What's happening

In just over a week, Josiah and the rest of the New Zealand Youth Climbing Team will be departing for Europe to attend the Climbing World Youth Championship in Valence, France. Josiah and I will be posting here to keep you updated on the trip. Posts are likely to be brief and scarce while Josiah is away as opportunities to write home will be infrequent (and perhaps unlikely to be taken full advantage of by a fourteen year old immersed in his first visit to the other side of the world). But Josiah will be keeping a journal as part of the one-and-a-half hours of school work the kids are required to do daily on the trip, and we intend to post some of that here as soon as he returns.

Josiah's preparations are well underway; he has been training hard, climbing, jogging and stretching. We have been familiarising ourselves such varied topics as hand luggage restrictions on international flights, drug tests at sporting events and the World Anti-Doping Agency prohibited list, European geography, the IFSC rules in force at the World Youth Championship, and the options available to a fourteen year old for carrying money to spend in a foreign country. Josiah and Tessa have had fun finding useful and not-at-all-useful phrases in a French phrase book. Useful: Je suis végétalien (I am vegan). Not useful: Veux-tu m'épouser? (Will you marry me?).

Josiah says:

I am feeling excited about the trip.

I am looking forward to competing, seeing really good climbers climb and experiencing the different holds, routes and walls. It will be cool training with the others in the team because I haven't climbed much with any of them except in the competitions.