Student Impressions

Early morning training was pretty tough, slept through my alarm today but we got there. Training is very similar to NZ except they get much more recovery time. SMCHS is a school with amazing facilities- crazy gym, huge pool and a track (although feels like concrete). Bought a new pair of running shoes from the assistant coach's running shop (stoked got a discount), they are bright orange! Team BBQ was in typical American fashion. These billets are raising the benchmark for future billets! - H.Watt

Last few days spending time with my host family "The Hogans" has being amazing. They have being treating both me and Alistair like we are two of their own and have said "help yourself with any drink or food you want. Here's the fridge. Here's the Pantry and here is the remote." as you can imagine us kiwis took advantage of this and welcomed this quote with open arms! Though along with the food, spending time with them is amazing, although the kid is deep into study and doing 4hours homework a night which is a shame and absolutely crazy compared to what we get at Grammar. We have also had two early mornings with wake up call being 5.30am for some intense training sessions which was tough but very good - ran in the desert for an hour first day and today I did 3x1miles and 2x800m around there track. It's great to get a bit of speed in my leg - so good! Overall everything here is amazing! Though there was one downside which was last night I turned the tv on in my room unaware that when you use the remote the fire alarm gets triggered off because wiring is messed up so I turned tv on and the whole alarm went off repeating "carbon dioxide. Evacuate" waking up everyone in the house... Now I have learnt haha
-S.A.Meltzer

Matt Wallace and I were definitely in different cubicles.... My billet is awesome, we stayed up last night talking until about 11.45 playing Xbox and watching movies. Getting up at 5.30 two mornings in a row was a bit difficult, then having to run laps around there track in about 18 degrees Celsius, which doesn't sound massive but it's lots of heat for 6am.
-Guy Kilmister

Santa Margarita High School has been a 'change up' from Pasadena high (Will Batts you know what I am saying). It's really just a bit unfair what we do without in NZ (haha). Anyway, we had two early runs with SMHS which were good fun and also the quality of the guys in their running squad is awesome. They are both great athletes and great dudes.
- T. Batts

Santa Margarita high has been a really amazing place- their facilities are crazy. When we arrived to meet their squad the football team- California champions- were training which was cool to watch. My billet is really cool- everyone here is so accommodating.
-Hamish Kerr

Santa Margarita has been great with some good training sessions. The boys are really nice and the barbeque was fun; our haka was the best one so far! Although I'm not able to see my billet much (because he has exams), the homestay family have been really nice and I got to ride bikes and scooters with the homestay children (I felt like I was 8 again). I'm looking forward to the things we'll be doing today.
- S.Baek

Santa margarita has been my favourite school by far. Being able to see the sport teams practice in the amazing facilities was awesome...real eye opener. The school is like everything you would expect from a typical American school. (With cheerleaders) - Josh Ellis

Santa margarita has been absolutely great but getting up at 5am for two mornings in a row to go running in the sweltering desert is not the best... But the theme parks and the nice sunny beaches have been amazing. To top it off I was billeted with Paddy, Matt, James and Andy Xie with great hospitality. - Jake Pallister