From New Zealand_New Plymouth GHS_ターム留学レポート②_2016

It’s our great pleasure to share with you another report from New Zealand, New Plymouth Girls’ High School.  Haruka Koyama, who is also now joining New Plymouth Girls’ HS as a term 1 exchange student with Nonoka Kuwabara, tells us about her life and study in New Plymouth.  Her report is as follows:

Hello! I'm Haruka Koyama, a Year 10 student of Otsuma Nakano Senior High School.  I have been staying in New Plymouth, New Zealand since the end of January and I am going to be here until the middle of April.  It's been only a week since I came here, but I learnt a lot of things.

I came here with my friend, Nonoka. We arrived on Saturday, January 30th. It took about 15hours (including transit at Auckland) from Narita airport to New Plymouth airport. It was a very very long trip.

My pleasure to introduce my hostfamily.  There are 5 people in my host family. My host father, host mother, host brother, and 2 host sisters. They are very welcoming me and very kind.  

On Sunday morning, I went to City Church with my host family.  Actually it didn't look like a church I expected. There was a band, and they held a small concert. After that, we went on a picnic at a big park.  At night of the day, we went to another park to see "Festival of Lights".  It was so beautiful. There was a Japanese garden in the park, which was amazing to me!

On Monday, it was my first day of school. My house is very close to my school, so I and my host mother walked.  There was a ceremony at the assembly hall, and I participated in that. I couldn't understand what the teachers said.  When the ceremony was finished, we went to the library. There are 9 new international students from all over the world, including us. One from Chile, one from Spain, one from Papua New Guinea, one from Germany, one from India and two other Japanese girls.

We had orientation from Monday through to Thursday.  What we did in first four days were as follows:

1. Writing a diary every day.

2. Filling in some information about us.

3. Introduction to the school including school tour.

4. Sending a postcard to my family in Japan.

5. Taking vocabulary test.

6. Reading about Mt. Taranaki.

7. Having an interview with ESL teachers.

8. Chose 3 optional subjects.

9. Introducing ourselves to our teachers.

10. Setting our Wi-Fi ID and password.

We experienced a lot of things and we could know about school well.

By the way, I chose music, sports, and ESOL as my optional subjects. The orientation was a very good opportunity to know each other.

On Friday, finally, my classes started.  New Plymouth Girls' High School (NPGHS) usually starts at 8:40, except Tuesday because of teacher's learning, but only for this week, we started at 9:00. First spell was ESOL. ESOL is a class for international students. Second spell was English, but we did nothing. Third spell was science, which was biology. Unfortunately, I couldn't understand anything in that class. Fourth spell was music. To my surprise, their music level was higher than Japan. They use "apple pie","cranberry pie", and "boysenberry pie" to keep rhythm. After keeping rhythm, the teacher played the piano and made some sounds we wrote down on paper. It was the most difficult music class that I've ever had.

This weekend, I'm staying at Nonoka's house because my host family had to leave home for their relatives for 4 days. Monday is a public holiday called "Waitangi Day" which is a very important day for New Zealanders. On February 6th 1840, there was the first treaty agreement between England government and Māori chief. As for this dinner, we made Japanese pancake "Okonomiyaki" for them and it was amazing.

I hope all of you reading this report would know about my New Zealander life as "kiwi girl".   Thank you for reading and see you in two weeks!

Regards,

Haruka

みなさんこんにちは！私は小山遥です。１月３０日から約２ヶ月、ニュージーランドのニュープリマスというところで過ごします。私のホストファミリーは５人家族です。ファザー、マザー、ブラザーそして２人のシスターがいます。みんなとても優しくてフレンドリーなので、すぐに溶け込むことができました。

次の日の朝、私たちは町の教会に行きました。そのあと、大きな公園にピクニックに行きました。夜には、昼間とは違う大きな公園にいって、とても綺麗な"Festival Of Lights"というイルミネーションのようなものを見ました。

月曜日はいよいよNew Plymouth Girls' High Schoolでの最初の登校日でした。私たちを含め、９人の留学生がいました。その中には他の２人の日本人もいて、とても心強かったです。

月曜日から木曜日までは、その９人の留学生と共にオリエンテーションを受けました。オリエンテーションでは、日記を書いたり、学校を案内してもらったりしました。

そして、金曜日からいよいよ授業が始まりました。先生たちはとても私たちが理解できるように説明してくれましたが、それでもあまりよくわからなかったので、いかに自分の英語力がないのか改めてわかりました。

この週末は、一緒に学校からニュージーランドに来た、桒原さんの家にお泊まりしています。月曜日は、祝日なので３連休です。私たちは、ファミリーのためにお好み焼きを作りました。とても喜んでくれている様子だったので良かったです。

このレポートによって少しでもニュージーランドの生活がわかってもらえたら嬉しいです。それではまた２週間後に！