Kiwiana Aroha!: Surprise!

As always, it has been a stupendous week here in Aotearoa! I am loving my class more and more each day even though it is more challenging each and every day. There have been many incidents of children coming to school with no lunch, a social worker is constantly in and out of my classroom taking multiple students to mentor each and every day, a knife has been pulled on a teacher, a child has destroyed a kitchen at school, there are multiple fights a day due to these poor children who don't know any other way to release their anger. Anyway, there are some defiant children, one in my class named Brewyn is especially defiant and gives me a headache. Come to find out after observing and talking to him, he is simply bored. He is very smart and gets his assignments done well before the rest of the class. He is very artistic and loves sports as well. I am starting to test him and will eventually come up with some lesson plans to help him. It is interesting because I am doing the same with James, the lowest leveled in the class. He is 9 and I have tested him and put him at a 1st grade level in math. These two boys are so different, yet have the most behavioral problems and I am working towards finding lesson plans that will suit them both, so wish me luck, it should be an adventure and I am super excited about it! The only problem is, 4 more weeks in the school is just not enough :(
This weekend was fantastic! Friday was just relaxing as we went to a bunch of vintage shops downtown and watched a movie with the kids. Then, on Saturday, we woke up nice and early and headed to Piha beach, the most amazing black sand beach ever! It is gorgeous, and a surf competition happened to be going on which was fun to watch. This beach is up in the mountains which makes it gorgeous and full of fun little hikes and waterfalls! We hiked around to honeymoon cove and to the top of a mountain overlooking the ocean and ate lunch. We then hiked up to the top of a historic mountain (Lion's Rock) the Maki people find sacred. After taking a couple pictures, or many as girls do, we packed up and drove to the other side of Piha to see massive waves and unexpectedly a jellyfish! And yes, I decided to pick it up, it was pretty gross feeling and almost didn't look real! Turns out they were all over the beach and a couple of us got them thrown at us! From there, we walked to a gorgeous secluded natural waterfall, the only problem is, pictures can not show how amazing it really was, high up it went and how far down we were, surrounded by trees and water!
Well, after we were all tired out, we headed back and I got dropped off but a couple of the girls, and Linda, came in to watch our skydiving video which I didn't think anything of, so I went and showered. I came out and they were still here, but after they left, at least i thought they did, Neeley told me she wanted to show me something the kids made out back. So, I followed her and much to my surprise, all the girls were standing there including Jim and Linda and they all yelled SURPRISE! To be honest, I thought they were joking, and had to ask what it was for! They explained that mum came up with the idea, since I was gone for my 21st in Queenstown and it is a huge deal here she wanted to do something. It's funny because they thought for sure I knew because of all the little things they had done and said in the past two days to lead up to it, but I was completely oblivious because my birthday was so long ago. To be honest, if it were closer to my B-day, I probably would have found out because I am a bit too curious and it's very hard to surprise me so they did very good. Well, luckily I didn't celebrate alone, it had been Nancy and Anna's 21st as well in February so they celebrated with me. We did it traditional NZ style where first, we were presented with keys which symbolize our right to come and go as we please (Natalia made them and all the girls got to sign them)! Next, the mum says a few words bout her child, so mum was so cute and funny and called us triplets and said a couple things, then we are presented with a cake, which was HUGE, blew out the candles, did a gift exchange where we pick out gifts from a bag until they are all gone, sang happy birthday, then ate dinner and had TONS of dessert! It was a lot of fun and so sweet of mum to go to all that hard work and include the other two girls whose birthday it was too. Oh, she also made little gift bags for each of us that had a little NZ souvenir and a bunch of lollies! She amazes me, and reminds me a lot of my mom, always doing extra and making everyone feel welcome! I felt right apart of the family and tradition and couldn't have asked for a better 21st birthday, except if my real fam was there too!
P.S. Some only worked if they were small, so sorry if they are hard to see, for better viewage, click on them :) ha