Amelia's Blog

The 16th and 17th of march were the best days ever. Want to know why? Because it was St Patrick’s Day on Saturday so we had a fair on that night.

On the Friday we do this annual thing we’ve done for ages every St Patrick’s Day, that is: The whole school (including the teachers) split into three even teams, Red, Yellow and Blue. The year 8′s set up games for the juniors to play on the field.

It all began on the Friday morning. First we had the morning prayer in the church then we all rushed to get dressed into our colours (I was in the Yellow team).

As soon as all the year 8′s were ready they all hurried to the field to get ready to host the games for the juniors.  I did a game with Mary and Beatrice, our game was having a tennis ball on your spoon and the spoon in your mouth and you’ve got to try get to your partner without it falling. Once you got to your partner you do the three legged race. It was kinda tiring explaining it over and over again to each group.

Once all Red, Yellow and Blue junior teams had played all the games set up for them it was time to get in our groups and get ready to do the Tug Or War.  Since we on had three teams, we had Blue and Yellow senior teams verse each other and who ever won that, gets to verse the team.  Blue ended up winning this time and my team (the yellow team lost).  These were the scores:

Blue vs. Yellow = Blue won, Yellow lost.

Red vs. Blue = Red won, Blue lost.

It was the same with the juniors too, which is quite a coincidence.

The final thing we do also is the relays, where all the teams go head to head to see who wins.  The Yellow team won this time, it’s pretty weird because the Yellow team has always won every year for the past 5 years, but we are sometimes in different teams every year.

All of the teams were all pretty much in a draw. Yellow won relays, Red won the first game of Tug of War and Blue won the second game.

After all of that we were quite tired and wanted to go back to our class and relax, so we did.

Since I’m a year 8 this was the last year I will be celebrating St Patrick’s day at St Patrick’s School, *sigh* I’m sure going to miss it. =(

Free Fall by Roderick Gordon and Brian William.

Imagine yourself waking up, all alone, in a strange, dark place, not being able to move at all.

Well that’s exactly what happened to Chester.  He had only had a slight memory of what happened:

Cal, William, Elliot, the Styx twins ( who’s last names were ‘Styx’ and they were identical twin sisters) and himself were running away from the Styx twins’ grandfather, the old Styx.

As they rushed through a dark tunnel, Cal accidently feel behind and was shot, dead.

So all six of them, even the Styx twins sprinted as fast as they could.  It was getting darker and darker as they ran for their lives.

Then suddenly, out of no where, a dark, deep abyss appeared in front of them, all six of them tried to stop, but it was too late, they were already plummeting to their death.

But the big questions were:

Was Chester the only one that survived?

As giant, carnivorous spiders crawl all over his face, he tries to swerm out of that deadly trap of dirt and mud but as he does he feels that there are belts wrapped around his torso and legs.

How did they get there?  There’s no way he would of done them up himself because his arms were tied up too.

Will he ever get out of it?

Even if he does, will he ever find the others?

Read the book to find out.

This book is the third book of the Tunnel series and the international best selling too

I mainly picked this book to read because I liked the cover, but once I read the first page, I couldn’t put it down.

A few weeks ago, 12 of us got a chance to go sailing in the Awatea Lagoon.

When we arrived there, we saw that there was a tent to get changed in (because there was no where else we could get changed).

Straight after we got changed into our togs, our instructor, Dean, gave us life jackets and waterproof thermals to keep us warm (it was abit chilly that morning).

Most of us had been sailing before and knew what to do, but some of us haven’t.  So Dean gave us clear instructions on what to do and what not to do.  There was 6 boats there and so there were only 2 people per boat.  Dean and Dean’s dog, Zena, got to ride in the motor boat.  Dean had to because he had a camera and he was taking photos of us, so he didn’t want to get that wet.

Once we all got into our boats with our partners, we pushed it into the water and away we went.  Most of us didn’t start off so well, like moving around in circles and some still in shallow areas, but once we got used to it it was easy.

The first challenge he gave us was to ride around the buoy that was floating somewhere in the middle of the Lagoon, but would move a lot but that was the easiest one to do.  It was kinda hard to avoid from crashing into other boats though.  After awhile of getting the hang of things and just riding around, it came to lunch time.

We had about 10 minutes of break time, until we had to get back into our boats to do some other activities he set out for us.  We played a game that was kinda like netball, except we had to hit the buoy with a ball in the water. So we spilt into two teams girls against boys(ish), and since I was the only girl partners up with a boy, I was on the boys team.  We did 2 rounds of it and the boys team won both of them, I felt a little bit like a traitor after that to all of the girls though.  Well while we were all concentrating on that Dean(our instructor) had put water guns all the way on the other side of the lagoon(the lagoon was quite big you know).  So we had to sail all the way there to get a water gun.  Once we got our one we were squirting everyone around us and they were squirting back, it was so much fun.  After all that fun we were allowed to do what ever we wanted to do, we could swap boats or partners with other people or capsize our boats. I hated when once our boat was upside down in the water and I was  swimming across and I accidently kick the metal pole,  I really hurts!! The hardest part of sailing was getting back onto the boat, since you’re wearing a life jacket plus a waterproof thermal under it, I weighs you down.

After a long day of sailing we were all tired and wanted to go home.  I hope I can get the change to go sailing again,  It was really fun!

Bonjour! Je mápelle Amelia.

(Do you know what I said? That’s right I said ‘My name is Amelia’, that’s in French, read more bellow.

Over the past 3 weeks every Tuesday we’ve had a French teacher, Madame P, some in and teach us the basics of French.  Like, the numbers, how to introduce yourself and starting a conversation.

The numbers we have all ready learnt are un(one), duex(two), trois(three), quatre(four), cinq(five), six(pronounced sees), sept(seven, don’t count the ‘p’ when you say it), huit(eight), nuef(nine), dix(ten, pronounced dees), onze(eleven), douze(twelve), some of them are quite hard to pronounce correctly though.

Today went the extra mile and did it up to twenty, which wasn’t too hard to do.  Madame P told us that 1-12 are the hardest to learn and that it all slightly repeats them like for instance thirteen is treize and three is trois(twa), they are kinda similar.

When you are actually put on the spot to say it in front of the whole class, it’s actually quite hard to remember and then you can see that you need more practise. For me it was kinda like that.

It was sort of hard to hear Madame P over all the people who were talking over her when she was trying to explain something, we heard ‘silence’ alot from her.

As I said before we learnt how to introduce ourselves and how to start a conversation, here is what we learnt:

Bonjour-Hello

Comment tu t’apelles?-What is your name?

ça va?-How are you?

Je mápelle- My name is…

Un garçon-A boy

Un fille-A girl

Merci-Thank you

A u revoir-Good-bye

She showed us famous landmarks and places that are in France, for example: The Effie Tower, she bought a mini vision of it to show us, we learnt that is was the first ever tower to be build.  (The Effie Tower in French is Le Tour Effie). Then for fun we played French bingo which was the best game we played. She also told us which countries speak French and she showed us which part of France she lives in.

I think French is a must learn language because most countries speak it.

Catching the train is a great way of getting where you want to go (not just for getting to work or going to school, but going to other places as well).

But the best thing about it is that you can see an amazing views of things you wouldn’t normally see in a different way, like the sea, looking up at you or the country sides where you can see all of the sheep, horses and other farm animals.

Also going through the dark tunnels a long side of the hills, is out of the ordinary too.

You can truly see that New Zealand is a beautiful place and we’d like to keep it that way.