Thursday, July 24, 2008

Off to Whangerei

We are here!  Currently our CJS kids are eating lunch at Kamo Intermediate School with year 7 and year 8 students from New Zealand.  We have spent time looking around the school, participating in classroom activities, playing games.  We will play our concert for the entire school of 640 students in about a half an hour.
Last night the CJSers met their first billet hosts and they went home!  Reports this morning were varied but all good.  The best stories came from John King, Luke Lentini, and Danny Jung who jumped from hot tub to swimming pool to trampoline and back followed by video games.  They had a blast.  Whitney and Liz went possum hunting...literally.  All the students enjoyed sampling New Zealand home-cooking.  They ate broccoli with celery, poached eggs, new and different cereals.  It was all very interesting.
Prior to our arrival in Whangerei, we stopped at Hobbiton and were entertained by stories of the filming of Lord of the Rings and we were amazed by the beautiful scenery we saw.  Wow!  It was gorgeous...we'll have pictures...lots of pictures.  This morning before we came to the school we got another taste of the beautiful New Zealand countryside by visiting the Whangerei Falls.  Wow again!  Amazing.  These Kiwis have been blessed with the most beautiful landscapes in the world!
So...off to our concert.  We'll chat later.

2 comments:

Sarah Reichert said...

Sounds like all the kids get a chance to try different things - are possum hard to hunt? I think they just kind of hang there ... pretty inert. I hope the concert went well - this is very interesting to read! We're off to South Carolina tomorrow, so it may be that you are almost home by the time I read the rest of the trip - Enjoy!

A-Dub said...

Mr. Welch,
Seriously, please bring me a Kiwi. Especially if his name is Jemaine or Bret.
Sincerely,
Annie