Rangitoto, Free Food and Passover!

Hello!

Happy Passover from Auckland!! Hope everyone is enjoying a matzah-filled week at home. Auckland has been great and sunny but Passover here is definitely not the same as at home. I'll let you know all about that, but figure I'll update you since I left off last.

On Friday my friend's parents and friend came to visit for Passover. We went to services at the synagogue and then to her university teaching assistant's house for shabbat dinner (how crazy is it that one of her TA's is an observant Jew who likes having people from out of town over for shabbat?!). It was really nice! The community just got in a lot of meat from Australia (one of the two-three times a year that they get meat) so we had delicious turkey! There were a few other people there too, and it was really nice and great to have a home cooked meal! The house was a bit of a walk away, so it was nice to see a more residential area of town which is still located pretty close to the city. It was a really nice evening.

On Saturday there was a village fair in Parnell which is only about a ten minute walk from me so a few of my friends and I went over to check it out. It was a lot of fun! Parnell is a very "arts 'n crafty" area. All of the stores were open with different crafts outside. We explored some of the shops which were really cool. Then the really exciting parts were that there were people walking around with free food to sample!! It was really awesome and delicious - all of the local restaurants gave a few trays that people would walk around with for everyone to sample. There were also live bands and different performances going around. It was such a fun event! Then one of my roommates works with someone who was putting on an art show in Devonport. So we went off, took the ferry and went to an art opening. It was really cool art and again there was lots of free food! One of my friends even bought some art which was cool, but I have no clue how he is going to get it home! After the art show we came back to Auckland and went back to Parnell for dinner at an Italian place which was pretty good. It was a really nice day!

On Sunday a few of my friends and I went to hike Rangitoto! Rangitoto is Auckland's youngest and largest volcano. It erupted 600 years ago and is now extinct. It is accessed by ferry but the island is not at all developed with no food or water. The hike up was about an hour and was beautiful. The entire island is covered in incredible trees and molten lava rock. The view from the top was beautiful and you could see out to Auckland. It was really sunny out which was nice (but hot!). Then on the way down we went to some Lava Caves which were really cool! I had my torch (headlamp) and we crawled in two of the caves which were really awesome. After the initial small part the cave opened up so I could stand and then we went out the other side which really looked like a big rabbit hole which was cool. Then we hiked back down and had a couple hours before the ferry so we decided to hike around the base. We saw some historich bach's (beach houses - but now no one lives on the island) which were set up like they used to be which was really interesting. Then we went out to Flax Point which is just a point on the island which was pretty. Then we took the ferry back and it was time for me to start studying for my psych exam! Here are the pictures from Rangitoto: http://picasaweb.google.com/LSOL817/RangitotoNZ#

Monday was the first seder. I went with my friend and her family to the synagogue's Israeli seder. The room was set up with a lot of circle tables. We sat with a couple from NZ who used to live in the US, a backpacker from London and another from the US. It was interesting but completely in Hebrew! They had each table take turns reading to make it more interactive but I was still a little lost and missed the songs from home. The meal was not even comparable to what I'm used to but at least I got a bit of meat! Then we went back to my friend's parents hotel for some dessert and singing which was fun.

Tuesday was seder number two also back at the synagogue but this time it was run by B'nei Akiva which is NZ's youth group. The seder was themed "Egyptian Idol" which was cute and it was filled with families which was nice. They put on different skits throughout the seder which was nice and there was a lot of singing. The meal was the same but there was more food. At the end I got to meet some of the local people my age which was nice and fun.

Today I had my personality psych exam which was not fun. It was really hard but at least it's over!

Now that you're all up to date, here are my internship updates!

Friday, March 26
Today was the third day in a row that one of the teacher aides was not in. While I have gotten used to this pretty regular occurrence, what was interesting about this instance is the fact that the same aide has not been in for three days and that she did not call in to the base school or to the classroom to report that she would not be in. Anyway, because she was not in today was especially busy. On Fridays my head teacher is physically in the school building but is working on other things so we have a different head teacher from Australia. She is also really great. After starting with fitness exercises, the head teacher asked me to work with one of the children on reading. He was a little distracted today but we were able to get some work done. We read a story, then he put the sequence of the story in order (using Velcro pictures) and then made sentences on the Velcro board about what was happening in each picture. After everyone else had finished their fitness exercises we had morning group time where we went over the days of the week and weather. The children chose every possible weather combination, which the teacher went along with since here in Auckland the weather is constantly changing! During morning tea break one of the aides in my class was telling me about moving to New Zealand, which was interesting. My head teacher had also told me about her experience immigrating to New Zealand and her first impressions of it. I find listening to why others have moved to New Zealand, what they originally thought of it and what they think of it now to be very interesting. We also we talking about how her daughter wants to study abroad, and how she doesn’t think she would be able to handle going off to Europe for the semester which I thought was interesting, since her daughter is so close to my age. I don’t know if this is something shared by all New Zealand parents (or parents in general) or just my specific teacher. It’s also nice that the other teachers are opening up more to me. After morning tea we worked with the children’s fine motor skills by ripping up paper for the Easter cards we will make next week. At noon one of the other teacher aide’s had to leave, so we were down two teacher aides. Due to this I spent the majority of the afternoon helping the other aide with toileting. At the end of the day we watched the mainstream kids duo-sport day where a lot of the kids rode their bikes then ran around the fields. It was fun to watch.
During lunch my normal head teacher was in the lunch room so I was able to ask her what she does on the days that the other head teacher is in. She said that she works on fundraising for Carlson – contacting different donors to get money for the school. I asked her what they need the money for and where they get most of their funding. She said that they get the majority of their funding from the government. The government pays for the children’s wheelchairs, walkers and most devices. She has been applying for grants for more technological stuff that the speech/language, occupational and physical therapists want to work with the children. I think it’s interesting and great how much the government funds the children and school. I hope to talk with her most in depth about this.

Tuesday, March 30
Today we had the other head teacher in, five kids, all teacher aides and a teacher aide who is applying for the aide position so it was a full house! We did fitness pretty quickly and had a lot of time for math and English. For math the teacher decided to do some physical math activities, which were a lot of fun. She first would say certain “math terms” such as across, in front of, next to and between. After she said each word the children would have to move to be in the correct position (with assistance from the teacher aides). In this way the kids were able to see and understand what the different words mean so that when we talk about them in relation to numbers they have a better concept of it. Then the teacher would call out a number and we would have to get into groups of that number. It was a fun energetic math lesson! Then we did some reading before morning tea. After playtime we made collage Easter cards. It was interesting to me that the kids make Easter cards in school because this is something that would not be done in the US. Apparently NZ does not have as strict a separation between “church and state.” Anyway a big egg was drawn on the front of each card and we used the paper we had ripped up the week before to make a collage in the egg. It was messy but fun. The teachers ended up doing most of the work, which I think is unfortunate, but the kids did help a little and had fun. Then we had lunch followed by playtime and then we played a game with room 1 (the other Carlson classroom) during the last block. This game was also related to Easter but was basically a board game where you had to go from the basket to the bunny. The children were in teams of two and had to press a button, which would spin to a number to determine how many spaces they would go. We played twice and it was fun. Thursday is the last day of term and a few of the teacher aides and support staff are leaving which will be sad, but it should be a good day!

Tomorrow is my last day of Carlson for term 1. I have a 2 week break from class and internship so I am going to Australia! I leave really early Friday morning for Melbourne where I will be meeting up with my friend who is studying there for the semester and another one from Sydney. We will then be taking the overnight ferry to Devonport, Tasmania. We're going to travel around Tasmania for a little over a week and then go back to Melbourne. After a day in Melbourne I will then fly to Sydney to meet up with some people from my program and travel around there for a few days! I'm SO excited to go to Australia!! I'll be sure to take a lot of pictures and tell you all about it!

Have a good beginning of April!