Matarangi

So 2 weeks ago I had another rotary weekend with the exchange students. The last time i had seen most of them was in Rotoma end of December. This time on the east coast, a beach called Matarangi. So on Friday morning I could skip school yusss! With Victor, the French exchange student, I took a bus to Hamilton. The city where I spend all my time in the hospital. I don’t like it. Anyway after stopping halfway because this lady had to throw up, we finally got there after hour and a half. We had to wait another 40 minutes for Ross to pick us up. When he was finally there we were looking for, well, a ‘normal’ car. But then we saw him waving by a big truck. 1/5 was actually the front part of the car where we could sit and the other 4/5 was the back of the truck that was filled with food and stuff for the weekend. Wicked. So we sat in front, the 3 of us, and I was in the middle so I was kind of squished in the middle but all good. I found the radio and made sure there was some good music and singing ;). So we left around 10 and got to Matarangi at 13.30. It was Ross’s his beach house. On our way we came across his wife Debbie and she had some of the other exchange students! Because we were the first ones there we had to unpack everything and unload the car. But also first choices on the beds! There were two houses, 1 for girls and 1 for boys. I took one of the rooms in the basement creepy but enough space. Then we decided to make some pizza. Exchange students only care about traveling, being together and food so of course all the cupboards were exploding with food. One thing that was really disappointing was that out of all weekends this weekend there was a really bad weather forecast. Yes, a tropical cyclone! Right there hitting the coromandel how unlucky  We still decided to check out the beach before the other exchange students arrived so we walked to it, like a 2 minute walk. The sand was really white and the sky was full of clouds. A bit of a shame but the ocean and its surrounding were still breath taking. Some went for a swim but I didn’t really feel like it. I took some photos and went back. We were waiting and slowly the other family members arrived. Still not complete but we felt like we should do something. We drove around to another beach 10 minutes from the house and some went on the boat fishing. The water was kinda rough and it was still really overcast. Me and some other exchange students decided to stay on the beach and walk around. After a while there was not much else to do so we went for a swim! The water was actually really warm and I didn’t want to leave Matarangi without swimming. So Louise, Victor and I went for a swim and enjoyed the view of green hills and the endless blue ocean! Still crystal clear of course. After our swim we went back for a hot shower and started dinner. Hamburgers! Then the other exchange students arrived. Finally we were complete after 3 months! Well sorta.. Because the South Americans left in January they weren’t with us anymore. Just the Europeans and American/Canadians. But of course we got replacements for them. So we met the newbies! 1 guy from Chile, 1 girl from Argentina and 2 girls from Brazil. The weather was still dry so we had dinner outside. Of course with music playing and us talking and screaming and hugging haha. After dinner we decided to sit inside and just chill. Enough to talk about. I made some Afghan cookies and Dutch poffertjes and some other people made lots of baking aswell. Enough sweets for the night! After a while we wanted to go back to the beach because some hadn’t seen it yet. It was really weird because it was really dark outside but once we got to the beach it was really light at the same time? Like it was grey-ish so weird. But we could just see everything good. As usual we brought our speakers and sat down and listened to music and the waves. So relaxing! Back ‘home’ we spend the night talking until we were sent to our room at 11pm……

That morning I woke up at 6 in the morning because 1 I was so hot and 2 there was this really annoying slapping noise against the window. I looked and I just saw horizontal rain and a big tree branch being slapped against our window! I tried to ignore it but then at 7 in the morning Linnea (the Swedish exchange student in our room) her alarm went off!!! She had forgotten to put it off  Louise and I woke up and made whale noises saying that Linnea had to turn it off but she didn’t get until a wee while later. She then turned it off but Louise and I couldn’t fall asleep anymore. We decided to hop into our sleepingbags and go upstairs. We sat in the living room on our own and starred outside. The wind was blowing sooooo hard and it was raining aswell. The rain was actually horizontal because of the wind. Quite relaxing in a way but it sucked because there would’ve been nothing to do that day.. We were supposed to go fishing and biscuiting and water skiing but yeah naah. Half an hour later Ross and Debbie came walking down the stairs in their rain jackets asking if we wanted to go for a walk on the beach. Ehm is this a joke, I asked. But he looked serious and off they went in the cyclone ahhaha. After 2 hours everybody slowly started to wake up and have breakfast. Around 10.00 we were all sat in the living room again with music and and our voices. Ross and Debbie had come back and said that there was a 7 meter swell in the ocean! Woah. Well we decided to play this game where you stick this paper on your forehead with a name and you have to guess who you are. Meanwhile we were hungry again so I thought ‘Oh I still have poffertjes!’ I told Victor to grab them and youre supposed to eat them with sugar and melted butter but the Nutella jar was there before I could grab the sugar so never mind. Who doesn’t love Nutella haha. The poffertjes and Nutella jar were passed around the room and were finished in no time. We then decided to go for a little walk on the beach. We just wore our togs and rainjackets and we were good to go! On the beach the wind was blowing soooo hard. All the sand hit us in the legs and face like needles, so painful. We took some pictures and then decided to leave again to the living room. After a few hours we decided we had to do something so we headed off to Coromandel City. And by city I mean 1 street with 10 dairy’s a bookshop and a café and 15 closed buildings. It was raining and cold so we looked for an open café. Luckily we found 1! We ordered a hot drink (Chai Latte as usual) and sat down. We had hour and a half in the bubbling city of the coromandel so we spent that precious time inside. Then we walked back to the car again and drove back to the home. By the way I asked if the city was close and they said: ‘yeah yeah it’s close.’ My god, 25 minutes later we were finally there. Close is 5 or 10 minutes and evertything more is ages ahaha. And the road reminded me of Switzerland. Full of scary corners around the mountain mehh!

Back home we changed into our togs again and decided to make the best out of our weekend. We left to the beach and just ran in. I walked in until the water touched my ankles and 5 seconds later the water came until my belly. The swell was so high! Surprisingly the water was really warm so everybody jumped in. The current was so incredibly strong. I was holding onto my togs the whole time because I just felt that if I didn’t the current was going to take them! Also it was so difficult to stand still when the water got pulled back. Most of the times you’d just end up falling and getting washed away. It was so funny to see. All these random kids just popping out of the water and only a few seconds later being sucked back again ahaha. Was a cool experience though dancing in this ‘cyclone Luci’ oh yes it got a name, so that means that Shit just got real. Well after swimming we luckily found our towels and walked back and had a shower. We started making dinner but then had another activity. I was always the slow one so after I changed and got upstairs everybody was gone! I panicked and ran all along the beach in this crazy weather and finally found them on a little park on the side. We were divided in 2 groups and had to do a race with different activities. Such as: shoot a ball in the basket, climb a little wall, walk in bags, eat weetbix and whistle, spin 3 times fast and walk to the other side holding a potato on a spoon, throw a boot in a box and bite an apple out of a container full of water. I started with the apple biting and I used my jaw as an excuse so they left 1 apple with the string on it haha! The rest was alright except for the weetbix. Oh my gooood. We had to eat 1 piece of weetbix. The driest piece of cereal/oatmeal I don’t even know what. Without milk or water its just impossible to eat on its own. It gets stuck on your teeth and theres no way to chew it. Horrible. I kinda cheated there ahaha. ‘Woops didn’t mean to drop that piece of weetbix, oh well.’ My group won by the way! We went back for dinner and then stayed up late arranging and creating ideas for our Rotary Conference in April. We went to bed around 2AM and it was raining again. Good weather.

Next morning some had to leave at 10AM because they had an 8 hour car ride to Napier aaai. We had breakfast and then it was just cleaning and packing. For the people left we went for a little walk around. The weather was more calm that day and not too many clouds. At 12.00 I left in the car with 3 other exchange students and Karen, our South Island chaperone. It was around 4 hours back to Rotorua. The weather was bad everywhere so yeah… I got back home around 16.30 and then it was weird again. No more screaming and yelling around me. It wasn’t the best weekend because I was so excited to see the beautiful blue ocean and to go biscuiting etc. But oh well I think we tried to make it fun and at least I went for a swim! And of course seeing my exchange family is always more than amazing, miss them already!