretty sure they will be great as well.
So I am really looking forward for some more sweet as weekends here in New Zealand.

Cheers!!