Auckland and more!

Thursday and Friday I had full control of my class. I felt nervous, but after a conversation with my teacher about other student teachers she had before I felt a bit better! She told me she has never had an American student teacher, but many New Zealand student teachers. She also told me that I'm her more prepared student teacher and she can tell I'm ready to have my own classroom! That's always a nice thing to hear! I'm writing unit plans now for the rest of my teaching and the term. When I leave on April 18th, the term ends and the students have a 2 week break. Unlike America, the student go to school year round and have 2 week breaks through out the year and a month off for Christmas, which they call summer holiday. Friday was Wheels Day at school. The student brought bikes, scooters, skateboards and roller blades to school to use at lunch time. Although it was a bit crazy and I don't think anything like this could happen in the US, it was really fun and I even rode on a few scooters!

This weekend I went on a bus tour around Auckland. We went to the top of the Sky Tower, which is the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere. It was beautiful to look out and see the city and harbour. After we had pizza for lunch. (I've been eating a lot of pizza here, but it is not like pizza at home!) Next we went to Kelly Tarltons Underwater World. We saw penguins, and a HUGE sting ray. A woman was in the tank and telling us all about them. One even splashed me! the best part was walking through the tunnels and having sharks, fish and sting rays swimming around me. I tried to take pictures, but they did not come out so well! I'll be posting up more pictures at school tomorrow. We also went to the Auckland Museum. It had tons of Maori artifacts, a area all about volcanoes, information and items from the World Wars and even dinosaur bones. The best was the volcano exhibit that simulated what would happen if a volcano erupted in Auckland. I went into a room that was set up like a living room in a home. The TV was on and there was a "view" of the harbour. You see the volcano erupt and the house shakes and all the lights go off. It was kinda scary, but I felt OK knowing a volcano hasn't erupted in this area in over 600 years.
Tonight I am going to a BBQ with all the other students from Oakland. I am bringing my diet coke cake which is in the oven right now.