LOVIN' SUMMER

Some students are getting creative with their spare time these holidays while others are having loads of fun, but there are a few who have the worry of paying bills and spend their holidays working hard. Daily Post reporter KRISTIN MACFARLANE finds out what Rotorua students get up to over the break.

Corey Herbert will mark his first day as a teenager the same way he's been celebrating the holidays - by going fishing.

Corey is a keen fisherman who one day wants to be just like Geoff Thomas and star in his own fishing television show.

He reckons he's got a few good fishing tips he could share with other anglers but says the No 1 rule is to never cheat in trout fishing, which means to never use bait.

Corey has been on holiday since December 20 and for most of that time has been spending the day fishing at the Utuhina Stream. While other kids his age take up the chance to sleep in on weekdays, Corey is often up and out of bed by 5am just to get out fishing - sometimes by himself, other times with friends.

"I want to get up early and go fishing."

He turns 13 today and although he says he's not too sure what he's going to do to celebrate "I'll definitely be going fishing".

He has his own fishing rod, reel, line, spinners and hooks and gets them out most days just because he loves it.

In the last few weeks, Corey has caught about 20 brown trout and rainbow trout including a 10-pound fish that he smoked so he could eat it.

"[It's] the biggest trout I've ever caught."

However, it's not his biggest fish - he caught a small shark off a boat in Nelson when he was about 6.

Over the Christmas holidays, Corey's had a few good feeds of trout. Although his favourite fish to eat is salmon, his favourite way to cook any fish is to smoke it.

"The legal ones I take home to eat," he said.

"Catching the fish [is the best] because it's an adrenaline [rush] trying not to lose them and it's hard."

Parents Melanie Craig and Kerry Herbert and his uncle Dean McLeod enjoy fishing too. Corey's first fishing experience was at the age of 2 with his mum at Nelson and since then, it's been hard to get him away from the activity.

While the main activity that has kept Corey busy during the holidays has been fishing, he says he's also done a bit of biking around Rotorua, playing with his siblings and catching up on sleep after an early day out on the water.



Tennielle Graham, 16, is another teenager who has kept busy since finishing school at Kawerau College on December 1. Her first two weeks out of school was spent practising with her former band The Jick, which scooped the top prize in the Pacifica Beats national finals last October, before performing at the Kawerau Christmas in the Park.

"That was really good because that was my last performance with them," Tennielle said.

Following that, Tennielle and her family headed for the Hawke's Bay to spend Christmas with her dad's family. There, she did loads of river swimming, sunbathing and shopping.

On top of this, Tennielle has been doing quite a lot of exercise during her holiday all thanks to her home gym. She does a mix of weightlifting and cardio work, which includes going for a walk or run every morning, pedalling hard on the exercycyle for 15 minutes a day, 50 sit ups a day and using the Bowflex Home Gym machine for 20 minutes every second day.

Tennielle looks after herself to stay fit, healthy, to feel good about her body and to tone up.

"I've just started working out to try and get fit again."

Now in Rotorua, where she is living and preparing for her move to Rotorua Lakes High School, Tennielle is hoping for fine weather so she can spend the rest of her holiday socialising with friends and family, swimming at beaches and pools and maybe at the lakes, sunbathing and just having a good break away from the stresses of school and exams.

When Tennielle starts at her new school, she hopes to start another school band.



Meanwhile, the summer holidays aren't just about leaving the stresses of studies behind for some students.

Gina McGreevy is a 23-year-old tertiary student who has just completed her second year of a Bachelor of Nursing degree at Rotorua's Waiariki Institute of Technology.

Having rent to pay and looking after her 2-year-old daughter Ayvaa means Gina's summer holidays aren't about relaxing.

While many students have the luxury of spending their holidays at the beach, shopping, socialising with friends or just having some time out alone, it's not the same for Gina, who has bills to pay.

Although she'd love to be doing all these things, she has responsibilities.

Instead of being outdoors whenever she wants, Gina spends her weekdays making coffee, serving food and cleaning tables - working hard as a waitress at Rotorua's Indigo Cafe in Hinemoa St for some extra holiday cash.

This is the first time she has worked during her summer holidays and admits it is making everyday living a lot easier. She is grateful to her employer for giving her work over the summer because it allows her to have some extra money to play with at the weekends.

"It makes it satisfying and it makes the weekends better because you've got extra cash."

She can now take Ayvaa out after a week at work and visit places like Rainbow Springs or take her shopping or out to lunch.

Without a holiday job, Gina says she'd spend all day at home with her daughter not doing anything because she wouldn't have any money and admits she'd be "more stressed out".

Instead, she works five days a week between 9am and 5pm while Ayvaa goes to day care, which Gina says works well.

"At least when I'm working it keeps [Ayvaa] in the routine, which I like."

Although working makes it a bit difficult to keep up to date with her studies, she says it would be a lot harder if if she stayed home with her daughter because she's always on the go.

When Gina starts back at Waiariki on January 22, she plans to continue working at Indigo Cafe one day a week for that extra bit of cash.