The week started off with everyone returning from their coaching clinic fully refreshed and armed with stories. The first thing they say to us though is, so this is your last week, are you sad? I tell them no, denial is a wonderful friend to me these days. We cannot believe we only have four days left with everyone and the minute we start thinking about it we realize how little time that really is. Six weeks seemed to have flown by as if it were one so we feel as though four days will go within the blink of an eye.
We spend the week getting our students to finish up their projects for us and getting as many pictures as we can as well as spending every minute soaking up all this amazing little community has to offer. Wednesday afternoon we were lucky enough to go fishing with the years 7-8 class. We didn’t catch anything but we had a lot of fun getting to know these students a little better considering they were the only class we hadn’t been able to spend a day with.
We felt as though we needed to do something for the students on the last day. They have done so much for us that we really wanted to repay them with something fun. We had been trying to figure out what to do for a while and it finally came to us at the beginning of the week. Any time not spent with the students this week was now dedicated to our surprise. We talked it over with Sue and she said we could have the general period for the years 11-13’s. However it wasn’t all of them so we put the offer out to the other teachers saying that if they would like a period off, we would gladly entertain their class. In the end, we had the whole senior school (years 9-13) for fourth period. As you have probably read throughout the last 8 weeks, Holly and I have been posting travel tips of things we’ve encountered along our way. We decided to cut those down and gear just under 50 of them to ones that related to New Zealand and specifically those the wonderful students at Manaia School had taught us and present our adventures in Kiwi Land complete with pictures and all the embarrassing stories. They laughed and seemed to have a good time so we hoped they enjoyed it. We followed our presentation up with a little Canadian trivia complete with music trivia by Canadian artists. We didn’t put in any Celine Dion, we thought it would be too easy, but we couldn’t resist ending it with a little Beiber. We handed out lots of lollies, which I’m sure made the rest of the teachers really happy with us because the students were bouncing off the walls when we finished. We took that as a sign of a successful presentation.
In the afternoon we had a big feast to celebrate the end of term. We’re going to miss sitting out and playing games with the students at lunch. I’m sure I can also speak for Holly when I say this school and community has stolen a piece of my heart. After lunch the school surprised us with a presentation for us. They gave us their school sweaters, a bone carving necklace and an amazing book. Then they sang. It took everything I had not to break down into tears, Holly didn’t make it. It was amazing to hear and yet so sad to know that would be last time we would hear them. Listening to the school sing has been one of the greatest joys we have had the pleasure of experiencing since being here. Monday afternoon Kapa Haka practice was always something we looked forward to, even if they didn’t. After the presentation, the rest of the afternoon was dedicated to music and each year got to play at least one song they had been working on this term. These students are so amazingly talented it’s not fit. There is nothing they can’t do and do well. It was a sad goodbye at the end of the day. I think we hugged just about every student in the school. It was a rough time, I would have gladly stayed forever if it was possible, I have never hated the saying all good things must come to an end as much as I did that day.
The last day was a teacher only day where we got to participate in a choice workshop about language and literacy for students learning another language. It was really beneficial because it gave us a first hand account at what it’s like to learn a new language. Although we both have experience learning and teaching alternate languages, sometimes you forget what it’s like to be lost in it.
Sadly we didn’t lose our passports and therefore had to leave the country to head to Scary-Bug Land AKA Australia. Everyone here had me believing I was going to be seeing all these scary poisonous bugs, plants, spiders, etc the minute I stepped on the plane and if not then, the minute I stepped off it. I have a feeling I will be spending the next week completely paranoid and constantly checkin my ceiling for white-bummed spiders...
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