Catching Up?!

Its been a long time since I posted anything... I have been mad busy working and all that I haven't had much time, I haven't even replied to any emails or sent any to any one even for Christmas! I have been super slack- so sorry!

I had six days straight at work last week- 24th til 29th and also worked today 7-3.  I am doing a 10 hour shift on Thursday night from 9pm til 7am the following morning- it will be my second ever night shift!  The last one I did on no sleep the day before and then managed to sleep for four hours the next day even with 5 kids running around the house.

I worked right through Christmas day, as I work at a hospital they don't exactly get to have any holidays and close the place down for the public holidays like majority of places around the country.  We work around the clock and there is always staff in the hospital- during the night there is only one nurse and two caregivers and then the day time there is a lot more including management.

I will try and fill you in on more in the New Year at some point.

Hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.

High school is over forever!

Yesterday I officially like, properly, signed out and finished high school forever! I never have to go back!

Exams are over, boring classes are over, learning stuff I'm never going to need is over, everything is over... associated with high school that is!

I got given my year book, and all of the Year 13 mug shots are in it... They were photos taken over the course of the year when the prefects in charge of taking them were able to get those that needed their shots taken- majority were taken during form time and are different to our main school photos that were taken at the beginning of the year for our portrait photos and class photos.

Last Friday I also officially gained the Level 3 certificate in Early Childhood Education and Care through the gateway/ STAR program through school, done through PORSE, I just have to complete the application to get the certificate sent to me.  With this, I am the only one in the school to have ever gone on to complete this certificate during school time and so since I hadn't done it by graduation (they wanted to acknowledge it then) the careers department took a photo of my yesterday to put in the school newsletters.

I am now waiting on hearing from Massey University to find out if I have been accepted into Nursing or not, if I have then thats all well and good, if I haven't I have to figure out what next year is going to entail.

Over summer I have been given all my work shifts up until January 12th for over the christmas period where a lot of the staff are off.  I have pretty much full time work from the 20th Dec through till the 12th Jan.

My Nashi Tree!!!

I can see my Nashi Tree outside of my bedroom window, the nearly three years that we have had it planted there since we moved down to Orewa it has pretty much stayed the same... it grew one fruit partially on it last year, it got its leaves and lots them again once.....

It now looks like this!!!!!

It has established leaves that have been there for the past month at least!! It has five fruit buds! I am EXCITED!!!!

the reason that it has two different types of leaves on the different sides is because one side (the one with the smaller leaves) got grafted onto the other one when it was a tree-ling (don't know the official name) and so the tree has two different types of Nashi on it!!

By the way... a little tid bit of information you may not have known:

Ever since we lived on the farm in Wellsford 10 years ago... (time goes fast!!) I found a Nashi tree by the pond and have loved the fruit ever since!!!

No.. they are not full grown Nashi Trees..... They are plum trees... (They are also where the water use to reach when it flooded as we had a stream running through the property- bottom of photo)

Exams and Updates

About time I posted something...

I am in the middle of a 12 day break between my third exam and my last! I have been full on studying, shopping, working, sitting exams, and touring.

I have sat three of my four exams now and I think I have done pretty well in biology, not sure about english or classics.  I have social studies on Tuesday 3rd Dec, so as of 12.30pm at the latest I will have officially finished my high school exams and as of Friday 6th Dec I will have officially signed out of school and completed a whole 13 years and 6 weeks at school!!! Its pretty exciting when I type it out and think about it!

I also have the last two PORSE booklets to complete to get my New Zealand's Level 3 Nanny Certificate- I am aiming to have these completed and signed off by Friday!

Next year I will hopefully be moving forward and onto tertiary education, studying a three year degree to get a Bachelor of Nursing- I will be finding this out in just under two weeks if I have officially gotten a place a Massey!!

I have been doing a few shifts caregiving as I am trying to work around my exams, studying and also other things I have to do and want to do.  Also, getting the only shifts that are really available as there is quite a lot of staff at the moment.

Last Thursday I went and toured one of the accommodation villages for Massey University, and then went late night shopping with a friend and came back to my house and wrote and card and wrapped a gift for one of our teachers- last year Taylor (friend) and I were in her class, it was her first year at Orewa and we were known as the ones that were constantly talking, laughing, giggling and so on- I also managed to continue that particular trend on this year with Danielle as I was this particular teachers class again this year! .... we decided on getting her a mug that had "little miss giggles" written on it from the "little miss" series by Roger Hargreaves.  Our teacher laughed and said, yeah, I will think of you two every time I drink from it- our aim! :)

Found This... (From My Birthday)

My Apple Crumble Birthday Candle Cake when we went out to the city... I got Mum to ask them to put a candle in it :) I got an actual cake on the Thursday which I need to get the photos off friends of it.

Graduation

On Wednesday 6th November I had my high school graduation! I have now officially done my time at high school and once my exams are over I will be free!!!  My whole year level graduated (Maybe a couple didn't?) It was a more formal occasion so majority were wearing dresses, and the guys dressed up in shirts and long pants. Here are some of the photos that Mum took.

My Graduation Dress

My friend Taylor and I

Getting my certificate :)

Graduated!! Im right over in the corner under the projector screen

18th Birthday!!

Well, yesterday, November 5th was my 18th birthday and also my last day of high school ever!!!!!!!!!

Pretty good day to end on too!
I had Lisa be the first person to sing/ say happy birthday to me, I had my last day of school, with no school work being done, playing cards in study, pranking the school/ teachers, had ALOT of fun, and got to go out to dinner.  Highlight would be my brother Daniel remembering and calling me during interval at school!!!
Here are some photos from my birthday dinner last night, in Mission Bay in the city with Mum, Wendy, Danielle and I.  I will add more picture when I have got them from Mum's phone.

I also have my graduation tonight, so I will post on that soon too, with more photos :)

More arm wrestling in Bio, for the last time ever!!

Taylor and I at lunchtime at school!

 This is where we went in Mission Bay, Auckland

Danielle and I

Mum and Wendy

Danielle and I afterwards... It was dark and freezing cold!!

One more day left!

Down to one more day of high school ever!

I had a shared lunch for my last lesson of classics, I had to say good luck and good bye to a good friend as it was my last class lesson with her forever! I mean, I will see her and all, but I don't know when.  After this lesson- English, I have to say good bye to another two.  Then I have four more lesson of high school ever! Biology, Study, Study, and Maths.  Then a practice graduation assembly for what happens, where we sit and finalizing all the details.

No more Maths or Internals ever!

Today I finished my last internal forever! And my last ever anything to do with maths forever!! So freeking exciting!  I now only have to focus for another two weeks for Biology and English, another three for Classics and another four for Social Studies..... And then never again.... Until February when university starts, but that's different to being at school as it will be working towards something that I want to do, to have a purpose to doing the work and and learning the stuff :)

Caregiving and School

As you know, I started my caregiving orientation at the end on September.. And it is now nearing the end of October!!

I completed orientation last weekend and Sunday night and last night I did my first official shifts by myself.  They actually went pretty well, I worked Sunday 3-9- originally I was doing 7-1 but Mum wanted to swap shifts with me so that she could go to a baby shower.  In the end it worked out perfectly as I got asked to baby sit on the saturday night.  After work on sunday I got home and started on the finishing of my classics internal which I finished by 1am, and then as I was packing my bag for school I realized that I had also got an english internal due the next morning at 9am too! So I had to quickly finish that off and print it before going to bed.  I ended up watching Fridays episode of Home and Away before going to bed a 2am.

I went to school on 4-5 hours of sleep, and then had to go to work 3-11 that afternoon too! So after finishing all my internals for this week (I only have ONE more due forever- which is done as a test over three class periods) having very little sleep Sunday night, and then being up until 12.30am this morning, I will get to go home after school tonight and blob out and watch the episodes of tv programs that I have missed over the last five days!

On the topic of school... I have exactly two weeks and one day until I'm finished!!!!

More on my tv habits one day... soon :)

Back to school for my last 17 days ever...

Tomorrow will mark the beginning of my last term of high school ever! I have 17 days left, Monday to Friday for the next two weeks, then Tuesday to Friday the third week as that Monday is a public holiday and then I have Monday 4th Nov, Tuesday (my 18th), then Wednesday which is going to be my last day ever! I am not even sure if it is a full or just a half day as we have graduation/ prize giving that evening.  I will then be on study leave from the 6th November where I have four exams over the course of the following month.

Biology on the 12th, English on the 14th, then a weeks gap with classics on the 22th, and Social Studies on the 3rd December.  Then school will really be over and I will have the next three months off where I will be working before starting university at the end of February.

Back on the bike

And so today, it marked the day of my first time back riding my bike- I had no pain in my knee it was so good! I haven't ridden my bike since at least May (when I had the surgery) and so to be back on it as the warmer weather is showing now, getting warmer leading up to summer!

On the way we stopped for lunch, then we saw the damage from the recent storm that passed through which happened to be at its strongest when it is high tide, on a king tide so the sea levels were rather high and took out a lot of the built up sand around the coast, you can see evidence of this all along the Orewa Beach stretch of the coast which is a good few kilometers long (five I think).  There is barriers all up along the beach front and the grass just goes straight down and all the tree roots are showing- that is all that is holding the beach front.  There is still a lot of debris on the beach as well.

I don't have pictures of the South end of the beach where the damage is a lot worse as the height of the sand/grass walls are a lot higher!!!

Even old steps were uncovered... 

This use to be covered in sand...

Saw this mailbox too- very cool!

We then went and got ice-creams...

And Allie got licks too- her treat :-)

Pavement Art!!

Yesterday at school we had house pavement art where each of the five school house groups had a team of seniors and a team of middle schoolers who came up with a pasifika design that they then had to fit into a 1.5m x 1.5m box drawn out on the year 7&8 side courts.

My house is Batten which is blue :-)

Batten seniors ended up coming second and Batten middle school came fourth.

Here are some photos which sort of illustrates how our hour we had panned out:

The start of it... thats a lot of blue!!!

Colouring, blending, and making the chalk colour stand out more..

Doing the finishing touches while the judges were walking around..

The finished product from the senior team- As it says in the chalk names underneath: Keanu and Gary were the designers and drew the design onto the courts and Myself, Jade, Courtney, and Dani coloured it in- with help from Keanu and Gary of course- as they are the artists :-)

Other houses working on their designs- two senior teams and a middle school team in the far corner by the path...

Four of the middle school teams- it was lunch time so there was a lot of people floating around looking at all of them as well as quite a few teachers.

The middle school Batten teams nearly finished design..

Near the end of it some of the (mainly middle school) teams were finding sheets etc. to hold up over their designs as it started to rain... We managed to find boards to protect ours from the side where it was starting to rain and also from the strong winds that was blowing the chalk dust all over it- mixing the colours!!

I plan on taking more pictures of the finished designs at somepoint today if I remember as because it rained quite heavily overnight, this morning when I walked past them on the way to form class they actually looked kinda cool!

International Festival

Last week on Thursday we had the International Festival at school which occurred over Form period right through until lunch time which meant for those year 13s not involved we had very small classes and a very cruzy day!
Each year level had a particular time to come over for it, it was mainly a food festival as they had the dances the day before- Wednesday.
My year group got lumped with the year 12s and I happened to have a study period then anyhow and so I was helping out with the Amnesty International stand as one of the senior leaders/ supervisors as a senior had to be on the stands along with the juniors.

The stand which I was supervising on for one period...

From the second level of the block...

From ground level...

Leavers Jumper

Friday 13th we got given our leavers jumpers! Well, those that bought them.  Very exciting as now we have them, it sort of says that we are closer to the end of high school!! There is only 7 weeks until the end of the school year before we go into study leave for a month whilst we sit our final exams for the year, and for our high school life.
November 6th 2013 is my last day of year 13 in school- learning (supposedly) I think we have a half day as we have prize giving at 7pm that evening.

FRONT

BACK

These are not the best photos as they were taken by my iPad, but also right at the end of lunch time and the bell was about to go.