Adventures in teaching and treetops

---

So maybe you have been wondering "what are those folks up to in Kiwi-land lately?". Well now you can stop wondering and read on. I guess what has been consuming most of our time lately has been working. Charlotte has been working in a pre-school for a couple weeks straight. She will write some more details about that in future blog. I have now been teaching at Southern Cross Campus for 5 and a bit weeks.

The teaching has been pretty interesting, challenging and fun. Its neat to be teaching in a school with Pacifika students. The student population is probably 80-90% Islanders and I don't mean New Zealanders, I mean Tongans, Samoans, Cook Islanders and others. The cool part about this is that there is a big festival on right away and all the different cultural groups put on a bit of a show. Dancing and singing and things like that. Right now they have been practicing, I'm looking forward to seeing the final presentation. The teaching has been challenging at times because the cultures are so different. In canada I find that students respond to teachers because they are teachers. I find that I am really struggling to asert my authority here, and I have been told that they respect and follow a heirarchical system where the top really throw their weight around. That's not exactly natural for me, especially the first time meeting someone, so the first few days I was a bit soft and now I have a hard time managing the students. However I think I have learnt a few things and I will be a better teacher for handling students in the future. It has been real fun too! They have a house system (think Hogwarts from Harry Potter). They are all named after NZ trees, my house is Rimu, and our house color is pink. It has been fun during house competitions to see all the color and spirit.

Other than work, we've been trying to keep busy and having adventures in our last month here. Since my parents were here we have hosted some other guests. Christina and Kirby met up with us in Auckland, they came to stay for 4 nights and one of those nights we went to a Chemical Brothers concert. It was awesome!!! We've been planning on heading out of Auckland to some beaches or something the last two weekends but they have both been rainy and cool. However we did find something really cool to do close to Auckland. The place was called Tree-top Adventures and it was basically an obstacle course suspended in the trees. Basically you climb a ladder then clamp on to the wires (you have to wear a safety harness) then move in between trees along cables, bridges, swings, zip-lines and other obstacles. It was really a neat set up. There were some hilarious moments as we made their way through the course. Body checking trees, extreme wedgies, doing the splits unintentionally, etc.. Watching us all I really wish we had something similar in Canada, especially when I was a kid. I would've bugged Mom and Dad to take us all the time!! It was like Sherwood forest (Robin Hood) or the Ewok Village (Star Wars).

Anyway thats all for now stay tuned. Oh ya I am really missing home, glad to miss winter, but definitely missing everyone from home.

---

Comments

[Teresa]

Totally cool zip line - if I could survive the Black Water Rafting (!!!!)I'm sure I could have done the zip line!!!

[lisa]

canada adventures
They had stuff like this at Birch Bay.