Tauranga Boys' College International : June 2015

Today, Friday 5 June, we had our annual special International Assembly. The boys led by our International Student Leader Boss (Thailand) with Max (Germany), Tim (Taiwan) Peter and Leo (China) and Aiman (Malaysia), gave very interesting presentations on their countries, concluding with Steven singing a popular pop song from China.
We were very proud of the boys achievements, speaking their second language in front of the rest of the TBC students and staff. Thank you to Paul (Germany) who helped with the technical side of the presentations.

Peter & Leo’s Speech

Good morning (nihao), Mr Mangan, teachers and school. Nihao is how we say hello in Chinese. My name is Peter Zhu Dunyin. I am proud to say, like most things, I was made in China.

Today, I am going to talk about the differences between our culture and your culture. So far I have been in NZ about one and half years.

NZ is quite a different country from China. Different culture, different people, different school and different city. I enjoy my time in NZ, especially the camping, skiing and beaches. I had never done those things before. There is no opportunity for me to go surfing and skiing in in my City. Guangzhou, the city that I come from is a long way, away from the sea. Usually it is so hot in summer and we have much warmer winters too. It never snows and we do not need a heater. However, in the north part of China it can be very cold and the temperature can be -30. I had never touched snow before until I went on the ski trip last year, with all the other International students.

I love the food in NZ. The biggest difference in food between China and NZ is that we don’t have potatoes, cheese, butter or bread. Instead we have rice, noodles, stir fry, seafood and Chinese soup. There are four types of food in China. Yue food, Chuan food, Lu food and Su food.

Our school day starts at about 7:40am in the morning and finishes at about 5pm in the afternoon. There are about 600 students in each grade with 10 classes. I had 54 classmates in my class. We study in the same class all day. We do not move from classroom to classroom at the end of every period like we do here in NZ. Each period is about 40mins long and then we have a rest for 10 minutes at the end of each period. And 20 minutes for morning tea, two hours for lunchtime. We sleep for about one hour during lunchtime. In China there are eight periods in a day. Five periods in the morning and another three in the afternoon. At TBC there is only six periods and no sleeping at lunchtime.

The area of China is about 36 times bigger than NZ and there are more than 1.4 billion people in China. That is about 311 times more than NZ. It means you better catch the early bus to school in the morning, or you will find yourself in a huge traffic jam and a very full bus or people running everywhere in the underground to catch the train. Sometimes you can’t even get into the bus because there are too many people inside. Beijing is the capital city and Shanghai is the largest city. It takes 24 hours to fly to China and back to NZ. The Guangzhou Tower is the tallest building in Asia.

In November 2010, the Guangzhou Tower was built for the opening of the Asian games. The whole tower and surrounding areas were lit up with fireworks and it was absolutely amazing to watch. The Guangzhou Tower is very famous. It is 624 metres high. You can walk on the glass floor which is about 300 metres high, this is very frightening as you look down onto the road. At the top of the Guangzhou tower there is a restaurant and it rotates all the time. You can have the best food with your family or your girlfriend and see all the surrounding areas around Guangzhou. Mrs Roff visited this tower with my family and she loved it.

There are some other famous places in China.

The Great Wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing

The beautiful West Lake in HangZhou

The Karst mountains in Guilin

The Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian

Thank You

Peter and Leo

Maximilian's Speech

My name is Maximilian Muehlhause and I'm an International Student at TBC.My Journey began 11 months ago, when I left my family and friends in Germany to go to an unfamiliar country called New Zealand.I didn't know what family I was going to get, or what the people were going to be like. I only knew that it was going to be a big challenge for me.I boarded the plan, missing my family already. After a two day long flight, I arrived in Tauranga, overwhelmed by all the differences. The most significant for me were the fauna and the style of the roads.Living in a host family is not easy at times.It's hard when you don't understand each other so well and I had to change families, but now I'm very happy with my homestay, the Strattons.A big difference between New Zealand and Germany is the school system. We for example, are marked by our performance in class as well as in conventional tests. We also can't choose our subjects and have 15 different ones rather than six and a boys' school is not a thing in Germany.We also don't play sports in school, so if you want to play a team sport you have to join a club outside of school. We don't have a field at our school, only a big gym.I personally really like the New Zealand way of doing sport and I found my passion in surfing, which I enjoy a lot.Looking back it was a great experience so far and I can truly recommend an exchange year to all of you.
Thank You
Maximilian (Germany)

Aiman's Speech - Globalisation

Selamat pagi semua nama saya Aiman. Which means kia ora and good morning all! I'm Aiman and I'm an international student from Malaysia. It is my second year here a the school and my third year in New Zealand and it has been real awesome!I'm up here today to talk to you about globalisation. Globalisation according to the trustworthy google is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture. Or to make it easier, it is cultural understanding. We're lucky enough to be in TBC where it is like a melting pot of cultures where we have the Maoris, Islanders, Asians, Europeans all here in one school. I believe that we need to mix around, interact more with people that are not of our race so we understand their culture better. For example we can learn about how different people live in different places, different languages. Or we can learn how they eat their food like how Japanese slurp their noodles rather than biting them like we normally do at a dinner table or even better how to yodel like the Germans. The world is a massive place and its a shame if we don't learn about other people's interesting culture. I'd like to ask my Kiwi brothers to interact more with us Internationals. You might learn some new things, and I would also like to ask my International brothers, don't be shy, get out there and interact with the Kiwi boys, lie what Chris Tucker said to Jackie Chan in the movie Rush Hour, we are brother from another mother! I believe we can work together and strive to make TBC a shining light in New Zealand and even better the world!
Thank you
Aiman (Malaysia)

Boss' Speech

It is a great honour for us to represent the many different cultures we have here at TBC. It is a new journey of experience in our life as a new International Student to have this opportunity to come and learn about Kiwi culture. Apart from that we also improve our English language and make many new friends from both inside and outside the classroom. Therefore I am also involved in a badminton team. At the beginning we all feel it is a little bit hard to understand what our teachers say in the classroom. Fortunately we have very good International staff and teachers to come and support us and make us feel more relaxed. Outside of school we also get a chance to do some activities we have never done before such as skiing, blokarting and kayaking.

After this assembly you all should understand more about each country. Grab the opportunity when you have it, to go and visit other countries. You might learn something new and find something interesting that you have never seen before. International students always welcome you to come and speak with them anytime around the school or outside of new International Centre which is underneath the English block. Even though we come from different parts of the world we are very proud to have this opportunity to open our eyes to see and experience life in a new country. The people in NZ are friendly, I also think TBC students are awesome. I believe it will be an unforgettable experience for you as well to visit other countries. We might see you one day in our country. Please come. Thank you. Kon Kun kub. Also thanks to Paul for managing and bringing our slide together.
Boss (Thailand)