At the Wind Farm (Te Apiti)

At the wind farm I nearly got blown off my feet and my hair went crazy. These pictures will show how big the wind turbines were. Fifteen technicians were killed in the making. The wind turbines are nearly two times the size of the one at Greenbush! (G)
I also nearly got blown off my feet. And near the wind farm was a house that looks like a barn. (C)

Mermaids!

(Corin) These are my mermaids. One's on my wall. I think you can tell which one! The one with the blue background. And the others are dolls. Look very close, and see which one looks real... The one on my wall with the dolphin is called Merlea and my dolphin is called Shine.

Himitangi Beach

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My World (Corin)

Off with his head! says my hat.

Worrrrrrd.

Fun in school...

I'm locked in a cage!

I'm having fun, so don't worry about me.

Dear Everybody,

I would like you to know that New Zealand is a fun place and a warning to all of you: pants actually means underwear here! So don't say it in New Zealand. People will laugh. It's really fun and I'm having computer time and video time but there's only problem... we don't have a video player. It broke on our second day! So we can't watch movies, which is a bummer. We've been going to school and it's very fun. I just had my fourth day. I'm very excited for the next day. My teacher is Mrs. Tremaine. She is like a sweet peach on a peach tree. She is SO nice. I do all sorts of things in class. Mostly math and spelling. We get an hour of lunch and twenty minutes for morning tea at school. In morning tea is where you just have a little snack. On the lunch break we get to do recess. Griffin gets to play soccer and I get to play tag or hide and seek with my friends. My friends are named: Emily, Marama, and Selena. They're my friends because Emily was the first one to show me around, Selena I met, and Marama--Emily told me that she is her friend. Niners are when you get pieces of paper with numbers on it and you can spend that money on popcorn and candy for a movie but you can also spend it on other different things... You earn niners by being quiet, listening, or even doing a good deed. They're called niners because I'm in room 9! Griffin's in room 6. They call them "class dollars."

We got scooters and we scootered all around the place. We went to school on our scooters yesterday and today. Most of the kids went on their scooters. We put our scooters on the end of the deck then we go inside. One day, it was a holiday, for school, and our dad video taped us on our scooters. We can show you the video (right after this commercial...!).

I had my piano lesson today. It went very well. If you ask me. My teacher is named Chris. Chris has a very loud voice but sometimes he has it soft. I think there's a mute button on him somewhere. He is very nice. He helps me. I have piano IN THE MIDDLE OF SCHOOL! Chris comes and gets me before lunch and when the lunch bell rings, I end my session with him. Then I go and get my lunch that's in a room with my backpack, my boots and my jacket. What's weird about school is that they sell lollies at school. Isn't that WEIRD? I hope you enjoy the school year. I will be back in the middle of school for you guys of course. Not for me. I'll be ending school, but then I'll come back and end school again!

Griffin has an amazing knack for sports. Sometimes I go and watch him. Well, I only did that once. But still, I go and watch him. He is very good. He plays goalie and defender. I've seen his team. They go WELL together! Griffin he is AWESOME.

We picked lemons off of our lemon tree. We squeezed and made lemonade. And we have a neighbor and our lemon tree grows over onto our neighbors' and they get lots of sunlight and their lemons are quite good although we haven't had any, but they look very good.  We have seen them, Griffin and I. We stood on a very old stump and Griffin almost slipped but we stayed on. And we looked at how good our neighbors' lemons were. Well, they're really ours... but still, the lemons were good.

I've had gymnastics. I just did my second with team, and my third time being to the gym. I did one of my gym days with the bigger girls. They were like well, here they call them Steps, but we call them Levels. They were on like Step 4 or 5.

school

This is Griffin my school here is a multiple room school and the rooms are not joined. I am liking the fact that school starts at 9a.m. and ends at 3p.m. I have met lots of new people and having  a great time. One of the greatest things about the school is that it has its own artificial soccer turf. I get to play it every day at our one hour lunch (my first day it felt like forever!) and I usually play for goalie because I've been making some really good saves. Earlier today I made a really cool save, but to make that save I had to slide and get kicked. I have been getting kicked in some painful spots, on accident of course, occasionally.

My teacher is named Mr. Bell so I don't even need to remember different initials! Well, I can already tell you that fifth grade is fun and hard. I have to do math problems which are like literal mess-with-your-brain. Well, actually it's sort of easy because we do a lot of fun activities rather than hard activities. Making cards because Mr. Bell wanted us to and plus we got paid class dollars. For a hundred class dollars you can change your seat in the room--you can pick your seat. And the Year 6s have a big auction where you can buy stuff using class dollars. Sort of like in 3rd grade. I'm a Year 6. The way they work their system for elementary is by years. Kindergarten is called Year 1. First grade year 2, and so forth, up to 5th grade.

I've made friends with my whole class. Everyone thinks that it's intriguing that I'm not from New Zealand and they find my accent sort of odd. My class is a bit odd. One of the things that I don't like that they do is occasionally tackle each other during morning tea. Like actually wrestling with each other. How they get away with this is they get twenty minutes for a snack and the teacher leaves the room for that, so they get away with tackling each other.

Oh yeah, I got a new guitar. It's really nice. It's all metal strings, it's got a hard case, my guitar teacher teaches me in school time so I'm happy!

In New Zealand

Griffin: In New Zealand. Having a great time with my little sister. And I don't want to go to school on Monday!

Cherry Mash good! (G)

On the plane having an awesome ride to New Zealand. (C)

Bunny ears... (G)

A HUGE plane! (C)

Big plane. New Zealand. (G)

Our house. (G)

I love kitty. (C)

Grandad and Granny's house. (G)

Fun in gymnastics! (C)

Corin: Having a fun time in New Zealand though it's not so great when school starts. But... we get smoothies! At school of course. This is an awesome place to go to.