Wake up was finally at the humane hour of 7:45am today. This meant most got a pretty decent night’s sleep, with even the worst sleep deprived offenders managing just over 5 hours.

For the first time in a while, we started off the morning with a visit to our group room, where we dumped our stuff before moving next door for a giant CASE move it session with the Aussies. It was great fun to do all the routines again, which we haven’t done in a while- we were better than the Aussies, just saying!! Much to our delight, Gabi joined in with her usual enthusiasm, outshining all the other GMs with her fab moves. We all left pink-cheeked and nicely warmed up for the day.

The breakfast hall was rather exciting this morning- we arrived to fresh waffles and a pile of santa hats on the table- such fun! Unfortunately there were no bananas on any of the tables (even the special meals), so we asked if they had any more- at first they couldn’t find any, but then one of the ladies came out on a quest to find us in the breakfast hall with a whole bunch that we gratefully took, saving one for Gabi of course! Everyone was feeling rather festive this morning, with over one hundred santa hats bopping around dancing and singing along to the music playing through the speakers- a lovely final meal at the hotel.

Next we headed back to the group room for our final farewells! Over the last couple of days we had been secretly organising group gifts for the teachers and GMs, which nearly ended in disaster when we had sent Philipp to the gift shop for Gabi and Shana’s gifts at the same time Gabi was there getting our things for Philipp and Chris… We’d also got the cards sneakily signed during the ChallengeX finals by hiding them in a book and passing them along the rows- by the end we regretted the choice of small-ish cards!! A couple of people did some lovely thank yous to them all on our behalf, after which the teachers and GMs did their own thank you speeches to us- in which we learned that we were the best group and if they went to Mars, we were the group they would want to go with (awwwwww!!!), which made us all cry until Gabi told us to pull ourselves together.

It was very exciting to then have another graduation- goodness, we’ve graduated twice before finishing Dio haha… We all got our certificates for completing CASE Space School, with Gold 2 (Jemima’s team) being announced as the overall champions and winners of the ‘CASE wings’- another piece of bling to add to the blazer. After we’d all gone up, had our handshakes and hugs with our GMs and teachers, as well as giant cheers from the rest of the group, we got an excellent video of everyone throwing their santa hats in the air- the closest thing we had to graduation caps.

Before we got on our way, we decided there was enough time to do a round of ‘warm fuzzies’- everyone got a piece of paper which we passed around the room, writing something nice to each person on theirs. Since there were 41 of us, it took quite a long time, especially since Aimee (one of our new friends from Hamilton Girls) was determined to write a bit of an essay to us all! But we made it, and it was so nice to have this to take away with us.

After a final sweep around all of our hotel rooms and some last minute packing, the moment of truth had come- was the shopping too heavy to take home…!??!?! Shana got our her luggage scales, but thankfully, with a bit of jiggling around, everyone was within the limit and we piled the stack of suitcases into the corner. We then did a survey about the programme, featuring some rather strongly worded feedback about ChallengeX(!!!!) before farewelling our group room for the last time and climbing onto the bus. Now we’ve had another driver for a few days since Troy had family commitments and had to leave us- sad feeling. But before he left, we got him a hoodie from the Johnson Space Center and all wrote in his card, as well as getting an iconic group photo with our favourite bus driver!

Our last tourist destination before the airport was the ‘Sam Houston historical tour’. We were a little early (as per usual) so decided to play a game while we waited- another of Gabi’s specials, which was essentially hide and seek on steroids. Being the competitive creatures we are, the game quickly became heated and rather exciting, with one girl scaling and hanging from a wall in order to avoid being spotted. This was met with a disapproving look from a passerby when she got stuck on the way down, after she gave up hiding and made an SOS call to Gabi. Even better was that the annoyed lady turned out to be one of our tour guides in the end… Whoops…

We were split into 4 groups and taken around the historical site. In our group, we went to the church first. It was fascinating to learn about the way people used to live and tour the __, which we likened to the Howick historical village back in Auckland and made for an interesting change to all the very STEM focused activities we had been immersed in (perhaps this is where the ‘Art’ in STEAM comes in?!?). We learned a lot about the community back then, which apparently had a German majority, hence all the framed documents being in German, as well as a traditional German Christmas tree setup, and the rounded corners (which are apparently due to a superstition that the devil likes to hide in corners). The rest of the morning involved going into several of the other houses, which were owned by people of varying classes- there was quite a difference between some of the higher-class houses with their parlours and sun room bedrooms, and the single room ‘old house’ which was very basic, as well as evident changes to building style and features over time.

After our interesting historical journey, we piled back on the bus and drove to our final lunch destination – a place called Sweet Tomatoes. The general consensus was one of positivity. We were also surprised to find out that to get into this all-you-can-eat place it was only $8- we definitely ate enough to get our value out of it! The first huge station was full of a great variety of different salady bits and cold pastas, after which was the drinks station (the sweet tea was interesting…), around the corner was the bakery department which also had pizza, various bread and muffins, as well as hot pasta and soups, and finally the dessert counter with more muffins, ice cream, cookies and various other sweet treats, much to our delight.

Then we headed off to the airport, arriving 3 hours before our flight was due to depart, just to be on the safe side. However, our extreme punctuality was in vain when the check in system crashed due to “technical difficulties” for over an hour.We were so tired that the time passed quite quickly as we sat there on our suitcases somewhat in a daze, until some of us finally got through. Then the system went dodgy again, so half of us were waiting on the floor by the gate, while the other half were still in line. We decided to make the most of the time to entertain ourselves with an epic jump jam and CASE move it circle, playing the music off Izzy’s phone which was just loud enough for us to hear but not so much that it caused a disturbance- though we did see a few people filming our craziness, which must’ve been quite a sight- a bunch of laughing dancing girls dressed in matching blue shirts and santa hats- such fun! One of the Actura organiser guys even joined in, and it was very amusing teaching him ‘the coconut song’.

When we all finally checked in, we got through the terrifying US security screening procedures in record time, though we had a bit of ‘fun’. The ‘remove socks and shoes’ sections was as intense as ever, and even saw Aletia having to take off her moon boot to prove she wasn’t concealing a weapon. Gabi and Philipp also got pulled over for a random explosives test, though we all said it was probably because they looked a bit dodgy

The flight home was pretty uneventful and seemed quite a lot better than the one there, as we were all so tired so sleep came more easily- though the champion of sleep by far was Gabi with her 11 hours!! The food was pretty nice again (pasta, bread, salad and cheesecake), and we had in-flight wifi, so that was a good bonus!

Finally after our 15 hour journey we made it safely back to NZ- after hoisting all the actura luggage off the carousel, we had our final farewell speeches from Gabi and Shana, and the reality began to hit that our trip was actually over!!

The trek through customs was also reasonably uneventful, with no one having any dodgy hidden fruit in their luggage- thank goodness!! Turns out they had crews filming for border security, so if in a couple of years you see a group of people in blue shirts and santa hats, it’s us!

It was so nice to come out and see all our parents and siblings there waiting for us with lots of hugs and welcomes. These two weeks have flown by, but at the same time, it had become our life and the group our family- there wasn’t a dry eye when it came time to leave the airport!

Thanks for following our blog and being part of our trip- we hope you’ve enjoyed reading all about our adventures at CASE Space School!!