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! :)

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

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 :)

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.

Skyping with JUDY!!

I have had a really awesome evening skyping Judy!  All the way over in Germany, and I, well, as always, in little old New Zealand.

We don't talk over skype to often as having to juggle the time differences and school and activities and all but when we do get to skype it is awesome being able to catch up in real time person!!

I first met Judy at school, as she was an international student and hung out with our group of friends at break times, we have since remained close when she left and still talk and write to each other on a regular basis :)

Making connections across the world is so awesome! I now want to go over the Germany, I even have a place to stay ;-)

Mock Exams

I have five mock exams coming up in the near future.. well in little over a week away. They are starting on Friday next week, and finish the following Friday.

This is my exam schedule for the mocks- my real end of year exams are a lot more spaced out with some being up to a week apart! These are all within the one week:

Social Studies- Monday (pm)
English- Tuesday (pm)
Biology- Wednesday (am)
Maths- Wednesday (pm)
Classics- Thursday (pm)

I am very happy that my exams are all very well placed in the week.  They are still subject to change, but by now I don't think they will change.

School Report

Well, school reports are out now, it is the last ever high school report that I am ever going to get!  I am extremely happy with it, and I think that it may be the best report that I have ever had! Especially compared to my Term 1 interim report at the beginning of this year, I have come along way over the course of this year, and I am heading to be finishing high school on a good note :)  Very very happy!

POSTCARDS!!!!

So happy to get home from school today to find a postcard from Judy sitting waiting for me on my bed, along with a DVD I ordered from TradeMe for English.

Excited!  Thank you Judy, I miss you!! :)

NorthSea July 2013 

I got another post card in May from Aunty Anna- Thank you so much!! :)

I love getting mail! Especially letters and postcards! Better than bills ;)

This one was sent from El Camino in Spain!

Form Class Photo 2013

My Year 13 form class for 2013

Orewa College

13CAR

I am top right- blue and orange Nike t-shirt

Arm Wrestling (video)

Blogger finally decided to like me! I managed to upload a video :)

Last Friday (21st June) we had a reliever teacher in biology and we had been given the worksheet to do the lesson before on the Thursday and so I had done it in study on the Thursday thinking we would have extra work to do on Friday with the reliever... oh how wrong I was... 

So it started with both Jade.R and Jade.V "battling for supremacy" (every lesson we have a debate between which Jade is #1 and #2 that particular day, and other days we have had different names) for who is who, as when someone says Jade both turn and look, or both will answer the teacher.

Our bio reliever was rather happy about us doing this and actually gave pointers and helped them.

This is a video of Jade.R and I having a arm wrestle with Jade.V being annoying and stupid through it as you will see.

Oh, and just for interests sake- there are 2 Courtney's, 2 Danielle's, 2 Jade's, and also 2 Rebecca's in my biology class alone.

Back into the drivers seat

And I'm driving again!

As of Saturday the 15th I was back able to drive as I stopped the higher dose of pain meds (DHC continuous) and went back onto the Paracode (paracetamol/codeine) and also as I am not so sore and a lot more mobile now (bending a bit better and such)

I am walking without crutches at home, and around the classroom at school to go talk to the teacher or something, but still on crutches aside from that.

My knee has definitely gotten better over the last week, the swelling has gone down heaps and the bruising from the pictures has gone away kind of, but more bruising has come up behind my knee and below it also.

Sweet Treats

Here are some of the cakes that I have made with my friends over the last six months.

I really enjoy baking, especially when it is for someone else, I just don't like the dishes and cleaning up afterwards.

I have a love of sweet, sweet, and more sweet :).

This is the cake Taylor and I made for mums 51st birthday.

I made this cake for my Uncle for helping me with the construction for my biology experiment.

It must have been the beginning of April for my friend Danielle's 17th birthday we decided to bake a cake together, it wasn't exactly an ordinary cake that you may bake... It was quite different, well to the normal chocolate, vanilla, or banana cakes normally made around my house for birthdays.  This was a PIGGY cake of sorts.

 A couple weeks after we had made that cake, a really good friend, Judy, that I had made at school from Germany was leaving to go back, and so for her last night in New Zealand we had a sleepover at  Taylor's house and made her a "Goodbye Cake", it was the best Vanilla cake I have ever had!!

 Then recently during a study period at school as when we have them period 5 after lunch we are allowed to leave school at lunch time, Taylor and I went over to her house and we made cupcakes which got shared with her family, and her neighbors little girl.

I hope to be making more soon :)

Update on my knee

As you know I had knee surgery last week.  10 days on and I am finally back at school for the first full day on Friday 7th June.  I have been in for the critical lessons needed to keep me up to date for a math internal that I will be sitting early next week.

Everyone thinks I am crazy weird for wanting to be at school when I have medical permission not to be there - even my doctor.

Wednesday (5th June) I went back down to my surgeons clinic in Auckland to have the bandage taken off and stitches removed with strips put on to hold the incision closed and waterproof dressings put on.  The bruising also started coming out pretty nicely, and the swelling has also meant that I haven't been able to wear my jeans yet, but I kindly got given a pair of track pants that have a zip up the side to borrow so that I can have pants to wear and not my skirts and shorts all the time, as it is winter over here.

My knee has caused a lot of pain when I'm not sitting down with my leg up, so I ended up at my local doctors clinic being prescribed with a higher dose of pain killers which have worked wonders!

Top view of my knee- 2 incisions (one for the camera- small one about 1.5cm in length, and one for the lateral release procedure- bigger one about 4cm in length)

Side view of my knee- yeah, thats the bruising, it continues round the back of me knee too.  The swelling isn't so bad at the moment as I have been from my bed to the lounge and had my leg up all day so far.

I am still on crutches and could be for quite sometime (a couple weeks+ most likely), I am fully weight bearing but not walking correctly as I can't bend my knee at all when standing or walking, though I can physically move it with my hands when sitting down.

Knee surgery

I tried writing this yesterday but blogger had a spaz at me and decided to delete this post!

Yesterday was D Day for my surgery.  It went pretty good until I got up to go home which I went all sick and pale so I got put back on the ward to be monitored for a couple more hours where they put an anti nausea patch behind my ear to help.

I had an arthroscopy done which is a look inside of my knee with a camera to find anything that they didn't already know was there just incase.  And then they the proceeded with the rest of the procedure which was to cut my tendon holding my kneecap so that it wont be attached in the same was as before because that was what was causing all of the pain I got in my knee.

I have a lovely fat bandaged up knee and I am also practicing to walk on it normally, well slightly weight baring at the moment with the help of crutches.

I do have the next week off school, but I am going in for a meeting in a couple of hours and will probably go back in on Tuesday for the day, or for as long as I'm not in pain.

I am really glad that is is done and dusted now to wait a year or so to see if it has fully worked.

Pictures of it to come..
Me in hospital just after recovery
And, the difference in knee size.

Drivers Licence

After school yesterday I went and sat my full drivers license test.  I passed it which now means that I am a fully licensed driver and I am allowed to drive anytime, anywhere, and with anyone.  Exciting stuff!!

I got my learner license on my first go back in April 2011, and then my restricted license also on my first go back in January 2012, and now I have my full which I also passed on my first go.

On my learners I had to always have a supervisor with me (mum) and I also had to have 'L' plates on the car.

For my restricted the 'L' plates got chucked and I was allowed to drive on my own with no passengers unless I had a fully licensed driver and also between 5am and 10pm.

Now that I have my full, I don't have any legal curfew and I am also allowed passengers.

I have been issued with a temporary paper license until my actual one comes in the mail which should be in the next week or so.