Christ's College

Exchange to Christchurch, New Zealand 2018


Carlos Soria-Garcia, Jonathan Brown, and I traveled a total of thirty six hours to Christchurch, New Zealand this summer. Once we arrived in the Christchurch airport, we were greeted by our individual host families. Carlos and I stayed together for the whole trip and the first two weeks we stayed with Finn Brokenshire who lived next to the bay of Taylor's Mistake, and for the last two weeks we stayed in countryside of Christchurch with Ollie Breckenridge. Jonathan stayed in the bay of Sumner for the whole trip with Sebastian Ferguson. For the first week of our trip, Christ's College was still on winter break, so after a couple of days of rest to make up for the jet lag we took a three day trip to Queenstown, New Zealand for skiing and other tourist activities. We had a great time in Queenstown and our generous host families took us skiing for one day and on the other two days we rode on the shotover jet through a canyon and played Frisbee golf.

After our first week in New Zealand, we began school on Monday. On the first day we went to our hosts, classes and experienced a curriculum much different to that of MBA's. Our hosts took classes such as film studies, mechanical technology, and tri-science, which is a rigorous course taken by the top students in which three different science courses are taught over the year. The other boys at the school were all very nice and we had a good time getting to know new people. On the weekends our hosts took us to rugby games, hiking, and to various zoos and tourist destinations in the vicinity of Christchurch.

As the trip came to a close, we all prepared for the long trip home. Although we did not look forward to the thirty plus hour trip, the trip was truly a once in a lifetime experience that provided us with a broader world view and perspective that we will never forget. We would like to thank both the Warner family and MBA for this incredible opportunity and hope to encourage others to take advantage of these trips in the future.