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Home  Community Alumni and Reunions
Ashleigh-Rose Keating Alumni 2008
 My name is Ashleigh-Rose Keating and I was a student at Kristin from 2005 to 2008. Before Kristin, I went to a school that I didn’t enjoy. It didn’t embrace me as a student or an individual and it wasn’t until I decided to change my school environment that I was able to see ahead. Kristin not only embraced me but offered me so many opportunities that would determine where I would want to go and who I would want to be in the future.
Now here I am, living in Spain for six months, learning the language and living the life of a senorita! I started out as an ‘exchange student’ but due to the conditions I was under I once again chose to take things into my own hands and alter my schooling conditions. I am now studying Fashion at Barreira, Escuela De Diseno, the most exclusive design school in Valencia where I am doing what I love and making the most out of my experience.
The moral of this article is that Kristin is a very special place to be, whether you believe so or not. It may cover those of you who have not experienced schooling conditions less fortunate with some cotton wool, but know that this will rub off as you grow and learn. Regardless of when and where this cotton wool of protection, care, love and a little bit of luxury will rub off, it will be a place and time that will flood appreciation and pride over you to know that you were a Kristin student.
So I thought I would share with you an email I initially shared with my close friends and family. I have found that the cotton wool has definitely rubbed off me from this experience, revealing the person that Kristin helped shape me into.
30 January
So I thought since I have now had a decent three weeks at school I would describe exactly what I am getting on the bus for in the freezing cold most mornings...
Imagine walking up to rusty steel gates and having to press a button for the office to let you in. Then, once you get in, you look around and there is not a green speck in sight. Everything looks dead and cold. You are very nervous now. The teachers in the office seem nice. They lead you to your first class of the day where the students are already seated and learning. The Dean interrupts the class while you are waiting outside the door with Carlos, my Spanish brother and the Student Travel Services (STS) coordinator. All the students are peering out the door to get a glimpse of you. You walk in and all you see are mullets and mohawks, black nail polish and piercings. The three girls at the front (who are repeating Form 6) will be your escorts for the day. You quietly hope they won’t be your only ‘friends’ for the next six months.
You follow the girls into each concrete, cold, sterile class with no colour but chipped cream paint, hoping the day would get better. For break time you join a mob of people waiting to be let out of the gates so you can watch your ‘friends’ have a few cigarettes. You don’t really understand everything the girls are trying to tell you until you find yourself walking away from the school and not towards the classrooms where you should be heading. Then
you find yourself sitting in a cafe with seven others having a coke while watching them smoke and basically wagging the afternoon. Yes, you were caught when you walked back to the busses. The Dean had noticed you weren’t in the afternoon classes you should have been in. Luckily, since you know very little Spanish, you had no idea of what was going on; therefore it wasn’t your fault. Welcome to my first day of school!
2 February
Today, while I was standing outside the gates with a couple of girls (dare I say friends), a flash BMW screeched to a halt and a man strode out of his car towards a respectable-looking boy who was hanging with his mates where they always do. The man didn’t slow down. He glared at me, stretched out his hands like headlights and bulldozed the boy into the side of the brick building. While growling in a low tone, the boy managed to reason with him until he let go of his fist grip to head our way. Great, I thought – that glance was a sign for me to run and I hadn’t. I looked at the girls’ faces to give me some sort of indication as to how I should be feeling, whether it be worried, concerned or terrified but, instead, I read a state of tranquillity as they continued to suck their lives away. I then assumed that when this happens it’s not an excuse to form a circle around them and chant “fight, fight!” but dismiss it as if it were an everyday event and avoid eye contact at all costs. So when I took my next glance to see if he had detoured around us, to my absolute delight he was standing right next to me as he pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and had a chat to one of the girls I was tagging along with. Hmmm, think I’m in the wrong crowd? Perhaps. But...
3 February
A pretty cool thing happened during break today. I was sitting with some of the girls while they had their ciggies and we were talking about New Zealand and travelling. I told them a bit about New Zealand, why I was in Spain and where I was going afterwards. It was like I was stuck in the scene of a movie, as one of the girls had a puff then looked at me and said “Tienes una vida bonita”, meaning “you have a beautiful life”. It was insane. I looked at them then thought about what she said and realised how lucky I really am. They went on to say how they don’t have the money to go anywhere and all of a sudden I felt privileged to be able to see and be involved in the lives of people who don’t have as much I do. It was a cool moment. Now, I really want to try and embrace this lifestyle (keeping my morals, of course) for this short amount of time. Some of the girls have so much potential, so I want to try and feed them some inspiration to maybe do what I’m doing in the future.
So I am starting to look at this school in a different light. The kids are good kids, they just have bad habits. And I’m sorry ma and pa but I don’t think even the purest of girls could have lived in Spain without trying a cigarette for the first time. But you will be pleased to know it was as disgusting as it looks. I did the typical blonde Sandra Dee, inhaled and coughed a few times, to my embarrassment. I felt like I had four Rizos around me as they laughed and continued to puff like pros!
So, back to the present. I think the cotton wool of Kristin has slowly rubbed its way off and I’m back down to my Mahu roots.
The atmosphere is definitely different from the warm, luxurious common room of Kristin, filled with couches and bean bags and equipped with its own kitchen.
So, thus far, I have been facing two opposite ends of the scale – most days waking up in a lovely, comfy, warm Spanish home, only to say “buenos dias” to a cold, concrete building from 8.30am to 2.30pm, five days a week. It’s a little difficult to find a genuine smile to stride me through the gates of the school every day, but what gets me through is treating it as an experience and to embrace it and learn from it. A lot of these kids know nothing outside of their homes, their school and the city. It makes me realise how spoilt we are in New Zealand. Kiwiland’s a rad country. Although you have to get out of it to travel, it’s not until you have seen the rest of the world that you see it for what it really is – paradise.
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