overdue update

Hello again,

I called home this morning, and was told that I should update this more often…

The past few days have been busy!! Each day has begun with visits to local “intermediate schools” (what they call middle schools here) and has ended with something fun and more “touristy” in the afternoons.

On Tuesday we visited Taradale Intermediate School and William Collenso College, what we would call a high school for year 7-12. Taradale is where I will be spending next week visiting, and seems like a really cool place. William Collenso has started a cool program this year that works on improving school for the Maori people, the indigenous people from New Zealand. (NZ, like so many other places, was a colony of the British, so now there are people here who are of Maori descent and people from European descent.) The woman we spoke to at William Collenso was very passionate about what she does to make school more equal for everyone. We also got to spend some time visiting the school’s garden, which the kids help plant and take care of. The students we talked with were very interested to know if we lived in Los Angeles or had met Michael Jackson (no and no)

In the afternoon we went on an amazing hike up Te Mata peak. The pictures I took don’t show how beautiful it is, everywhere you looked there was beautiful hills and farms and the ocean. The further you hiked, the more beautiful it was. We had dinner at a very cute restaurant named Pipi’s that was all pink and had great pizza.

On Wednesday we started the day with two schools again, this time Havelock North Intermediate School and Hastings Intermediate School. Every school here seems so different!! I have a notebook full of new ideas from each one! Havelock North has a new “technology” program, which is different than what we think of as technology. This program has classes in food, electronics, art, bio-tech (green technologies), and their own TV station. The projects the kids did were so cool!! Hastings was again very different. This school welcomed us with a powhiri, a traditional Maori welcoming. We did not see it coming, and many of us were brought to tears with this incredible ceremony. This school has a big focus on student leadership and has a virtues based curriculum. Also, very cool.

In the afternoon we rented bikes and toured the vineyards nearby. There are huge areas of grape and olive crops nestled in between farms full of sheep, horses and cows. The farms actually remind me a bit of Vermont.

In all it has been a great few days- tonight we go to a Maori Marae, and this weekend we go to Roturua before moving into our homestays at local teacher’s homes next week.

Wow- this was long. Hope it was interesting!