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The New Zealand Connection

Some of you have sent me wonderful photos and stories about your schools, and your activities in learning about us. Here are just two, to give you an idea of what is happening in the Mongolia Street Connection around New Zealand.

Rangiora New Life School:
The year 8 students dressed up as street kids to experience life in Mongolia for an hour. They had to form a gang , choose a leader and guards for their hideout.

They spent the hour under the school deck area. During that time many feelings were discussed. They had a drink and some biscuits to eat which were 'stolen' from the staff fridge (part of the experience - we do not condone stealing - in fact some children did not want to go and get the milk incase they got caught by a staff member!)

Comments recorded:
This place is too cramped.
How can we live here?
Are there spiders?
My Hands are dirty.
I'm not eating anything under here!!
'Pass me the milk, this is great fun!'
'Can we sleep under here when we do the 40 hour famine, Mr. Ford?'

from Peter Ford.
Rangiora New Life

Auckland The biggest city in New Zealand Hawkes Bay Where we live, called the Fruit Bowl of NZ Wellington, Capital of New Zealand Southern Alps Mount Cook is part of these mountains. Mount Cook is the biggest mountain in New Zealand. There is a lot of snow on these mountain especially in the winter.

Where we live there is a place called Splash Planet. It has six hydro slides and a Lazy River where you sit in tubes and go around. We have a Gannets Colony which is the largest in the world.

The Hawkes Bay is known for its fruit and its wine. There are 23 vineyards in the Hawkes Bay. Many people work in vineyards and orchards. It is fruit picking season at the moment so we are eating lots of apples.

In New Zealand we have a lot of sheep. The sheep stink when they go past in the trucks on the way to the freezing works. There are over 60 million sheep in New Zealand.

The weather in New Zealand is quite nice. It can be very hot and very cold but not as cold as where you live. In the winter time it does not snow where we live but it snows on the mountains and down in the South Island. We get frost and hail though.

In the summer it can be really hot and we like to go the beaches. We like to swim and boogie board and surf. We have plenty of nice beaches here. We often go and have BBQ there.

From Darryl, Thomas and Daniel.
Flaxmere Primary School