Christchurch earthquake

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/image.cfm?c_id=1&gal_cid=1&gallery_id=116916#7380473bx

Yesterday another devastating earthquake hit Christchurch, turning Tuesday 22nd February into New Zealands darkest day. Many died and others were badly injured. Everyone was traumatised and frightened by the disaster


Buildings all over the city crumbled to the ground and left debris everywhere. Beautiful old structures like the cathedral collapsed. Streets are trashed with rubble and you can hardly see the roads.

There are 75 confirmed deaths and 300 missing. The search and rescue teams main focus is rescueing the survivors that were trapped.This event is heart-breaking for everyone around the world.

Message for Christchurch

Dear Christchurch
We are very sorry about the devastation that the earthquake has caused.This must be a difficult time for everyone in Christchurch.Remember to stay strong and never give up on hope.We’ll try our best to help you as much as we can. Our thoughts and prayers will be with you during this rough time.


Arohanui,Pt England School

New netbooks!

I can’t wait until we get to take our netbooks home, because we can go on them at anytime and anyplace to do lots of very cool things. Our netbooks are going to help us to get ready for the future, by being able to use a computer because lots of our jobs will involve using them.

Everyone was ready and waiting for Mrs Burt to walk through the door, with all of our brand new netbooks. Lots of teachers helped us to set them up.We got lots of support from teachers that don't even come to this school, but they still helped all of us.

It was very frustrating at times when the internet didn’t work, and we had to go back to using plain old pencils and paper. We had to be patient and wait for a teacher to come and help us if we had problems. I thought it was intriguing how small our netbooks were, but they can still do most of the things that our big i-macs can do.

Holiday Highlight

During the holidays I went to my Aunty’s batch. At the start of every year my family goes there. It is always so fun. One thing we always like to do is going to the waterhole. There are three that we go to the most. But my favourite is the Wekaweka one. That one is awesome! I like it because there is a rope swing hanging from a tree branch and you jump off of a big boulder, swing and then let go to drop in to the water. So I was so excited to be going there again.
“Yay, finally we are here”. As soon as we got to the waterhole I quickly put my stuff down and went straight to the rope swing. But I didn’t get on it right away. I was really, really nervous. Plus it wasn’t my first time though. It took me a long time to actually get on the rope. Then eventually I grabbed it,hopped up on to the huge boulder, and jumped. “aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”. “SPLASH!” I dropped in to the cold,but refreshing, water. I swam to the surface and climbed back up to the rope swing. It was so fun, I just had to do it again. My Grandad was telling me to do as many turns on the rope as I could before I had to drop. I could only do one and half.

After a couple more swings on the rope another family joined as at the waterhole. They had a really cute dog. He was really funny because when a person jumped into the water he quickly swam to them barking and trying to rescue them. It was really noisy.

When I got tired of the water I went and climbed over all of the rocks to see what my cousin,Connor, and brother, Isara, were doing. They were trying to catch eels. I remembered from the last time we came to this waterhole and someone found a dead possum floating on the water!YUCK! It looked like a hunter had shot it because it had a hole in it’s neck. So my older cousin,Jared, found a stick and started poking it to squeeze the blood out of it. Lots of eels came so he tried to grab them with his hand, but he didn’t get any.

Anyway, Connor was using a fishing rod and ham for his bait. Every time he got an eel they kept slipping out of the net. Connor kept getting the eels and putting them in mine and my sister’s face. We screamed so hard. So when the eels kept slipping out of the net Connor got a bag to put them in. He got a really big one and to kill it he was smacking it’s head against the rock. I thought that was pretty mean and so did my older cousin Jared so he told Connor to stop it. He did and amazingly the eel was still alive.

In the end they didn’t get any eels. It was so fun at the waterhole and I can’t wait till next time when we go back there.