When all is said and done

My life in good ol' Welly is now over. I'm gutted. It was such a sad parting, even though I have so much to look forward to. I'm in Christchurch right now, but so much has happened leading up to this point!

My last week of teaching went really well. The kids were great and we had lots of fun. I wanted to get the kids' perspectives on the US, so we dedicated one whole afternoon to having them write down their thoughts and then do skits about the US through their eyes. I'm pretty sure every group had "Supersize" somewhere in their skit.

We did some really good work with their business unit at the beginning of the week and we got to see what they think makes a business successful. And for most of the week, the kids were working on writing their short stories, so I didn't do a whole lot of teaching points during literacy. Math got cancelled two days, so we didn't get far with those guys, either. It's too bad!

Thursday afternoon, I gave the kids the same eval to fill out as I did my first class. The ones from this class were a lot nicer and I feel like I worked a lot on the things that my first class told me I needed to work on. I am realizing more and more, like Kathy Blomker said, that I need to give them an eval halfway through so that I know what I can improve for THOSE kids in THAT classroom.

Friday for lunch we had a "shared lunch". The kids were super adorable and they all brought something chocolately or something with chips. Yum. I made them PB&J sandwiches and made them all at least try one. Then this one girl said, "OOOOooo, that's why they say PB&J otter!" So we started singing the noodle dance song. I'm pretty sure when that cartoon came out I was like, 14, so that's kind of embarrassing, but ya know. When you gotta do the noodle dance, you gotta do the noodle dance.

Friday afternoon was "Raroa's Got Talent" so we just watched some of the kids do their talents. I was blown away. The acts were all so different.. I wouldn't have been able to choose a winner. BUT, the violinist got first place, so that was great! Then the talent show ended really early, so we headed back to the classroom, desperate for something to do. When I got back, the kids were all sitting in a circle with a spot for me and each person said their highlight of the term and then one comment for Ms. Cram. I definitely had to grab the kleenex. The kids were so cute and it made me feel so appreciated. One of my students painted a picture of me and that made me bawl. You can see it on my profile pic on Facebook. That girl is only 11 years old and she made that!! Incredible...

So the end to Friday was real sad. I gave each of the kids a class picture of all of us together and then wrote a message to each one of them on the back. I did that for the first class as well. I gave Phillipa a blown up picture of some pretty leaves we had seen the weekend before so that she could frame it (when we saw them, she said 'I would love to have a picture of that to frame and put on my wall'). I went for a drink in the staff lounge after school and then met up with Laura for a celebratory drink as well.

Friday night some of the girls we've gotten to know threw a little get together to say goodbye to us. That was really nice, but I went home early (had to prepare for my half!)

Saturday I went and volunteered for 6 hours handing out registration packs to people involved in the marathon on Sunday. It was great and was an awesome way to get me excited about the whole thing. Then I went home and made spaghetti in my microwave (we didn't have any gas in our house for about 2 weeks). I have to say, I was pretty skilled and it was delicious. Then I had to head to bed to get ready for Sunday!

Sunday, SUNDAY! (I say that like Al Roker on the Today Show) I woke up REAL early, I couldn't sleep anymore I was so nervous. Right before I left for the half, I found out that Adam, my ex, got engaged. Whoa, Mama! That's a pretty big deal. So congrats to him! I figured that when I went to run my half, I'd reflect on my trip here and by the end, I'd be to the end of my trip and cry because it was all over. Yeah.. I pretty much don't remember most of the run. So I videotaped parts. If you want to see, let me know. They're too cheesy to put on facebook. I do remember a plane landing a few hundred feet from where I was running, so it flew right overhead. I kept up with the 2:00 pacer until halfway, which I was pretty impressed with. Around mile 11, my knee finally had had enough and I limped pretty much until the finish line. I was almost there when I saw Pip fiddling around with her camera!!!!! She came to see me finish! It was sooo nice and gave me the energy I needed to get to the finish line. It was so wonderful. I didn't cry when I got to the end, I just felt really good. Finally! Something I'd wanted to do for SO long, DONE. And now I'm going to have to run another... when I can walk again!

Alright, I need to get out of bed and enjoy Christchurch. I'll write more soon!

Cha-cha now y'all

Today has been great! I'm kinda bored at school right now, but am too lazy to go outside. The kids are having a sports exchange day with the kids from another Intermediate school, so pretty much all day there have been all kinds of sports going on that the kids have been a part of. Right now is the rugby game, so my whole class is down there with the art teacher and then heading to art in a little while. I figured I'd use this time for planning, but Pip has disappeared somewhere and I kind of need her to help me! The kids are going to be on Tech next week, which means less planning for me! haha.

So that awesome lesson that I had planned for my kids unfortunately crashed and burned... partly because of the fire drill that happened and took away a good 10 minutes, but partly because the kids didn't know how to convert fractions to decimals. Not even 1/2. Yikes. So, tomorrow we're going to have to have a conference about all of that. Oh, brother.

My knees are still killing me. I'm starting to get really nervous. We'll see how my run goes tomorrow morning. My time is up now for my membership at City Fitness, so it's going to have to be a full out run outside in the morning since I'm leaving right after school to go to Palmerston North with Pip. I'm really looking forward to it! I have no idea what she has planned, but she told me to bring hiking shoes. I hope my knees can deal with that!

I'm trying to get a lot of my planning done before we leave for the weekend so that next week will go smoother, but I unfortunately just don't know where the kids are going. It's hard because it's the end of the term, so we have so much we want to get done.

So anyway, like I said our school had a guest intermediate school for a day of sports games. We dominated pretty much. It was nice because whenever the kids got done with their other activities, they got to go and watch the games. It was a good incentive for them to get things done. So after math, it was time for fitness, but Pip said I could let kids that want to go go, so there were only about 5 kids left afterwards. We did fitness stations for a while and then I put on jock jams for them to do it all, haha. All of a sudden I heard Cha Cha Slide and got into the groove and made all of the kids cha cha with me. It was hilarious! Then we did the Chicken Dance and Tequila (is that school appropriate?? haha). I had such a good time and started sweating like I normally do. One of the kids goes, "Oh my gosh.... you really ARE sweating!!" Whatdja think, kid?! Of COURSE I am!

After I while I went down to watch the rugby and realized that half the team is made up of boys from my room. WHOOHOO! We kicked butt. I chatted with some of the girls in my class while we were watching and they said, "Ms. Cram, when do you become a real teacher?" And I said, "Well, next Friday, at the end of the day, I'll be done with everything!" And one of the girls goes, "Let's have a shared lunch (potluck) for her to celebrate her being a real teacher!" How sweet! I love those kids.

Well, I have lots of planning to do for next week, so I'm going to get down to it. Night!

Taking a day off

Sometimes God grants women with lovely pain so that they get to miss school for a day. And in that day, they have an excuse to watch movies, cry hysterically, take pills like it's no one's business, do laundry, and EVEN get other things done that they've been meaning to get done for hmmm... 2 months! Today was one of those lovely days.

Last night I followed the NZ soccer game online and fell asleep right before they scored a goal to tie up the game. I heard that it was an awful game to watch, but then an incredible game to watch because of that goal. Whoohoo. I rolled out of bed around 930 and got some laundry done (since I only have one outfit to work out it and I've worked out so far every day this week and last week, my workout clothes were getting ripe. I've now figured out why no one would work out on a machine next to me at the gym. TMI?) I went and hung it up outside. I still can't get over how much I feel like my Gramma when I do that, and I LOVE it. It's like we're connected in some silly way. Except I don't let my skiddies hang out for all the neighbors to see like Gramma.

Then I watched a movie called Dorian Gray. It was one of the first novels that I remember reading and I saw it at the movie shop yesterday and just had to have it. I definitely wasn't disappointed. It even had Colin Firth in it with lots of facial hair... mmmm.

My new favorite lunch food is toast with avocado on top. MMMMmmmm. Luckily I could eat it. My host parents are getting their kitchen redone and we won't have gas back in the house until Saturday (and they disconnected it last Friday), so our meals are all microwaveable. Feels like my childhood, haha (love you, Mom!)

Then I proceeded to finally write to people that were due letters, gather together presents to send home (since there won't be room for them in my suitcases), and write checks that were WAY overdue (sorry Pilgrim Center!). I showered around 4 PM and carried it all down to the post shop. On my way, I picked up a Father's Day card for my dad. I had two choices in a tiny area labeled "UK Father's Day". One choice was a card that I suppose is supposed to be from a 5 year old that had all kinds of bright colors and huge writing and opened up into a huge poster thing. I figured it would probably give my dad a heart attack, so I settled for the "Miss you. A hug just isn't the same over the phone" or something equally cheesy. Ah, well. I still cried in the middle of the post shop when I personalized it. Go figure.

I returned home to an empty house, but a lot of work to get done for tomorrow. My maths group is now working on a mini business that they're going to put into action next week. This is what I LOVE about academia here... we do what we want and what we think is best for the kids at the level they're at! So, for these kids, who scored lowest on the pretest, we decided that real-life situations would be the best for them. SO, we thought the best idea would be to give them a real-life task: to throw a bake sale. BUT, we pulled in a lot of academia into it that for us seem so easy, but for them could be really complicated. The students are in groups of three where they have to choose a recipe, look up the cost of the ingredients at a supermarket in town, have to calculate how much they'll charge per bar depending on how much profit they want, including the fact (possibly) that part of the profit needs to go to Pip (since she's taking all of the money out of her pocket). The kids are all selling on the same day as well, so that'll be interesting. So I've spent the evening planning for tomorrow morning (I'm teaching the whole morning) getting ready to throw all KINDS of math at these kids (the biggest issue is that on the supermarket website, it gives all the measurements in grams whereas most recipes are in cups/tsp/tbsp etc).

Well, more planning needs to be done and then it'll be time for bed!

Funny how I write more about what I did on a day off than I do about things that are actually Kiwi. So I guess I'll include something more "Kiwi" like.

So yesterday I went to work out. I got to the train station about 20 minutes before a train was going to come. I was sitting there, too lazy and tired to take out my ipod or my book. I was piled in bags (workout bag, takeout bag, grocery bag, bookbag) and was taking up a decent amount of space on a bench. A guy came up, looking like he really wanted a place to sit. I squished all my stuff close to me and he said, "Cheers" (love it!) and sat down. I said to him, "Jeez.. with all this stuff, you'd think I'm moving or something." His response: "Are you American or Canadian?" So I guess I can't really hide it, can I? haha. We proceeded to talk and I think my favorite quote that he said was, "Yeah... I like America. I like the people there--all of the people I've interacted with have been incredibly nice." GO AMERICA!!! That was the first time I've EVER been abroad and heard someone say that. We chatted the whole way til my stop. I popped off the train and went to the video store to get some movies. The guy working there asked me if I was from America and I said I was and he said, "Oh, cool! My uncle lives in Connecticut and I've gone to see him a few times. It's nice." Two awesome interactions with Kiwis within half an hour of each other. THEN I stopped at the local dairy (what they call pretty much our equivalent to a gas station without the gas) to get some chocolate because, let's face it, who can watch a movie without some chocolate? The guy there and I had a nice chat about the miserable weather. It made me smile because everywhere I went, people were just so chipper and eager to chat. I LOVE that! :) Thanks, New Zealand, for making me feel SO at home!!

Tired.

Phew! The last few days have left me feeling incredibly exhausted. The weather is also so easily dragging me down. Yesterday morning on my run out the door to school, I ever so gracefully slipped on the tiniest patch of ice on my porch. I then proceeded to slide down the two stairs down to the pavement like I was on a sled.... sans sled. My knees (which have been killing for about a week now from doing too much too soon with my training) broke my fall on the cold and wet pavement. Lovely. How does that happen in June??? It was an incredible start to a pretty poopoo day at school as well.

It was my first day teaching the whole day... Pip was out sick and it was quite a struggle at times. I've found that one of my favorite reasons for having another adult in the classroom is so that I can have someone to laugh with about the stupid/silly things that kids do. And she wasn't there to laugh, so I had to just move on, haha.

I've spent the past few days planning my trip to the South Island. I'm SOOO excited! I'm going to be traveling with Kiwi Experience. I bought my flight to Christchurch last night and I'm getting pretty stoked! The return flight was only 100 NZD, which is about 80 USD. Sweet! The trip will be a bit expensive, but it'll be fun because most people that do it are younger and it'll be a great way to meet new people!

Over the weekend, I ran 11.2 miles on the elliptical trainer... that was a joy! That's the farthest I've ever "run" and although I guess I kind of cheated by not really running, my knees thanked me for it. Yesterday I RAN ran for the first time in about a week and that was not SO bad, but it kind of hurt since I fell on my knee earlier. Ah, well.. I cut it short so I wouldn't do any more harm.

I'm being incredibly reflective about the culture shock cycle that I learned about before I went to Mexico. I definitely went through a stage where everything was simply incredible, and then I went through a stage where I found out a few things about the schooling (as awesome as it is) that I didn't like, and I feel like now I'm approaching the acceptance stage. I'd say that if NZ wasn't so far from home or so expensive, I would definitely make the move here. People are great, the country is beautiful, and the schooling is pretty top notch. I'm finding myself getting to the regret stage. When I first came, I thought that I'd want to get involved with some volunteering. I looked into it, but with my training and all of that, I just didn't think I'd have enough time. Now I'm realizing that once I learned how to manage my time, I had all sorts of it and now it's been wasted. SO, the first thing I did this morning was sign up to volunteer to hand out registration packets for the half marathon next weekend. That'll be great!

Over the weekend, I went to a country western band concert with my host parents. Hilarious! It was absolutely freezing outside and rainy. It was pretty miserable. So I had like, 4 hot chocolates at lunch. The people that we went to lunch with were really friendly and we chatted a lot about our travels and that's always fun! Other than that, I just hung around the house over the weekend, recuperating (which hasn't seemed to do the trick since I still feel pretty crummy!)

My kids back home graduated from middle school. They're all grown up!!! I can't believe it... my first class, off to high school!

I'm still working on my journal entry about our incredible trip to the Rotorua, so that'll be coming. I thought I'd just write something since it's been so long! :) Off to work out!

Success never felt so gooooood!

So this past week of school just flew by and I felt that I should write a separate entry just about how fantastic things are going in my new classroom.

The amount of support I've been getting from Phillipa has been incredible. She gets a sub every once in a while for a block of the day so that she and I can just go and do some planning and get some things figured out. I LOVE that. I also love how much we laugh with our kids... they're so funny and they deserve appreciation for their awesome senses of humor!

So when I was in Katy's social studies methods course fall semester, we did this activity with M&Ms where they were actually money and we had to trade with other people in our class to see who could become richest. You got bonuses for three of a kinds as well. After each round, whoever was considered "upper class" (it was a certain number of M&M dollars that determined that) got to make up a rule for the next round. I thought that it was an incredible exercise and when we did it, I felt like everyone hated me by the end because I stole M&Ms from people. No one said I couldn't! And then when Celia and I won and tried to share our M&Ms with everyone, no one wanted to. It was kind of sad.

So anyway.... we are starting our financial literacy unit for math with the kids. Pip and I have the "lowest" group (they scored lowest on their assessment sheets). We assumed that these are the kids that have no interest in money and absolutely no interest in math. So I thought this would be a great way to get the ball rolling. However, I was kind of nervous because, even with all of the planning I did for it, I wasn't sure how it would go. I felt like there was enough confusion in our SS class with all college kids, I didn't know how these 11 and 12 year olds would do... the hours leading up to when I introduced this to the students (who, mind you, I had never met before because this was their first day in this class), I was almost shaking I was so nervous. I really didn't want it to fail.

The students came in and all sat down and we got attendance done. And then, out of nowhere, the kids got to meet the queen of M&M world (ME!) It was the best hour of my life! I really did feel like a queen (kids were actually bowing down to me... how's that for my ego?) The first round of the game was a little rough just because the kids had to fully understand what was required of them and all of that. They had to make sure they knew how to fill out the charts and understood the 3 of a kind deal. After that, though, we were on our way! The kids finished their first day SO excited (and since we have kids from the whole team, I heard them talking with their homerooms about the game and how much fun it was!) I was so proud to be a teacher in that moment, but knew that tomorrow, the kids would all hate me. Because that's when I turned on the wicked witch of the west....

The second day, I decided I should probably have some kind of way to get the kids' attention (and of course, my penalty for not complying was taking one of their M&Ms, mwahahaha). So, by the time I got to the end of "They melt in your mouth, not in your hand" the kids had to be completely quiet or I'd take an M&M. After a while, one of the students made the very good point that they WERE melting in his hand. The truth of the matter is that 1. Yeah, they do, haha. and 2. They were SMARTIES, a completely inferior type of M&M. No WONDER they were so upset! So anyway... after the 3rd round, the group that was the richest in the whole class got to make a rule. They decided to take an M&M from every group in the classroom. All HELL broke lose. The kids were SO mad and upset and "It's not fair"ing and it was funny to me, but they had real frustrations that I really wanted to link with real life!

We had a lot of really good conversations about real life and money and how it's distributed. The kids made some fantastic observations and I was just so impressed with their level of thinking. Today I think I'm going to just have them fill out a little reflection just to have on file so I remember just how powerful it was. Oh, AND 3 teachers have asked me for the lesson so that they can do it in the future! AWESOME!

For literacy, I've been doing some Sci Fi reading with some of the students (War of the Worlds, baby). We're going to start tearing it apart this week to see what makes up a Sci Fi story and hopefully the kids will come up with some awesome stories by the end of the week (if we get that far). Yesterday was the Queen's birthday, so we had a day off (which I'll write about in the next entry!), so we only have a four day week this week. Hip hip, hooray!

Today starts the first day of my last three weeks teaching. Where the heck did the time go? I got a gym membership (20 days for $20, awesome!), so I've been monitoring how fast I've been running (or should I say, how slow), so I've been kicking my butt trying to run faster (when I actually run... I was kind of slack this weekend). Although it's been a good boost for my morale because I've realized that I can run a lot faster than I thought, it's been KILLER on my knees. NO fun. Today I'm going to go buy some joint something or other Celia told me about. Yes!

Alright, I have to go buy all the kids M&Ms for all being guinea pigs in my little game...

The Incredible South Island

So as I was saying in the last post, Margaret was waiting for us outside the gate. It was raining out, so she went and got the car from us (a car sized minivan from some Finnish people they bought two weeks ago) and we all piled in. We headed to her home where she lives with her husband, Orm, and her son, David. David married a woman from Japan named Yuri and they have two boys, Mana (4) and Aki (2). They were SUPER adorable. We slept in what Margaret calls the "dormitory". It's actually their garage, but there are four beds set up in it because they often take in travelers in their home.

For dinner, we had make your own sushi, which was interesting. It was the first time I had ever had it, so it was an experience. The family was SUPER cute and we got to know them really fast. We spent a lot of time playing with the boys because they were so friendly and fun to hang around! My only embarrassment of the day was when we first got there, I saw the two kids with their long hair and cute little features, so I said, "Hi, girls!" And their dad goes, "Um... believe it or not, they're both boys." OOps!!! That evening I was still in a drunken stupor from the two dramamine I took on the ferry, so I went to bed really early.

The next morning, I woke up and read for a while (I actually read a whole book over the weekend... "A Thousand Splendid Suns" I'd recommend it!). We had some delicious breakfast (homemade granola which they call muesli) and then we were off for a day in Nelson! Margaret drove us there (2 hour drive) and we got to see some incredible sights. I took a TON of pictures, and luckily the rain more or less held off. We stopped on the way at this little country store where you could buy ice cream mixed with different fruits and the machine actually combined them.. so we got frozen yogurt w/ fruit flavors. Yum!

When we got to Nelson, we went to the visitor center and a gift shop and then just walked around the town for a bit. We found a place to have lunch and had fish and chips (my new favorite combo... with garlic mayo for the fries). Afterwards, we did a little more walking, then hopped in the car and went a beautifully huge beach. The sand stretched on forever toward the ocean... it was crazy!

Then we came back home and had some delicious dinner (ice cream included!) We relaxed for the night, did some reading, and got to bed early.

Sunday, Margaret let us borrow the car for the day (our first time driving in New Zealand!!) We just drove to a nearby town called Blenheim by way of some beautiful vineyards and then stopped at a park in Blenheim and read for about an hour and a half. Then we headed back towards Picton and visited Margaret at the shop that she volunteers at that is all fair trade items. It was really cool. We got some pizza for lunch (Chelsea about had a heart attack she was so excited). We chilled for a little while and then had to head to the ferry! The whole family came with us... it was so incredible. They saw us off at the ferry (David, Yuri, Mana, Aki, and Margaret) and I most definitely cried. It was so hard to leave such kind and loving people!

The ferry ride back we just took a bunch of dramamine and parked ourselves in the corner in some comfy chairs. Before we knew it, the whole Wellington Community Choir (like, 50 of them, I swear) made a huge as (Kiwi term), blocking us into the corner. Of course, because I'm so afraid of the dang ferry, I was panicking about not being able to get out if there was an emergency. Chelsea and I were getting SOOOO angry, haha. It was legit though. So after a few minutes, I was so tired that I just passed out on the floor and slept most of the way home. Annabel and Nisha were there to meet us when we got there and drove us home. It was so nice! I most definitely wasn't ready to teach again!...