Gillie's Blog: Gillie's second week of school...will be spent all week at CAMP!!

This is Tracy--
It is 1pm 6th January (Monday) in New Zealand.   I am currently sitting in a Mc Donald's (yes, of course they are here as well, but have many different menu items and are missing others we are used to! Hey, where is the 2 cheeseburger value meal??!) The main reason I am sitting at McD's is that they have...FREE WiFi! And it is pretty fast! The internet connection options here in NZ are slower than what we are used to..and cost can be a bit more.   We have a mobile broadband modem now for use at home but we have to pay for that just like you'd have to pay for mobile phone time, so I am sitting here to use the "free stuff" while I blog.

OK...so on to Gillie. She started school last Wednesday, 2nd February.   She was a bit nervous about starting school, but ready to get there as well. We had a lot of fun while in our campervan from the 17th of January thru the 28th of January, but hey, that is a lot of time alone with your mom!   So, she was lucky before school started to hook up again with some friends she made via email before we landed in NZ...3 girls from her class: Abigail, (her mom is from the East Coast of the US and Canada, and her dad is a native "Kiwi" (New Zealander)); Delila ("Lila") who is from England; and Maddie, who is a native Kiwi.   This really helped Gillie look forward to school and not be so nervous, as she got to play with these girls and have a sleepover at Abigail's house the weekend before school started.

Gillie thought her first 3 days of school were "AWESOME"...a 100 on a scale of 1 to 100! She has 30 kids in her class, which may seem big to us, but is a good size for a Steiner-type school. Only 1 teacher, too! Her name is Fran McCall, and all the kids and parents call her Fran. She has been with this same class, moving up each grade (level) with them here for the past 3 years.   All the parents think she is awesome, too, and I like her.   She is friendly, but no nonsense...I think the kids respect her for that. So far in school Gillie has studied Te Kuiti, a famous Maori. Gillie will blog more about this when she is back from camp, but basically, the Maori people are the native people of New Zealand. Many people in New Zealand speak some Maori in addition to English.

The reason G though school was so awesome is that they had little homework so far, and the little homework booklets for the term are very easy...spelling words and math problems she is very familiar with. However, Gillie's friend Abigail has warned Gillie it will get harder once they are back from camp!!

Also, every Friday at 2pm (school goes from 9am-3pm M-F), the kids in Class 6 (basically, 6th grade) get to go down a big "Slip 'n Slide" that they set up down a hill next to the school! I will post pictures next time they do this...the kids all get in their "togs" (swimsuits) and then get to go right down the slide...how cool is that?!

This whole week Gillie will be at camp about 2 1/2 hours away. She left this AM at 9:30 and will be back Friday at 3pm. This is a camp the school sends the new Class 6 kids on each year...Gillie's teacher Fran told us parents the purpose of this camp is for the kids to start to learn to do things more on their own, away from their parents, and how to better use their friends to figure things out... a "growing up" camp!   Gillie and her classmates will be swimming, tramping (hiking), mountain biking, canoeing, kayaking...incredible!

You should have seen the scene at the school...there are 8 parents and 2 teachers (Fran and Mario) going along with the 30 kids...so there were 40 mountain bikes, about 8 cars, and 4 trailers taking everyone there! Crazy!

Well, be sure to email or post to me here, as I will be all alone ;o( this week,
as Chris and I talked to Fran and we decided that Gillie will be fine without mom, as that is the purpose of this camp! (Develop some independence.) I will miss her, but I will be visiting a veterinary clinic tomorrow to talk about their stem cell treatment for arthritis in dogs...and I will see if I can somehow get some work out of this! I am not used to this freedom, and I have to say I miss work!

Love you all!
--Tracy

Gillie, Sibohan, and Maddie in the truck ready to drive off to camp!

(Monday, 6th February 9:30am)

Controlled chaos! This is about 1/6th of who and what is all going to camp...Gillie is right in the middle waiting for things to get packed up! Gillie's class room is the blue building with 2 tall windows right in the background. Her school has multiple buildings, and you just walk outside to get to the different classes.