Day 4 - Thursday 12 September

Today we did the same thing as we did the past two days, in other words our morning routine which was, Getting ready for the day, Fitness, Breakfast, Packing our lunch and doing our daily duties. My group were on Kitchen duty which meant we had to wash the dishes, pack them away and just clearing out the area.

A few minutes later we loaded the bus to get ready for our trip to Russell. When we got to Russell, we were split into two groups. I was with group three with half my original group which is group two. We first visited Christchurch and we got to see a few graves including Tamati Wakanene and Hone Heke. Not only that, but we got to see the bullet holes on the sides of the church.

Next, we visited pompallier house. The building is located in Russel somewhere along the beach side and it's New Zealands oldest working factory. The house was very big and had so many rooms and things that really amazed me. While we were at pompallier house, we got to see how people use to make leather, how the made books back in the days and many more.

After that, we had a little break before heading up to Flagstaff hill. We had a little bite which were cookies and nuts. About 10 minutes later, we were all finished and we were ready to go to flagstaff hill. As we walked we had to walk in one line because there were cars coming down our way. A few minutes passed and we finally made it to flagstaff hill. It was a very tiring walk but worth it because the view was nice and we could see the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean kind of blend in with eachother. We also got to learn about how Hone Heke and his men were so sneaky about cutting the flagstaff down so many times without getting caught. Not only did we learn that, but we learnt that if you sail from Russell and you go straight you come across two Islands.

After visiting Flagstaff hill, we visited  Russell Museum. The museum was small but very nice and had so many things that have been stored in there for over 100 years. One thing that caught my attention the most was Captain Cooks ship. It wasn't the actual size of his ship, it was only 1/5 of it. It was pretty big, and the sails were so low that everytime I wanted to go to the other side I'd end up hitting my head on them, but it was very nice getting to read and see things at the museum.

To end the day, we went to long beach. 7 students got to go swimming first while the rest played games  such as rugby and volleyball. Since I got chosen to go in first, I took a ball with me into the water to play tag with. It was very hard to throw the ball without it hitting the water and, it was also hard to run in the water but fun. Once everyone got to have a swim, we gathered our gear and loaded the bus, and headed straight back to Orongo Bay. When we got there, we got sent to go shower, help out with preparing dinner and some of us got told to pack our gear so we can leave early tomorrow.

After dinner, we wrote our evening reflections. Once that was done, day 4 was over for us.