Meeting up at the airport with our parents, we formed a huddle- something we’d quickly have to get good at- and waited for further instruction. Which we are also getting good at. After some emotional farewells, we headed through customs and to get some food before the flight after wandering around for a while as the 6 of us.

This is the photo of the 6 of us. You may notice a certain penguin who will feature in these photos also… different authors will feature on different blog posts and we will credit accordingly- and you may see some of our friends in the photos as well.

We boarded the flight with a sense of trepidation. Some of which rightly so- as expected, long-haul flights are as long as the name indicates. After a (varyingly- Ananya’s flawless 7 hours compared to a more meagre 1 or 2) sleepless flight, but luckily with great entertainment, we stumbled off in George Bush International Airport ready to face the ominous US customs: which was “Actually not too bad. It was pretty speedy”- Jemima Po.
After a remarkably luxurious bus ride, once more with free wifi much to our delight, we arrived at the grand hotel which serves as our ‘habitat’ for the duration of the ‘mission’. A quick ‘snack’ was catered for us in one of the ballrooms before mission briefing and ground rules. At the time of writing, we’ve just received and toured our rooms: Ananya and Antonia, Jemima and Emma, Anneke and Izzie (Westlake), and Tess and Jess. We’re currently awaiting the next part of getting to know our groups…

The next session was around getting to know the others in the group in speed-dating style. After quick introductions had been made, we got into our teams and did some goal setting, for which we made posters including a name and personal goals as well as team ones. We got pretty creative and had lots of laughs! ‘The Climb’ is our goal setting song, which is now well and truly stuck in all of our heads.

Dinner was pretty awesome too- a buffet setup including chicken, salad leaves, risotto rice, bread rolls, roasted vegetables, with fruit and lemon sorbet for dessert. It was nice to have a chat with some of the girls from other schools (Hamilton Girls, Waikato Dio and Westlake Girls), as well as catching up with the rest of the Dio group.

After this, we worked on our mission patches for a bit, and have finally returned to our rooms, ready for a shower and to flop into bed for a good old sleep after an awesome day (or two…??)- finally!!

– Emma, Anneke and Jemima over and out 🚀