Owairaka 20/20

Thank you to Nicki, Joanna and Phelicia for sending me a message from New Zealand. It is nice to hear from people back home.

I would love to hear what other people have done in their holidays too.

I have had a great time. I arrived in K. L. last Saturday. Although I had just had an 11 hour flight and spent an hour getting from the plane to my home-stay, I still managed to go out to town and look around the parks and have some food. I got to bed at 2am KL time, which was 6am NZ time. Next day we were up and touring around. We went to Batu caves, a Hindu temple site. There are lots of steps to climb and lots of monkeys running around. I also saw a python draped over some one’s neck. There is a large gold statue guarding the entrance way. Then we went to the Royal Selangor Pewter factory. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide. Then we went to the Kuala Lumpur Memorial. It is similar to our cenotaphs and war memorials although it did have a much more striking and interesting statue of soldiers than ours have. People were very surprised when I informed them that NZ also sent soldiers to World War 1 & 2.

The next day I visited my first school. They were very welcoming. I saw children doing environmental “green day” type activities. I joined their assembly and spoke a bit about New Zealand.

Tuesday I went bright and early to the Twin Towers to get a ticket to walk the sky bridge. When I arrived at the ticket opening time of 8.30am there was already a que a mile long. I had a plane to Kuching to catch in the afternoonm so had to give it a miss. I hope to do the sky walk when I get back to KL. The flight to Kuching is about an hour and a half. Air Asia is the budget airline but it was a clean, comfortable flight. My new host family comprises of Mum, Dad, and three girls.

Wednesday I had an amazing day. I visited an arts school. 605 of the day is devoted to the arts and 405 to academic subjects. Their assembly performance was outstanding. They sang, danced, and played instruments like professionals. They were so confident and proud of their work. Robyn Mc Queen from my school would have been blown away. I then went on the the Kuching Arts Village to watch the real professionals. They were good but I still enjoyed the childrens performance better. I got to walk through some native Sarawak long huts and have a go with a blow dart. I hit the target in the bulls eye. Lucky there weren’t any wild animals around or they might have been history.

Thursday and Friday I relaxed a bit after my hectic week. I have been to the museum and the market. I have also seen one of the world’s biggest deer antler collection. It is valued at 30 million ringgits or 15 million NZ dollars. It is owned by the father of Hasfa, the mum of the family I am staying with. He is an amazing man and told me stories about his life for three hours.

Today I played cricket with the boys at the local school and then watched them play rugby. They were very impressed with my All Black jersey. It was a stupid thing to wear in this heat. Tonight I am going to be Simon Cowell at the school’s talent show. I don’t know how mean I should be. My instructions are to give comments about the style, beat, and tempo of the performances. I can hear Robyn in NZ choking with laughter now!!

Tomorrow I am going to the World Rain forest Concert. I know i will die in the heat but this is pretty special. Performers from all over the world are coming. I can’t wait…