2015 New Zealand English Study Trip Ivana Sze Hiu Kei

I joined a program to New Zealand and to learn English this summer holiday. I went there with my friend, Ashley, who came from the same school. The reason for going abroad is that we wanted to try and see new things that we had never seen or tried before such as the buildings and all the things in New Zealand.

When I arrived there, I met my buddy who was a student from St. Catherine’s College and I had to follow her to the school. We went to different classes after the first lesson. Sometimes, she needed to go to St. Patrick’s College to have some lessons with the boys. I could see students in New Zealand were much happier than those in Hong Kong because they had lots of fun during the lessons. The teachers there were very nice and their teaching methods were very lively because they had a great deal of activities to make students more active in class. It helped me a lot in learning how to jot notes, highlight important key words etc. And when I had problems about studying, I was brave to ask them for help.

In Wellington, I lived in a host family who were very nice to me and they really took care of me. I had many interesting experiences that I wanted to share with them. My host mother took us to visit a farm but the weather was bad for it rained the whole morning. Instead, she took us to a store which sold vegetables and bought some vegetables that I had never seen in Hong Kong before. After that, she bought some fish and chips as our lunch. It tasted good and looked wonderful but we ate too much. The chips were oily and looked disgusting because they would make me fat.

I learnt lots of things there. The first thing is the culture. In New Zealand, some people used to speak Maori language in St Catherine’s College. I learned to speak some simple Maori language. The second thing was that I had improved my English a great deal after going to Wellington because I needed to use English to communicate with the others as well as my host family. Also, I need to listen carefully to what people were talking in English for I needed to answer them also in English. Sometimes, they might speak very fast. Therefore, I had to listen carefully. The last thing I had learned is their unique animals, Kiwi. It lived in a dark place and they couldn’t see red lights so we could only see them under red light. They had long beak but small wings. They ran very fast. When I wanted to take photos with them, they ran away and escaped quickly.

In New Zealand, there are also lots of birds to take photos with. New Zealand is an amazing place which I took a lot of photos and I learnt a lot of things. I hope I can travel there again and visit my buddy. It is an unforgettable memory.

I really love it

She is my buddy

On the bus to school