Last Week of School!

This week was a very exciting one because it happens to be Dad’s Birthday Week!  I just want to remind him again how amazing I think he is!  I am so lucky to have the world’s greatest dad!

This was my last week of school!!!  I am done with my winter semester of classes! 

I'm going to miss our fun lunch breaks sitting out the grass outside the church building.  

But I won't miss the 45 minute walk to school every morning and home every afternoon.  We decided to try and save money and get a little work out by not taking the bus to school each day but it was definitely a long trek.

We have been studying social studies and science for the past six days.  It has definitely had more work that most of the other courses we have been taking.  One of the best parts about this week though has been the science experiments we get to do every day.  A few of my favorites are
- Making bishop paper airplanes

-Putting 6 sided metal nuts into balloons and swirling it around to hear the noise it makes
-Standing on upside down tables with balloons underneath to support us.

-Making chemical reactions while we try to make hokey pokey

-Making rockets
-Dissecting flowers and food
-Making explosive volcanoes

We also have had some amazing discussions in our social studies class about helping students become active participating citizens.  We learned about the story of a boy named Iqbal that was one of the most life changing stories I have ever heard.  To make a long story short there was a boy named Iqbal who was from Pakistan.  His family was very poor and had to sell him for the equivalent of $12 US dollars.  Iqbal was sent to a carpet factory where they bonded and force children to make weavings and carpets all day long.  The men would have children do this work because they have little hands.  They wanted to keep the kids as small as they could for  as long as they could so the kids were barely ever fed.  The children were literally chained to their work and were beaten if they made any mistakes in their weavings.  At the age of 10 Iqbal escaped this horrible place and began speaking out and rallying against child slavery.  How amazing this that a 10 or 11 year old boy leading protests.  Eventually he was even able to travel to the US to speak at meetings and schools about the seriousness of the issue of Child Slavery.   He touched the lives of many with his words and strong will to fight for this cause.  Eventually he had to leave the states and go back to his home land.  Many people asked him why he was going back to a place where he was now in great danger.  He was making the child labor industry unhappy with how much support he was gathering.  Iqbal’s reply was that he had to go back to finish the work that he started.  Soon after he returned home he was riding his bike near his house and he was shot to death.  At 12 years old this boy had done an amazing amount of good with his life, and then sacrificed his life for what he knew was right.  There were schools that rallied together to gather money to have enough to build eight schools in the middle east.  What an inspiration to get involved and realize that there is so much more we can do to help others around us.

Thursday night some boys from our YSA took a group of us out to see a place called Devonport which is a war dug out battle places from World War II.  The sight was built on a beautiful hill overlooking the ocean.  

There were giant cannons placed on top of the hills and secret dug outs and tunnel caves throughout the hill side.   It was amazing to think that this was set up and built so many years ago to help protect their nation and now I was walking through it all.  

We ended up climbing up one of the biggest cannons and going to the top of the hill side that over looked the major city part of Auckland!  It was such a beautiful night!

I have to show a picture of the transportation we had for the night.  It was this sweet yellow van that had curtains in each of the back windows, that we packed everyone into.  We were driving in style that night for sure!

On the way home from Devonport everyone was hungry so we stopped at a Wendy’s.  They have Wendy’s here ha, who knew!  The drive thru window was the craziest thing because you feel like you are going through completely backwards because the drivers seat is on the opposite side.  It was pretty fun!  But they don’t have the wonderful dollar menu like we do at home.  Here it is the $3 value menu.  Disappointing.
 Christine and I both got viruses on our computers last week and we each had to pay about $175 to get them fixed.  So we decided to save our money and not eat with everyone else.  But when we got home we realized that we were starved.  So we crept into the kitchen to not wake up Phyllis at mid night and brought ourselves a cereal snack to our room!  Such a great way to end a fun night!

Friday night was girls’ night out for dinner with Phyllis and Christine and a buffet called Valentines!  We had an assortment of every kind of food imaginable.  We spent an hour tasting everything there and really getting to know the dessert counter.  Phyllis really knows how to party with us!  It’s been really fun to spend dinner with her every night because even though she is reserved and not super open we have been able to get to know her and learn about her amazing life a little bit.  She really has accomplished so much.  She was a doctor, did a medical mission for her church for 12 years in India working at a leper colony, got married at age 52, and now is a school Chaplin at the local elementary school.  She said that she had an amazing job, a wonderful marriage, everything she ever wanted except for her own kids.

Saturday was an activity filled day.  We started in the afternoon with a few hours at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.  

There were three levels to explore.  The first was the cultural part.  We were able to watch a traditional Maori performance.  They used poi balls and did a Haka for us.  

There were also huge long canoes, carvings, and traditional homes.  The detail of the walls and art work was very impressive.

 I may have secretly loved one of the performers that we saw during the show :)  I had to get a picture with him.  He told me to try to make my eyes really big how the girls in the show were, so I did my best!

 The next level of the museum was all about the New Zealand land.  It talked about all the volcanoes around, the animals, bugs, and plants.The traditional kiwi bird was one of our favorite displays because of how much we had talked about them in class.  

There were also some animals that are now extinct that use to live on the island.  There was also a giant shell fossil.

  The top floor was the memorial for the wars that New Zealand has been a part of.  There was a hall dedicated to the names of the thousands of people that died throughout those wars.  It was interesting because on our way home some of the girls and I got to talk about the museum experience on the ride home.  This floor of war information was covered in tons of names of people who were fighting and died.  The WWI museum gave a pretty good description of the men that were used as the main combat weapon coming face to face as certain confrontations occurred.  War is such a horrendous thing and yet some how we think that the fighting will fix our problems.  In fact its hard for me to fathom that people were so mad towards each other and there were enough misunderstanding that would allow for all these terrible things to take place.  Even when we read in the Book of Mormon there are wars that wipe out entire nations.  It is amazing that people let anger lead to such violence.  Even in our lives when people let frustration lead to hurtful words and actions towards one another as if that is the best way to solve problems.  Any ways I'm not sure if these thoughts all make sense.  And through out this part of the museum I could not fully comprehend what these soldiers and nations during the times of intense war went through and suffered.  But my heart goes out to them and I hope that people throughout the world can learn from these devastating events from the past.

After, we went to the Kelly Tarleton exhibit to see the ocean animals.  At the beginning we got to watch the HUGE sting rays being fed.  I had never seen one this up close before.  The boy who was feeding him was telling us all about these sting rays.  He said that if you get bitten by one it feels like getting your hand slammed into a door.  But yet he was just right in the water with them. 

Then we got to go through this tunnel that shows you all the penguins they have there.  There is a place on the south tip of the South Island in New Zealand where people leave to go explore Antarctica.  

We watched a short film and walked through an exhibit that talked about Shackleton, one of the first groups to try to explore Antarctica. 

After that we walked through one of those clear tunnels that have the fish and sharks swimming over and around us.  

I'm still shocked at how big most fish are.  The only fish I really ever see in my life fit in small tanks in peoples homes.  But I have begun to understanding that there are a lot of BIG fish in the lakes and especially the oceans that I swim in.  I don't really like this realization that I am having.
 Then we had the opportunity to stand next to a skeleton of the jaw of one of the largest sharks ever found in the world.  Just its jaw towered over me.  This was not the most comforting thought either.

 This yellow guy was my favorite fish that I found here!  He almost looked fake!

 Then in one of the cages we got to see peronna fish that come from South Africa.  I could see their teeth when I looked up close

Today was too much to take in.  I really needed a week to truly explore all the things that we saw today.  But it was fun to be with all the girls and see important parts of New Zealand history and what its known for here.

For everyone who is reading my blog, specifically my grandmothers, I am flying out to the South Island Monday morning (Your Sunday morning) for a week and a half trip!  So I won't be posting on my blog for a little while!  But don't worry about me I'm being safe!  And Grandma Patti I'm still making my bed every day and keeping my room clean :)  LOVE YOU family!!!