Auckland is ones special place on earth. It is the place where is surrounded by green hill with the slow living life of Auckland city. The beauty of life on the hill and its pristine nature.  I was so lucky to be able to study in Auckland for one year in 2000. It was such a great life experienced that is unforgetable. I decided to come to Auckland to experience my new adventure away from home. I went to high school here for a year. It was the whole new experience and was incridibly difference from my daily life back home in Bangkok. I had to adjust myself and learnt new culture. It was a bit culture shock at the begining since there was notthing alike at all from where I came from.

​ My first impression was about the landscape and quietness. Are you kidding me?! I am from Bangkok - the city that never sleep and crazy things are going on all the time, but here in Auckland. It is so quiet and green. Here I am a teenager from a big crazy city and was going to learn how to live slow life and being able to adjust my life style in the whole new experience. It was hard at the begining but it was such a great life skill and a great oppurtunity as a teenager in the difference coutry that was such a great advantage to improve my ability to discover and being able to understand and learn about other culture, people, exploring, discovering and enjoy life. These are the big part that incresed my ability until these day to become TravelChic. 

 Life back then in Auckland was slow, my daily day life was going to school and hanging out around the city or visited some beautiful place during the weekend. I used to live with a host family and other two international students. I was very very lucky about where I live because I ended up match with a host family who own a beautiful house on top of the hill. I love the house and my bed room has a large window over looking the whole city, mountain and lake. It was absolutely stunning and I felt like I was on top of the world. I love looking out through the window at night. The light of the city and the shadow of the mountain in the quietness brought me into my peaceness feeling. I also remembered a great moment that I had to weak up so early in the morning to use the bathroom because I had to share with other two students and I had to walk about 15 minutes from top of the hill down to the main road to get to the bus stop. I either catched a public bus or school bus which was depending on times. I was either late for school bus or too early. I remembered an adventurous moment when the mist was everywhere in the morning. I could not even see the side walk either my feet. I had to walk like a blind person from home to the bus stop. It was fun for me. This city is surrounded by the natural beauty. I usally see snail on the site walk or butterfly during the summer but when its cold. It was freezing cold and I really hated it when I had to waer my school uniform. 

 As I am thinking about my life back in Auckland. I remembered a lot about life with host family, green hill everywhere, fresh air and being at school with a lot of crazy kids. These school kids did not seem to know much about outside world, even though I was a teenager but I had been travelign quite a lot since I was 14 years old so I found it was quite hard with the mentality to deal with people back then but I was lucky to find one best friend when I was in school. We met in mathematic class, ohh dear this class was even harder for me in English and even worse with the New Zealand accent that I found it was the hardest English accent in the world - writing about Kiwi accent "Kiwi means New Zealander" I remembered when I was traveling to down south of New Zealand. There were a couple from Canada and we were at the cashier. This cashier girl was telling him about the price but this Canadian guy had to ask her twice to repeat. They were actually talking in English but it was funny that they had to try to communicate to each other. This was a funny thing how I remembered about Kiwi accent.

 As an international student. I was glade I got to meet one best friend while I was at school. She is New Zealander. Why one best friend? There are a lot of international students who just only hang out with kids from the same country and I found that really off and unexploring with their new life experience so I never hang out with people who were from the same country because I was interested to be more Kiwi back then and eager to learn about new culture. I had a wonderful time with my friend, her name is Gemma. It was important as I looked back that I got to have such a wonderful friend who was a Kiwi. I got to have a bond and great memory of my high school life because of a friendship. It made my high school life abroad so memorable. It is actually a beautiful thing that happened in my life. 

 Life as international had a lot of discipline of living in with host family but I got lucky and my host family was kind. They are my favorite people. I remembered they took me and other two students to a country side day trip. It was beautiful. I got to play rolling ball from the hill, visited natural hot mud, wathing gorgeous scenary of the country side during the road trip and visited a cultural maori attraction somwhere. It was a great experienced to be able to see the world. New Zealand is really a unique place on earth. It is rich of natural beauty and its pristine beauty of nature that is like anywhere else. The colour of its nature, lakes, river, moutain and the fresh air made me think this is really a heaven on earth. There is no way you would understand what I say until you discover it yourself. I always remember the moments of my impression that I have about the beauty nature that is all around in this country.

 Another experienced that I would never forget and if you are goin to travel to New Zealand. I will always recommend people to try..."Meat Pie". Yes! Meat Pie is a must try food. I gained so much weight from this delicious heavy food. They sell them everywere. I also eat them at school for my lunch. This meat pie is like a nation food for Australia or New Zealand. It is a hand - size fast food and everyone loves them! I love beef pie the most. This beef pie containing largely mined meat, onion, mushrooms, chess and juicy gravy. They served it warm, people usually eat them as takeaway snack. I think it is the best beef pie ever. It was so rich, juicy and tasty. This is the iconic food in New Zealand. The meat pie is heavily associated with Australian rules football and Rugby League as one of the most consumed food whilst watching game.  

 New Zealand is also well known by Rugby. The New Zealand national rugby tem, known as the All Blacks. This rugby has helped shape modern kiwi into a proud, sportin, innovative nation determined to make its mark on the world. As important of its Ruby. There was the mixed between an art, culture and sport. I was so impressed and blown away when I watched school kids who attended Rugby school team, everytime before they play the game. They had to do Haka dance first. The Haka is a traditional Maori dance and Maori is the native islander who have been living on the island before the British colombia. There are thousands of Haka that are performed by various tribes and culture groups thoughout New Zealand. The Haka performanced are for various reasons such as asusement, a hearty welcome, acknowledge great achievements, occasions, funerals and at the Rugby league could be representing of scare the competitor off. Thie Haka performance is extremaly powerful. The movements and emotions on performers are incredibly expressive and deep. It made me pause once the Haka dance perfoming start. The Haka dance is one of the most interesting dance cultural I have ever seen. It is powerful, rich, expressive and unique. It is one of my favorite perfomance culture in the world. 

 New Zealand is also known for sheep but it's not like you would imagine that sheeps are running around on the green field here in Auckland. They are usally in the farm land like country side. Here in New Zealand. I could find skin cares products that made of sheeps oil ingredient. I love shopping at the souvenir shops here. I love the skin cares products that made of natural stuff from New Zealand like manuka honey bees, sheep oil, tea tree oil and mud. I found that they are great products and unexpensive. They are great gifts as well. This is the quality of its simple native ingredient and they work great as some expensive skin cares compared to counter brands. When I was traveling down south of New Zealand. I runned into a great shop where they sale sheep skin. I bought a high quality of sheep skin. It was a king size sheep skin, soft and thick. I bought and shipped it to my parents house as a gift. They love it so much. It has been over ten years and this sheep skin still look like the same condition since year 2000, my parents still use it everynow and then and sometimes they use it as a special occasion. This was absolutely a great gift and timeless, more then that it always bring back a wonderful memory everytime I use and see this sheep skin. This gift is a pricless and it is a life time memory of my trip from South of New Zealand.

 I really had such a wonderful time and a life experienced of my high school life in Auckland. I am very grateful to be able to have such an oppurtunity to explore the world since I was young. After one year in Auckland. I continued to move to another country so I chosed to go to Paris for fashion design, somhow as much as I missed Auckland and the host family that I used to live with. I came back for a visit once again in 2004. This trip was even better. I enjoyed everything even more and everything seems much more beautiful compared to what I used to know about Auckland. I also made a surprised visit to my host family that I used to live with. It was really great and I had such an amazing times. I relaized how lucky I am and how much I love this country. It is one of the most beautiful place on earth and its beauty of Auckland that is surrounded by natural beauty and the fresh air that made me so happy. I would defineitly list this travel destination on my top list.