Kiwi School

Ok wow. I know it has been way too long. It takes a long time to type up one of these blogs and for those of you who don’t know me so well, I procrastinate… pretty badly. I always say, “Today! I will write a blog!” and as you can see by looking at it, something else came up. For example; I decided to not watch TV tonight so that I would come into my room and sit on my bed and write one. (looking back, it's taking me a week to write this ;))

School began the 25^th for us. I am at The Terrace School in Alexandra, New Zealand. I am in the Early Entry level (similar to Kindergarten) with Mrs. Anderson! It is a beautiful outdoor corridor school. I will take some pictures and post sometime I have a few. A few of them are for my mum because there are lilac bushes everywhere! And they remind me of her :)! Here is a picture of me in front of the school sign. I will take more of the outside and inside too. 

It was really cool the way that the school welcomed us at the primary school. There was a Maori welcome ceremony!! Really cool! (hopefully I can figure out how to upload the video below. The school all went into their new Hall (we would call it a gym) and waited. The Maori dance class sang a Maori song and we were called into the gym from where we were waiting with Mr. Murphy’s and his senior 7/8-year class into the Hall. He was the one that would speak on our behalf, as it is not customary for women to speak at such gatherings. Then our principal Gary Anderson gave his Mihi (or ‘about me’ type of welcoming speech) and so did Mr. Murphy; he introduced us. We then gave forth an American flag as a gift to the school. Once again females are not permitted to speak and one of the senior boys set the flag halfway between us and the school and anther boy picked it up. I wish I could remember what the Maori word was for what we did next. We walked around to the group with the senior boys, the girl who welcomed us, and Gary and other leaders in the school. We shook hands with one hand and grasped their arms with our other and then you put your noses together and symbolically share a breath. It is a symbol of peace to share a breath with another person or people group. It is considered rude to not partake in this welcome. They raised our flag next to theirs. There are two shorter flag poles and a taller one in the middle. Our American flag and the New Zealand flag are on the shorter poles as they say two countries at peace should not be raised to different levels. So, naturally the ALL BLACKS Rugby flag took the taller pole! :) Here's a picture. 

It was a really neat experience to be a part of. The culture here is really beginning to embrace the Maori people and traditions. I am told that the relationship between the explorers and the native Maori people was similar to the one between our own explorers and native people group, but on a much lesser scale. There was much less destruction and they treat each other (generally speaking, but as always, there are exceptions) with much more respect than we treat our own. It is really really cool. Mrs. Anderson, my co-operating teacher, uses many Maori phrases in her classroom. Some are instructions like stand up, get into a circle, or she uses colors, she greets them and dismisses them in Maori, and also many songs are in Maori. We are learning to sing Silent Night in Maori! It's so beautiful. Maori is a beautiful language! VERY hard to read, the pronunciations are NOTHING like you would think. 

Besides that I have been picking up some reading groups, I currently have four, maths groups (yep it's maths, not math) I have two of those. I also lead a large group once a day for handwriting. Today I began to lead the morning session as well. Ann Pierce, our Iowa State Supervisor, has come and just left this morning. It was a good visit! She said things were going well and I am progressing normally, so that was good to hear. It is good. Next week is Maori week so we will be learning a lot about Maori and I am really excited to learn more about them. 

Last week was a good/crazy week for me. Ellen's teacher Ann Condor invited us over for dinner on Tuesday night. She roasted us lamb! It was soooo good! We ate really well for the first time in a long time and it was deeelicous! The next night was the night that Ann Pierce came into town and picked us up for a delicious dinner in the neighboring town of Clyde. It was really good!! The very next night, we took our teachers out to a nicer dinner at Monteiths. And it was SO good! We ate so well this week. And it was really fun to hang out with our teachers and talk and get to know them outside of school, and it was a really cool thing that Iowa State did for our teachers. Not only are they taking on student teachers, but we are student teachers who don't know the curriculum, nor how a normal day is run. Then on Friday, Ann offered to take us out AGAIN! So nice of her! I think I gained 5 pounds haha! We made her a homemade dinner on Monday to thank her and it was really fun. She brought us a few groceries and we played dominos afterwards. It was a good way to end the visit!

Speaking of differences, I will tackle a little bit of the differences. It is hard to put into words but I will try. It is a year round school and I am here for the full final term. The children here start when they turn five. So I started the term with 20 children and I now have 25 and one more starting on Tuesday. It was really weird to think about, but I do like it. They stay in the Early Entry classroom until Mrs. Anderson thinks they are ready to proceed to year 1-2 classroom. She said that it was usually about two terms. It was an adjustment, because Mrs. Anderson and I are constantly re-teaching routines. I was doing that in my special eduction inclusion preschool too, but it's a bit different because it will be this way always. I don't mind it at all, and I think it is actually really cool. So they start when they turn five, adjust to the school setting and learn some reading, maths, handwriting, and many life topics and when they are ready they are sent on! It is good because there are older role models there that assist the few children that are new at a time. There is never a whole class of 30 starting at the same time. The class may get that big, but it is gradual. Then the grades 1&2, 3&4, 5&6, 7&8 are in the same rooms taught by the same teacher. So when they move on from early entry, they stay in that room for two years and you kind of have the same situation. The older children coach and set the example for the newcomers. I haven't experienced it but the other girls say that it is really awesome. This way you can teach them to their individual needs even more so than at home. I have around 14 reading groups in my class! It is crazy awesome how individualized it is here. It is a lot of work and thinking but just think of how much more meaningful the learning is to the children. It's really cool.

Well that is about it for the update about school! I will upload the video of the Maori welcome when I find my flip :P I think I know where it is, but I have to go look for it! Shoot me any questions that you may have and I will try to answer them! The next posts will be about our beautiful Doubtful Sound trip and our most recent trip to Queenstown which was suuppper fun! :D  Miss and love you alllll!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please send me love!!

Information and Picture Overload. Please allow a long time to read ;)

WARNING: Towards the end of this post the pictures get all out of order. I apologize, but after working on this for nearly two hours. I'm finished.. SOO Happy times working out the puzzle. Just think of it as a challenge to figure out what goes where!!!

Ok, here’s another information dump. I hope you have your soda and popcorn ready, cuz it’s a LONG one. J Cheers.

After we stayed the night in Ashburton, we headed out for Christchurch, the epicenter of the disastrous earthquake of the past Spring and Fall.

Stop 8: Christchurch. Been traveling for 1 hour. Will stay the night. We found a place in a hotel (all of the hostels were packed out already because they lost 1500 beds in the quake). We found a brochure for something called the Adrenaline Forest: a six-tier intensive ropes course! We looked at the clock and had to be there in the next 30 minutes if we wanted to do it.

Stop 9: Adrenaline Forest. Traveled 20 minutes. Stayed for 3 hours. We jumped back in the car and headed out to the forest. We mocked the brochure for claiming to be physically and emotionally demanding. Oh boy, were we wrong! The first five levels were not so bad but by the time we got to the sixth one (the ‘MAX adrenaline’ tier), we were already feeling fatigued, I forgot how it uses muscles that we never use. Right off the bat, my muscles were shaking and I’m staring at a very high (some 20 ft) very long (some 15 ft.) rope swing jump to a rope spider-web thing. (picture to illustrate below). I had to click into the rope and leap across this space and grab onto the rope web. The most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. It was at the beginning of the 20-obstacle max adrenaline tier. As you can imagine when my feet hit solid ground I was more than elated! J We repented for mocking the brochure for claiming to be physically and emotionally challenging, for it indeed was truthful.

--See a few of the billions of pictures and videos that we took!

This is the one that we had to leap to. It's hard to see. Maybe I can upload some videos..

Stop 10: Beach in Christchurch. Traveled for 5 minutes. Stayed for 10-15 minutes. This stop was right down the street from the forest and we decided to pop on over and see the ocean for the first time since landing. It had just started to sprinkle and the beach was a bit dreary. There was efforts to help the beach re-grow its vegetation that was destroyed in earthquake. We took a few individual and group photos and headed back into town.

Stop 11: Mall in Christchurch. Traveled for 20 minutes. Stayed for a few hours. We then went to tidy up and then to the mall and had dinner and drinks at a local pub and retired for the evening. There were several pictures when we went home from being wired from the days events.

The next morning we got ready for yet another road trip and left the hotel. We drove a few blocks to the downtown area and got out to look at the destruction from the earthquake. It was really humbling and eye opening. You could look into one of the buildings that looked decent on the outside and see total destruction on the inside. It’s a really eerie thought to look into a building and see exactly how it was left that day. It hasn’t been touched. There are signs of re-growth and renovation everywhere. It was really heartbreaking though, to see so much of the gorgeous city stripped away like that and the lives taken with it.

Stop 12: Scenic lookout outside of Christchurch. Traveling for 20 minutes or so. Stayed for a few minutes.After we piled back into the van, I found a little tunnel road to the opposite side of the mountain. It was so beautiful on the other side. Not as much destruction from the earthquake and there were little marinas and boats everywhere in the bay. The water against the beautiful mountain backdrops were simply stunning. Here are a few pictures from the stop! If you can’t tell, I love messing with the colors of my photos!

Stop 13: Suburb of Christchurch. Traveling for another half hour. Stopped for lunch. We stopped on our way back over the mountain back to the highway in a small town for lunch. We ate at a pub (delish burgers!) and stopped at a small garden behind a chocolatier in town. The small garden was laden with beautiful colors and interesting artwork and vintage pieces. We were shortly on our way to our final destination: Dunedin.

Stop 14: Timaru. Traveling for 3 hours. Stay for about an hour. We pull off the highway at this very cute coastal town. Reminded me of a very small version of Seattle, mainly the Fisherman’s Warf area. Except for on a much smaller scale.. haha so I guess it’s very different. Maybe it was the ambience that reminded me of it. Anyway. We stopped and walked down to the beach and found a wonderful garden and strange exercise equipment there as well. We took lots more ‘jumpy’ pictures on the beach that looked like there was a bit of oil on it. There was a port or something next to it that may have had an oil leak.

Stop 15: Oamaru. Traveling for another hour or so. Stopped for maybe an hour? We were planning to stay the night here but there was not really anything going on and the town had a bit of a stench. We tried to look for penquins in the reservoir for penguins but alas, there were none. The people (we think) were all gone for the rugby world cup that was to happen the next night. We made a group instant decision to continue onward and hope to find a hostel in Dunedin as many hotels and hostels’ offices close at 9 and we weren’t going to make it.

Stop 16: MOERAKI BOULDERS. Traveling for maybe an hour. Stayed for an hour! This was a veryyy fun stop! These boulders were really interesting! I still haven’t looked it up as to why they are that way. I think I read something about something being fossilized and they formed round rocks around them …. I just think that God likes to create something so simple as a perfectly round boulder and say, “Ha humans! Figure this one out!!” And He laughs while we try to act like we know everything. It’s amazing to me! They were really neat. And the beach around it was mostly shells, I got quite a few of them to bring home. They are especially neat because they have many different colors in them! So neat!

Stop 17: Dunedin!!! Traveling for another hour or so. Stayed for two days! Dunedin has been one of our favorite places so far. Ellen has a family friend that is attending the college in Dunedin, and his flat had an open room that they offered us to stay in. When we rolled into town on Saturday night, we stayed in an actual Backpackers hostel for the first time and stayed in a ‘dorm’ room that had four bunk beds in it, and you wouldn’t know who other random people were going to be in there. Turns out a guy named Pedro from Brazil that had been living in NZ now for a few years was in our room. He was in Dunedin playing soccer. We changed clothes and headed out to the famous Octagon for some good night life! The Octagon is like a town square, but has eight sides instead of four.. duh J.

Stop 17: Dunedin!!! Traveling for another hour or so. Stayed for two days! Dunedin has been one of our favorite places so far. Ellen has a family friend that is attending the college in Dunedin, and his flat had an open room that they offered us to stay in. When we rolled into town on Saturday night, we stayed in an actual Backpackers hostel for the first time and stayed in a ‘dorm’ room that had four bunk beds in it, and you wouldn’t know who other random people were going to be in there. Turns out a guy named Pedro from Brazil that had been living in NZ now for a few years was in our room. He was in Dunedin playing soccer. We changed clothes and headed out to the famous Octagon for some good night life! The Octagon is like a town square, but has eight sides instead of four.. duh J

Stop 18: Brett Rousaur and friend’s flat/still Dunedin. Traveled 5 minutes across town. Stayed the other day there. This upcoming day is to this date the best day so far! After the hostel we went to dinner to get some pizza and met Ellen’s friend Brett, whose place we were crashing. We hung out for some of the day, rested up, went to the Warehouse (like Walmart) and got a black dress for the up coming ALL BLACKS game, and went back to the flat to get read. There were four people living in the flat and four people living in the one behind it. These lovely people and many of their friends were just sitting outside enjoying the nice sunny day! Some kicked around a ball, some were eating ice cream, some enjoying a drink, and some were making daisy crowns from the Daisy bushes. I thought to myself that this was the atmosphere that I always wanted in college, so I was happy to sit in a day! J After hanging a while, we got ready for the Rugby Game, and headed to the Baaaa (a local pub!) to watch the game.

Stop 19: WORLD CUP RUBGY MATCH!!!!!!!! Traveled for a few minutes to walk down the street. Stayed for a while. This was the most exciting part of our small trip for me. The entire city was electric! Everyone was buzzing with excitement about the game! Would the All Blacks break the 24-year drought without a World Cup Trophy? Even though I didn’t know the rules, I had it enough figured out when something good vs. bad was happening. We watched the WINNING game in the pub and then headed downtown to celebrate with the KIWIS. For all you Iowans out there, I relate it to ISU beating IOWA on State turf after a big upset (like this year! Go STATE) but times 100!!!!! It was amazing. The sheer joy of these people. There was not a frown in town :P. Anyway.. It was pretty awesome to be in New Zealand when this took place. I haven’t even been alive for as long as some people have been waiting for this moment! It was a proud one and many of the teachers in my school went to the game and had pictures. I took pictures of the TV, so that is what you will see here. The match was in Auckland, the North Island, and we were in Dunedin, the South Island! Omigosh! I forgot to say that the Haka, or challenge, from the AB’s to the French was pretty cool to see in person. I’ve only ever seen it in movies or not live. So seeing it in almost flesh was really neat! I bet my dad would love to see it real live someday!

Stop 20: Alexandra. Traveled for 2 hours. Home! The next morning we thanked our lovely hosts and set out for home. By the time we got home we were exhausted from our 20 STOP TRIP. Phew. It was a long one in which over 2000 pictures were taken. Now you see why it took me so long to put this together! So much to choose from and a three page (four or five if you count the last one) blog update not counting the pictures! Jeepers! We just sat and relaxed and geared up for starting school the next day!

I hope you enjoyed this long and detailed blog post! The next one will cover school activities and how teaching in a new country has been going. We were greeted with a beautiful Maori welcome (the indigenous people group here) and I have it on tape and will hopefully get it on here!

Hei Kona Ir

See you soon

Krystal