The Terrace School

Hello friends!

I thought I would take the time to 'show you around' my new school tonight. I absolutely love the layout of the Terrace School. Everything is very open and you are constantly outside. The classrooms are all separate buildings, it is so different, but I love it! The openness of the school is also nice because it allows all the kids to be outside at once. All 360 kids eat outside at the same time and have playtime, or recess, together.

 A couple pictures of my beautiful and colorful classroom!

 One the 'hallways'

The two main playgrounds.

As you can see, I have a pretty nice set up here! I will for sure be sad to leave. It's just such a happy and easy going atmosphere. I feel like it fits me perfectly!

Until next time,

Michelle

Thursday Night Hike!

Kia Ora!

I am glad to report that I have finally climbed up to the clock in our sweet little town of Alexandra! When we first arrived our vice dean, Mick, pointed it out to us. It is a huge white clock that sits on one of the many hills (more like a mini mountain) in Alex. I like it best to help me with directions when I am driving. I always follow the clock to get home and so far it hasn't done me wrong!

Yesterday we had the most beautiful weather so we decided to take a family hike and it was so much fun! It took us about 45 minutes to get to the top, but when we got there to view was breathtaking. You could see all of Alex sitting right in front of a landscape of mountains with the sun shinning so brightly over it all. We stayed at the top forever soaking up the view and taking TONS of pictures (something we are quite good at).  Over all it was a great way to have fun on a boring Thursday night and a good way to get in a wee bit of a workout. Here are just a few of the many pictures taken!

 The clock in the distance, looks so small!

 Krystal and I glad to have made it to the top!

 Ahhhh! We almost fell off!

 Jumping for joy.. a common theme I have in NZ! I love how gorgeous the background is!

Spelling our emotions for this place with our shadows.. so deep ;)

New School Excitment!

Hello friends! Today completes my second day at the Terrace School and I am quite fond of it here! I was a wee bit nervous coming into this experience, especially the last few days leading up to Tuesday (no thanks to Krystal!), but I really love it here! I am in a year five and six room with 25 students. The kids are all so, so sweet and so is my teacher! I love their accents, it makes the kids even more adorable.

A lot of the things are very similar to classrooms in the States, however there are many differences as well! The most noticeable difference is that all of the classrooms are in separate buildings and it is so odd! I have always been in schools where all of the classrooms are connected and in one building.  There are around 360 students in our school and all of the students go out to 'playtime' at once. That means there are kids ages 5-13 running around while the teacher sit in the lounge and enjoy tea time! It is a nice morning break and there is always yummy food to snack on. The learning style is different as well. There are various learning groups for each subject and they change as needed. Small groups are also used in the States, but definitely not to the same degree. I am rather interested to see how it affects student's learning. It has been interesting to get used to the spelling differences. For example they spell realize as 'realise' and when there is an 'or' in a word like color, they use 'our.' I think I will begin to catch on eventually, but right now it's a bit confusing.

Right now the kids are my favorite part of being here! They all want to be at school and I have never seen a classroom with absolutely no behavior issues. I have only been here two days, but it is quite obvious that I am really blessed with a great group of kids. Our seasons are oppisite here, so the kids only have about seven weeks of school left and they will be on summer vacation. I got pretty lucky as to see the begging on the school year at Monore and the end of the school year at Terrace.

I am sure I will have a wonderful experience here! I am sure I will have many stories and fun things to share as my time here progresses.

Until then,

Michelle

End of Vacation!

I am finally back in Alex after an awesome road-trip!! I saw so many awesome parts on New Zealand this week and had a great time!

Last night was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had! The NZ All Blacks won the rugby world cup against France. It was a really fun game to watch, even though I didn’t understand all of what was going on. We watched the game at a local bar in Dunedin called the Baaa (like what sheep say) and it was so amazing when they won. The whole crowd went crazy! Rugby is a huge deal in New Zealand. This year they moved holidays, school schedules and even daylights savings because of the world cup. This is the first time NZ has won in over 20 years so I was very lucky to get to experience it!

After the game we went down to the Octagon, it is the main bar area of town, a lot like Welch Ave in Ames, but much larger! There were so many people out celebrating, it was super fun. We stayed in the Octagon for a while and then went to a smaller bar called Fever. It was an actual discoteka and it was hilarious! They had a floor that lit up and played all sorts of music from the 70’s.

We met a ton of cool people last night. One of Ellen’s friends from ISU, Bret, is studying abroad in Dunedin and had an empty room in his flat for us to stay in. It was fun hanging out with other college kids from all over the place! Dunedin was definitely a great town to spend a couple of nights in!

On our little road trip I learned some fun Kiwi phrases. It is hard to get used to them, but they are super fun. Here are some of the terms I have learned…

Sheans: Wearing tennis shoes and jeans together.

Jandals: Flip-flops

Sweet As: A short saying for sweet as all hell

Rubbish: Garbage, they never say garbage

Wee: A little, “A wee town”

Cheers: Thank you. I love this one, they always say it!

It is nice to be home and relaxing a big. Tomorrow is our first day at school and I am pretty excited to meet the kids and all the staff. I am nervous, but I think it will be lots of fun!

I’ll be sure to update about school, soon! Cheers!

Michelle

On The Road Again!

Yesterday we made it Christchurch. I was really sure what to expect when we got there with all of the damage from the Earthquakes, but it was pretty devastating. The whole town centre is shut down and it really feels like you are walking through a ghost town. It was a very eye-opening and sad thing to see.

Not all of Christchurch was sad though! We found another nice hotel to stay at. When we got there we started looking at various brochures trying to find something to do. We looked into hot air balloons, but they were a little pricy so we found one for a place called High Adrenaline Forest. At first I thought it would be a zip-lining thing and I was pretty excited. It was super cheap and seemed fun! We all laughed when we read that is was emotionally and physically challenging; we soon realized they weren’t kidding! When we got there we didn’t have to sign anything, we just paid our money and got a super short lesson on what some of the ‘obstacles’ would be. It started out pretty easy. We would climb various things to get higher in trees and we would zip-line. There were six courses. Number one was easy, so we skipped two and moved to three. Three had it’s challenges but wasn’t bad so we moved on to five. Five was pretty challenging. The obstacles were super high up and required a ton of strength. Six was down right HARD! We saw two or three people get stuck after the second and third challenges, but we were not going to leave without doing it! It was scary because there were no safety nets under us, just the forest ground, and we were responsible for hooking our harness to the various safety wires. We were doing pretty well until about the seventh obstacle where you clipped onto a rope and then jumped over NOTHING into a spider web-type net. It was by far the scariest moment of my life. I screamed bloody murder the whole time! We were 60 feet above the ground and the jump was about twenty feet wide. SO scary! After I finished I felt so accomplished! We went to the beach for a little bit after the forest and then headed back to our motel.

We went to the local mall next where we learned that clothes in New Zealand are great, but SUPER pricey! For dinner we went to a pizza place outside the mall. They had amazing pizza! We ordered garlic bread and a Caesar pizza.  Probably some of the best pizza I have ever had! We ate and a few drinks before heading back ‘home.’

Today we drove all the way to Dunedin. We stopped a few times a long the way. We stopped in a super cute town called Timaru. I absolutely loved it!! It was super cute and right on the coast. We also stopped and saw the Moeraki boulders. They are these huge boulders that are perfect circles. The beach that they were on was COVERED in sea shells. I was so beautiful, a really neat thing to see. Tonight we are staying in a hostel and I am pretty excited, as I have never stayed in one before. There is one other person staying in our ‘dorm.’

I am excited to see all that Dunedin has to offer! It is fun being back in a college town, especially one so big. Tomorrow night is the final game in the Rugby World Cup. New Zealand in playing again France, so it is a great time to be here!

As usual,

Michelle

Road Trip, Day One!

Today we began our first New Zealand road trip! Since we don’t start school until Tuesday we have five days of free time. I have always wanted to pack up my car and just drive with no specific plans and that is pretty much what we are doing! We know we are going to Christchurch by driving up through the middle of the island and then we will be driving to Dunedin along the coast, but those are our only plans!

We had a lot of fun today just driving and stopping at random places. We have seen so many gorgeous parts of New Zealand already. It is pretty amazing to just drive. One minute we were in the mountains and the next we were driving through fields of sheep. We stopped at a few places today. First at the Clyde dam, then Lake Pukaki and finally lake Tekapo. The second two lakes we stopped at were so amazing! They were extremely blue due to glacier run off. It was amazing! Lake Pukaki was my favorite. Krystal and I climbed down a ton of rocks to get to the water, but it was totally worth it.

We continued driving until we got to Ashburton. We are about an hour away from Christchurch. Our plan is to go in the morning and find a place to stay. Our hotel tonight is great. Hotels are super cheap and they all have a kitchen. They also give you milk when you get there for the morning, it’s pretty awesome!

Until next time!

Michelle

Goodbye America, Helloooo New Zealand!

Kia ora! I am finally here in Alexandra, New Zealand after more than 36 hours of travel! While we have only been here a few hours I am already in love with this country. Everything about it is beautiful and so far the people have been very nice.

My flights went very well. I started in Cedar Rapids and had four different flights. First to Dallas, then L.A., next to Auckland, and finally in Queenstown. I met up with my roommates (Alex, Ellen, and Krystal) in Dallas. It was so much more fun to travel with others. Our flight from California to Auckland was very long, thirteen and a half hours, however, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was anticipating! The seats were very comfy and we were supplied with a blanket, a pillow, a sleeping mask, toothbrush and paste and two (very yummy) meals. We had movies, TV, music, and games on demand, which certainly helped the flight go by faster as well. Shortly after getting on the plane we were fed dinner and dessert (around 3a.m. Iowa time) and when were done they brought us a ‘snack bag’ to get us through the night. Then all the lights were shut off and it was finally time for bed! Sleeping was not the best, but I managed to get quite a bit of sleep in! In the morning they brought us a warm breakfast and slowly turned on the lights. They started with an organish light, so it looked like the sun rising! After that we got off our plane in Auckland there was a lot of confusion with my bags and the person checking us in that we got on our plane only 5 minutes before take off. But we made it and the flight was nice and short.

In Queenstown we were greeted by Mick, he is the Assistant Dean at our school. He drove us the hour home and was a super fun, nice guy! On the way home he drove us around Queenstown and we stopped at the AJ Hackette Bridge. This is the place where we will be bungee jumping in the near future. I had seen pictures online, but seeing it in person was so scary! I’m not sure how I will be able to do it!  We then stopped in a small town about 20 minutes outside of Alex for lunch. I ordered a steak sandwich and Krystal ordered a chicken kebab wrap, which we spilt. They were both DELICOUS, but I think the sandwich was one of the best I’ve ever had! Then we finally got to Alex and got to drive around the town and see the Terrace School where we will be teaching.  Then Mick took us to our house and introduced us to our proprietor, Denise.

Our house is really nice and cute. It is more spacious then I was expecting. Alex has his own room and bathroom (the bathroom is actually outside of our house) and Krystal, Ellen, and I are sharing a room and bathroom. We have a large living room and kitchen area as well. When we got to the house we were surprised and excited to see that Denise and some people from our school had left us food, wine and beer. While in NZ we have a van to help us get around. It was so funny driving for the first time when Mick had left us. Krystal got to drive first and it was pretty hilarious trying to remember to stay on the left side of the road! Ellen also took a shot driving on our way to the grocery store. We got a little bit of food for tonight. Everything was VERY expensive! It seemed like everything cost twice as much as it would at home!

Last night we unpacked all of our stuff and got settled in. This morning I got to Skype with mom and dad which was really fun! We don’t begin teaching until Tuesday so with our long break we are planning on traveling. We are not sure where we will begin yet, but our plan is to end up in Dunedin, a college town, to watch the Rugby World Cup. It takes place in Auckland and the New Zealand All Blacks are playing against France.

I can already tell I am going to love it here! It is so beautiful. Every morning when I walk out the door I will be seeing mountains. I am really enjoying my roommates as well. I think we are all going to ‘mesh’ together very nicely. So far I am not feeling too jet lagged. I went to bed around nine o’clock last night, or three in the morning at home, and didn’t find it too hard to stay up.  I am excited for everything that lies ahead! I can’t wait to meet more people and do new things. It will be very fun and interesting getting used to the kiwi lingo, but I think it will be easy to pick up. Stay tuned for what comes next!

Pumpkin Patch Fun!

With only two days left in the good ol' United States I wanted to spend sometime with some of my favorite kids! For the past three years I have gone along with Kayla (my cousin's wife) and her daughters Emma and Nora to our local pumpkin patch. It is so much fun and there is a ton of stuff to do for free, overall the perfect way to spend an afternoon. They have a corn box, basically a sand box, and the kids love it! It was even more fun this year because we had Will too. He wasn't too phased by anything, but still fun. :) The girls also had fun feeding the animals and crawling on hay bails. Emma was a pretty big chicken at first, but she was a pro by the time we left! As they say pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are 5000!

Nora feeding the donkey.

Emma and I lost in corn maze, we never did make it to the end!

In the corn box!

Corn box again!

Nora having fun!

Goodbye Goodies!

Well today was a super sad, yet exciting today! I finished my first student teaching placement! I was so sad to leave all of the students behind, but excited to move on to New Zealand! The kids were so sweet.... they gave me close to a million hugs and kept telling me they were going to miss me. It made me feel so loved and special! Sadly, my cooperating teacher was not at school today and we had a sub, so yesterday the kids gave me the sweetest gift. About a week ago they made a canvas tote for me with all of their names and hand prints on it. Some how NONE of the kids spilled the beans and it was a total surprise. It was filled with all sorts of fun teacher/school supplies. Markers, pens, note pads, stickers and lots of things. It was so sweet, when they gave it to me they had the biggest smiles on their faces. They were so proud!! Here is a picture of the front and back..

And of course I had to make something for my students and Amy (my cooperating teacher)! I made Amy a sign to hang outside her room. I bought a little plaque from Wally World for a buck and some scrap-booking stickers. Then I used some paper I had at home, some paint and mod podge. It turned out so cute and she LOVED it. It said "Mrs. Boyles' Room," sadly I forgot to take a picture before I have it to her! I made the kids each a little goodie bag. It had a poem attached to it that said..

I'm glad I was your teacher

I've come to love you so.

I can't believe the end is here.

I hate to have to go.

Remember all the fun we had

in all the things we did,

But most of all remember...

You're a very special kid!

Inside you will find:

Chocolate hugs and kisses, to remind you that you’re loved..

An eraser, to remind you it’s okay to make mistakes..

Smarties, to remind you exactly how smart you are..

A penny, to remind you to use good sense..

A marker, to remind you to leave a good mark wherever you go..

A Band-Aid, to remind you to heal hurt feelings, either yours or someone else’s.

I found the poem online and had seen a lot of similar goodie bags before so I just did my own little spin on them! The kids were really excited today when I gave them the bags!

The goodies inside...

And the final bags!

Now it's time to move onto packing to head across the pond! I am already thinking of what to give my students there! I think I will do similar bags, I am also bringing them some new books for their class library, hopefully some new books they haven't read yet!

Unlucky Ducky

By writing this post, I am sure I am bring more bad luck upon myself. In fact, I have already tried to post it once, but it was deleted and not posted or saved, so I had to type it twice. Just another unlucky thing to happen this week.

I will start by reminding you (or letting you know) that about three weeks ago my iPod broke. Well with 30+ hours of travel time to New Zealand, I needed to get a new one and they are not cheap.

My luck was fine until this past Saturday. I went to Cedar Falls to see friends and celebrate homecoming. I drove up in morning and shortly after getting there put my ID and money in my pocket and headed down to tailgate. Tailgating was fun and I saw so many friends but after a while we headed back home to watch the Iowa game, take a nap, and order pizza. The pizza came and I got my money out to pay and went about my afternoon. After eating I sat down on the couch and bumped my camera which was sitting on the arm of the couch. Instead of falling on the floor it fell right into a cup of water that happened to be sitting there. Making it worse, there was no rice to be found so my poor little camera had to dry out all by itself. I was pretty upset about the extra expense before my trip when I realized my ID was no where to be found! We tore the whole apartment apart looking everywhere for that little piece of plastic that is oh so important, but found nothing! I am now certain that there is some blonde hair, underage girl in Cedar Falls running around having a wonderful time with my ID. 

Yesterday I knew I had to go get a new ID right away, even though there is a VERY LITTLE chance it will be here in a week. So I left school fifteen minutes early and drove to the Jones County courthouse. The treasurer office was open till 4:30 and I walked in at 4:15 feeling so much better knowing I was finally getting my new license. Nope. They not-so-kindly informed me that they stopped doing driver's licenses at 4:00 and I was fifteen minutes late. So it was not until today after sitting at the DOT for an hour that I finally have a license again. 

Last but not least I have now found out my phone charger is broken and I use my phone on a daily basis as an alarm. How lovely. Not everything has been so horrible. On a very bright side, my camera is now well and working!

Here we go, only six more days. Wish me luck, I may need it!

Almoooooooost Done!

Well it's official I only have ONE WEEK LEFT at Monroe. I have come to love the school so much! I love all of the faculty, I love my teacher and my students are the best! It is hard to imagine being placed in a better class. Today I had my final lesson supervised, had a mock interview, and turned in my last big assignment! PHEW!

Of course right when I take a sigh of relief I remember that New Zealand right around the corner and I feel like I have so much to do! I have started to make a list of items I need to pack, but I still have things to buy and the idea of packing in general is terrifying! I am sure I will end up forgetting something and I always over pack. It should be a very interesting process!

I am so excited to go, but still nervous! I know I am going to miss everyone back home, but I wouldn't change it for the world. I am so lucky to be going to such a beautiful place for my student teaching and to have fun people to go with!

If you have any great ideas of things I need to pack, please feel free to share :)