Award-Winning writer Eleanor Adams (14), of Wanaka, has plenty of tales to tell but the best news of all yesterday was that her father, Quentin Adams, would be there.
Eleanor, a year 10 pupil at Mt Aspiring College, was presented with the Extra! Best of 2007 Award by the Otago Daily Times at a school assembly, in front of her beaming father, who was paying a fleeting visit from Kuwait.
He works there as chief aviation officer for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq.
Eleanor won $500 for herself and $500 for her school with her winning entry, This Is What We Call A Tragedy, in the recent Extra! short story competition.
Eleanor rarely spends time with her dad because of his job, which has taken him to many of the world's war-ravaged countries, including Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Iraq.
Mr Adams is back in New Zealand for a short break and drove over to Wanaka from Dunedin yesterday morning, arriving just in time for the 10.45am assembly.
The pair keep in touch with emails every few days but both said they did not see each other often enough.
They were clearly delighted to have each other's company and planned to spend the afternoon horse-riding. Mr Adams returns to Kuwait tomorrow.
Eleanor said the title for her fictional story was suggested by her friend, Zoe, and was also the title of a song she likes.
‘‘We had to write about a situation. It could be good or bad, so I wrote about one of my friends getting an asthma attack at a football game,'' Eleanor said.
Like most wordsmiths, Eleanor keeps diaries of observations and ideas, and always has a dictionary close to hand.
Eleanor remembers she began writing at school in Auckland, but Mr Adams said his daughter's passion for literature emerged when she was a preschooler.
‘‘It came right from a really early age and reading lots and lots of books. We used to go all over the place looking out for new books. It was like being a book factory,'' Mr Adams said.
‘‘My brother would be talking to me when I was reading and I wouldn't even know,'' Eleanor said.
She has enjoyed living in Wanaka for the past three years with her mother, Vanessa Adams, and older brother Oliver (18), a first-year Otago Polytechnic student.
She has joined Cardrona Alpine Resort's highperformance centre and is coached in ski racing by Adi Bernastoni. Last year, she won the Otago Daily Times Interfield Cup in the girls' K2 category, and for the past two summers she has been able to train and race in Switzerland.
This year, she was based at Berner Oberland, near Berne, and placed seventh of 300 competitors in one of her races.
‘‘I learned to ski in Bosnia [at the age of 7] because Dad was working there, so I lived there . . . I was there for 18 months. It was really cool. We got to meet lots of new people and learn about their culture and how they lived. They had markets with fresh fruit and vegetables, and bread that was baked that morning,'' Eleanor said.
The 1980 Sarajevo Winter Olympics had been held on the fields where she learned to ski, but the lifts and ski jump were still damaged from the war there in the early 1990s.
During the summers, no-one could go to the ski areas because of landmines, but the weight of the snow in winter meant it was safe to go skiing.
‘‘It was quite weird skiing downhill and seeing there was a five-star hotel and it had been bombed,'' Eleanor said.
She intends to keep writing whenever the mood strikes her - and that is often.
‘‘It just really depends. If I get a good idea I just write it down and start writing a short story. Sometimes I don't know where I get the motivation from. It just happens,'' she said.
