I just come back from a one week break and knowing that I will have another break in 2 weeks makes it harder to go back to studies.

As I have to do a two month internship, I was looking for a place where I could work for minimum one month as I already had a one month internship in London. The difficulty is that on my Visa, it is explicitly written that I can’t work as I am here as a student. I had a look at the volunteer job I could do in wellington. In fact there are many but the problem is that they hardly correspond to my studies. They are generally linked with conservation areas. For example, planting trees and to me it was not the best way to improve my English.

                At my last badminton class, a friend told me that he was working as a volunteer in an art gallery on Cuba Street (an artistic street) and that I should try entering using his name. I reached the person in charge of this gallery and met her. She seemed to be very pleased to have someone regularly.

http://www.enjoy.org.nz/

My job will be to help installing the exhibition, to welcome the public and to answer questions about the exhibition. Modern Art is not a domain I am familiar with but I was told that I would get easily into it.

On Wednesday Stafford, the hall of residence I am living in, organized a cultural quiz for everyone. A very good way to get to know people you often see in the elevator!

On Tuesday, I went to the weekly tramping meeting to know more about the trips organized for this weekend and decided to sign up for a weekend trip in the national park which is one hour from Wellington. I didn’t really realize the consequences… I just took it as a kind of challenge. We were two groups of five people doing this trip. The first one was doing it in two days and a half and mine in two days. I was with two Americans, one German (the leader) and a guy from Sweden.

On the first day, we walked from 9am to 9 pm. The biggest tramping day of my life! It started quite easily with some small up and down and then for 3 entire hours it was only up-hill: 1531m high!

Remember that we were carrying our bag for the week-end! When we arrived at the top, I had a sudden impression to be in the middle of winter: cold, wind and rain! But you can’t imagine how extraordinary the view from the top was!

From this point there was no track and the visibility was not good so we had to use the compass to find our way!

At 5pm we went downhill. And at 6pm it was dark so we had to use our head torch, real adventure and still with the rain and the wind! It was so great to see that until the end of the day, no one ever complained, always chatting and making jokes even the last ones!

Arrived at the hut we had our best hours, eating our favorite tramping dinner: nachos, discovering our feet state and our wet things!

The Sunday was more “relaxed”: different propositions depending on people’s motivation. With two American girls and a kiwi one, we went to the Rocky lookout. Just 600 m high in two hours, almost a walk compared to the day before!

We finally all met at the end of the day and had a Turkish dinner.

…tomorrow, class at 8am at Kelburn campus! (the one uphill)