Carissa Moore scholarship trip to Hawaii

breakers.kiwi

New Day. New thoughts. New strength. New possibilities.

Off to Hawaii!

With Hawaii only a couple days away I am getting super, super excited! I’m getting everything ready to go away and I have also been surfing as much as I can, even if that means walking from school and getting straight out there no matter what the conditions are like. Lately we haven’t had many big swells so it has been pretty small. Its’s such an incredible opportunity to go to Hawaii to train and stay with Carissa Moore at her family home and to learn some new things. We don’t know exactly what we are doing on each day yet, but I do know that we will be doing a lot of surfing which hopefully includes Honalua Bay. It will be fantastic to experience all the culture over there too and each of us will be cooking a traditional dish to share our cultures with Carissa and each other which will be amazing. It’s going to be so awesome meeting heaps of new people.

What’s been happening

Since my last blog , New Plymouth Surfriders ran the 6th event of the 2019 Super 8 series at Fitzroy Beach. The event was held in some challenging conditions. It was pretty solid and onshore winds and we had to run down the beach to paddle out because the drift was so strong. It was also pouring down with rain at some points. At the event, as well as competing, I also judged heats for the majority of the day. At the end of the day I was happy to come away with a semi-final place in the U18 mixed division as well as 1st in the Open Women’s.

Just the other week Taranaki had their sports award night it was super nice to see my family and I all dressed up for once lol. The night was really fun surrounded by all my surfing friends and even though I didn’t get an award I was grateful for just getting a nomination to be there. I would just like to thank Surfing Taranaki and New Plymouth Surfriders for the nominations and to Sport Taranaki for putting on a really nice night.

Something really cool that’s just started happening is the Coral Gardeners. They believe raising awareness is key to building a better future for our oceans. They are telling the story of the reef worldwide through conferences, school lectures, ecotours and social media.

They really want everyone on this planet to know how important coral reefs are. They have scientists that are monitoring the growth of the corals they plant and improving our reef restoration methods and knowledge. Their first step is to collect broken pieces of corals, then put them on bamboo stems. They leave them for one month on their nursery tables before planting them back on the reef. That’s the most efficient way for them to bring new life to the reef. This is really cool because I don’t think everyone knows how much reefs actually contribute to our earth and there are so many species of wildlife that live in our reefs.