We are just driving into Nelson, New Zealand. We decided to leave Kaikoura a day early due to the "blow" that blew in last night. It was sticking around for a few days, canceling any boating adventures so we thought it would be best to move to warmer temps and put in a few miles while the weather is not the best. Those that travelled with Derek and I in Europe over the years know how I fare with windy mountainous roads. Today I had to nap in the car to attempt to ignore the motion sickness coming on.
We made a few stops enroute. Walked to a waterfall and cruised around the shore spotting hundreds of fur seals and pups just hanging out. We watched them be taken out by the tidal waves which the boys thought was quite funny to see. Those seal pups make a lot of noise. Once one starts barking they all do. Today they must have been bothered by the stormy winds because we saw many seals fighting with each other. We drove through wine country, Marlborough and stopped off at a little winery to visit.
We are continually amazed with the number of people, young and old, walking around town and in stores with bare feet. It seems to be the New Zealand way. Even the school kids are outside running around with nothing on their feet. So strange! Derek and carter visited a school the other day and learned that all students must wear a uniform in NZ. Their year is split into 4 terms to follow the seasons. In term 1 and 4 every kid has to wear a big blue floppy fishermans hat to protect them from the sun. This school had 100 students and only four teachers. The classes were all in portables. Gr1, gr2/3, gr4/5, gr6/7/8. They had a school pool, tennis court, wicked play structure where we played American ninja warrior. Recesses are unsupervised and discipline was said to be limited. Even though we witnessed a boy named Griffin wacking kids with a tree branch. The next day, there was a board triathlon which our boys were excited about. For school trips, it's an everyone goes or no one goes. If you can't afford to pay for the trip, you don't but the more affluent families have to pay for those other kids and that is voted on before the beginning of the year. All or none!
Today we bought our first real souvenirs. The boys got an All Blacks rugby ball and an All Blacks tshirt each. They are pretty excited. We hope to see a live rugby game tonight if we can get tickets. Braden said he'd like to play rugby if he was bigger:-) I told him he can stick with the surfing and travel the world as a cool surfer dude. Lol
Kerri that is a 1 to 25 teacher to student ratio sounds better than Canada!!! I love the uniform. I wish my boys could wear a hat with theirs!
ReplyDeleteHere too people don't wear shoes in the countr., In St. George's everyone wears shoes and the women wear heels I wouldn't even try in Canada!
I hope you got to the All Black game it would be amazing!