My name is Marion Dumaine and I am a student at Middleton Grange...

In the summer holidays I took part in the Hands On at Otago programme. 

It started on Sunday the 13th of January and went till Friday the 18th. The whole week was filled with fun and learning. Everyone that I talked to told me that they loved it. Even if we weren't allocated our top project choice (out of five), we ended up loving everything we did.

My allocated project (which was my third choice out of my top five) was Languages and Culture. In our team of eight students and two supervisors, we did a variety of amazing activities such as meeting families that moved to NZ from overseas and learning about their culture, tasting international food, taiko drumming and Latin dancing. We also visited the Chinese gardens and had a tea tasting session, and learnt to write our names in four different scripts.

During the week we stayed at the Arana College and were assigned floors and rooms. Every night we had floor meetings where we would meet with the other people from our floor and talk about our days. The goal was that between the project groups, floor groups, and all the other activities in between (meals, free time, and side projects called Snacks) everyone met a variety of new people and made lots of friends.

On the last night, a dance/party was organized with the theme of 'It's a Kind of Magic'. We dressed up and spent the evening dancing or playing board games. Each floor also had to choose a song to lip-sync to and come up with choreography for it.

Each day was full of fun and amazing activities, I know I will always keep great memories of this experience!