Finally, another exchange student at Sacred Heart Girls College will report to you all about her reflection on her experience there in New Plymouth.

Hi! I’m Ayaka Ogake, an exchange student studying at Sacred Heart Girls Collage in New Plymouth in New Zealand. I have only one week left to stay here.  Anyhow, I have had a lot of memories of my stay here. Now, I’m going to talk about my memories to you.

Firstly, I’m going to let you know that I went to Hawera water tower with my host family. Hawera water tower is located in a different town. So, we could see Mt Taranaki from a lot of different places. We ate lunch at Oponuke. Oponuke lies at another different place.  So, we went to a lot of places on the same day. I really enjoyed that day. I went to a big supermarket called “Pak’n’ Save “ on that day. The supermarket in New Zealand looks much bigger than that in Japan. Everything is bigger than Japanese things. For example, the buildings, meals and snacks. I was surprised when I saw the supermarket in New Zealand for the first time.

Secondly, what I want to talk about is the Pōwhiri. Pōwhiri is the one of the Maori words. Pōwhiri is a welcoming ceremony. I saw a Hongi. I have learnt a lot about Maori culture.

Next, I’m going to talk about the netball game. Do you know netball? I think there is no netball in Japan. Netball is like basketball and it has a lot of detailed rules. And everyone has a different position each other. My position was WD and GK. we lost that game. But I really enjoyed the game.

Finally, I will report to you about the person who I respected. I listened to her presentation. She spoke to us about how she had a big illness when she was a baby. She had a kidney transplant because she had holes in her kidney. Kidneys can be removed from your body. In addition, they work to reabsorb what is necessary for the body and keep it in the body. So, kidneys are important things for us, which means that she had a hard time. She told us the process of fighting against her illness. If I was in her position, I couldn’t tell that I had an illness and couldn’t tell anyone these processes and the illness would be my secret. So, I am respecting her and I want to be strong like her.