Welcome or welcome back to my blog!
Yesterday the year 7 & 8 extension crew along with a few other selected students, Mr J, Rima, (Nadia's brother) and Miss West, went to KPMG! We left school at around 9 AM and came back at around 2:15 PM.
This blog post is a recount/summary of what we did during the time we spend at KPMG. But first, if you don't know what KPMG is, 'KPMG is a global organization of independent professional services firms providing Audit, Tax and Advisory services. We operate in 146 countries and territories and in FY20 had close to 227,000 people working in member firms around the world'.
An amount of the year 8's have already been to KPMG once before but for the majority of us, we haven't been. Once we walked into the KPMG building, everything looked so proper and fancy you could say.
Once we went inside the little 'hangout' room we'd be staying in for pretty much the whole day, the people working at KPMG that would be staying with us throughout the day, introduced themselves and told us what department they work in.
From what I can remember, there was John, Jack, Christine, and Justine. There was also another man but I don't know how to spell his name. If I'm correct, his name is from the Indian culture.
Oh and also, there was this long comfy couch. Justine said that if there was no more space on the couch, you'd have to sit on the carpet. I was able to sit on the couch.
After the small introduction from them, we were told to split into four groups of eight, (I think). My group was Simon, Nadia, Yolanda, Lily-May, Finau, Adriana, and Valessa. I don't think there was anybody else in our group though.
But anyways, once we were split into these groups, we were passed around paper little tag things that had one out of the four element's on it for each group. Fire, water, air, and I can't remember the last one, (excuse my sucky memory). It had something to do with earth? The ground? I'm not sure.
But anyways, we wrote our names on the tags and my group was fire. Once we wrote our names on the papers, we were given out these pins/badges we'd put the paper in for the workers at KPMG to know what our names were.
To summarise what happened next, we separated with the others in our groups to take a tour of the KPMG offices etc. We went with a guy named John. We said hello to the mail lady that took care of the mail that KPMG received and even got to take a look inside the kitchen! We were given a good insight of their techniques of cooking- a good speed yet delicate and the food looked fantastic.
This made us even more excited for morning tea which would take place after the 30 minute tour. During the tour, we took the elevator, some stairs, said hello to a few workers and spotted some of the other groups.
But once we finished taking a look at the different parts of the KPMG building, we went back into the little 'hangout' area where we were able to have morning tea! I forgot what we had for morning tea but I do remember there were fruits however I don't know the name of the other foods, oop-
After eating, Christine gave us a more detailed 'about me' about her. She goes to university at Pennsylvania in America! Apparently, (if I heard correctly), Joe Biden used to be a professor at her university! That's so cool-
Mr J asked her how she's a student at an university at America but works at New Zealand, she said that due to the coronavirius pandemic, she was brought back to New Zealand. However, she said she'd go back to America after around 2 months.
She explained how she was passionate about how we can help planet earth. She handed out these foots, (paper foots might I add, 'foots' sounds weird), and she said we had to write/draw how we were going to help the earth.
Once we finished that, (I don't even know if this is the correct order), a guy named Jack helped us make some experiments that we had to do with our team. We had to make a spinner that spins without us touching it.
This is what the other groups' experiments were:
Air: Put these acidic and alkaline substances, (liquids such as baking soda) to blow up a balloon. I don't think that was what their literal challenge was, but that's how they figured it out.
Water: Put these substances like vinegar and baking soda in the trays. Then put ice cubes in them to see which one would met the fastest.
Earth: They made oobleck! Oobleck is a substance that's solid once pressure is applied and a liquid when poured- how cool! There was this long word for that sort of thing but I forgot it; Oops.
After our experiments, we had lunch! Lunch was sliders, chicken tenders, spring rolls, some fruit and something else I think.
After that we marked the quiz we did, (I seriously forgot the order we did this stuff in), we had to mark another groups quiz and they got 2nd place while we got third. We did good but it didn't really matter who was first or last. The winning team however, received a little bag prize thing. I'm not sure what was inside but it looked really cool! Good job to them :)
Towards the end of the day, we made up our own planets on these paper sheets they gave us. My planet was called 'Fauna' which is a planet with only animals. Kauri came and checked out my planet while also showing me his one which was planet Toes.
Its Kauri we're talking about anyways so I wasn't that surprised. Miss West chose me to say the 'thank you' and this is what I said:
"On behalf of this group, I'd like to say thank you for this wonderful learning opportunity and an insight on what goes on here at KPMG. I hope we can come back in the future and have just as much fun, if not, even more.. Um yeah."
THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT I SAID-
I sounded so awkward but anyways, Nadia helped me with that because Miss West told me earlier just so I could plan what I was gonna say.
But sadly our time at KPMG came to an end as we said our goodbyes but they gave us these cups that had a milky way chocolate, (now that I think of it, I get it now. Like 'milky-way'? The galaxy? Y'know?), candy sticks, paper with things that either said 'telescope', 'earth', 'moon', 'star' or something else. But the best part was these mini aliens!
There was green ones, (basic green screen looking dudes), yellow ones, (lemonade) blue ones, (mega mind), and orange ones, (orange juice). But like their eyes were painted red and the paint wasn't all neat making it look like the alien's were crying blood-
Anyways, that's the end of the KPMG trip! I hope you enjoyed what I thought was going to be a short recount that turned into a long one. Adios amigo :)
