Student enjoying his stay
Sixteen-year-old Julius Bals has to look both ways at least five times before he crosses the street.
The German exchange student just can’t get his head around cars driving on ‘‘the wrong side of the road’’.
‘‘I’m always going to get in the wrong side of the car as well,’’ he said. ‘‘I can’t help it!’’ Julius has been in New Zealand since January and is spending six months as a student at Matamata College.
While it is his first time here, he did have an idea of what the town was like before arriving.
His mum Tina Bruger also spent time here as an exchange student in 1981.
‘‘She always told me about the friendly people here and how everyone in town knows each other,’’ he said.
Mrs Bruger stayed with Don and Jackie Stanley for a year and still keeps in touch with them.
Julius hopes to do the same with his host parents Kevin and Kay Tappin.
‘‘ They are awesome,’’ said.
‘‘They are so friendly and help me when I have problems.’’
Julius is in year 12 at the college and said school here was a lot more relaxed than in Germany.
‘‘School is much easier, it’s kind of like a holiday,’’ he said.
He had found it easy to make friends and said the other students were all really friendly.
‘‘ I was quite shy at first because there was heaps of
he new people but they are all really nice and ask me heaps of questions about Germany and how it is there.’’
He was looking forward to going on a three-day trip to Wellington with his history class to visit Te Papa Museum.
He was hoping to do as much travel as possible and had already been to Mount Maunganui to see his best friend from Germany who is also here on an exchange.
In the next school holidays, the Stanley family have invited him to go to the South Island and he hopes to go bungy jumping in Queenstown.
Staying in Matamata was very different than living in Hamburg, a city of more than 1.5 million people, he said.
‘‘ It’s so different walking around the town and seeing my friends – in Hamburg the chance that you will see someone you know is very, very low.’’
Apart from that, Julius said New Zealand was not all that different.
‘‘People are more friendly maybe, but it’s pretty much the same.’’