Everest
I am the mountain
Everest
More mountainous than all
Tiny people stab with their toothpicks
Nothing but annoyances
for the king of the pae maunga
I am the mountain
Everest
Loneliness haunts me
No one understands a giant
I have stood for centuries
The heavens gifting me blankets of ice
Covering my remote, rocky, rugged skin
The loneliness is unnerving
Tallest of the pae maunga
Above the billowing clouds.
When I breathe,
freezing gusts throw climbers off my shoulder
Into the abyss
Endless skies lay a blanket of cold on me.
I am above the world
In the shadow of no one
Watching time go by at my feet
Cloze Term 3
The Hare and the Tortoise
Looking at Insects
Teacher Takeaways
Everyone needs a break, including teachers. Our teacher should take us to Japan for one week. Everyone needs a holiday and Japan would give us an amazing cultural experience beyond the bounds of New Zealand. There would also be learning involved about Japanese culture.
Everyone Needs A Break!
Do you really like teaching and learning for 10 weeks without a break? I believe we should go on a break with our class to Japan. It will be exhilarating and an acceptable break for the children and even the teacher. My cousin went over to Japan during the school holidays and he said that it was an enjoyable and entertaining experience. Imagine having a hard day at school and then your teacher says, do you want to go to Japan? Yes!? Then they hand out notices to get signed by the parents. It would light their heart a blaze to make sure their parents signed it.
An Amazing Experience!
Japan is a very sophisticated country. There are unwritten rules such as: no eating in very public spaces, silence while on public transport, and no blowing your nose in public. All of those things are considered rude and disrespectful. There are also many different cities that we will go to. Sapporo has amazing ski resorts, Nagano has the snow monkeys, and the Fushimi Inari shrine has over 1000 torii gates! All of these places are memorable in the best way possible. I (Chase) loved my visit to Japan and I strongly believe that our class would love this visit just as much.
Learning About Japanese Culture!
Who doesn’t want to learn about Japanese culture! Japanese culture is a very interesting topic. There are many different celebrations and traditions. Setsubun is a day celebrating spring, during this celebration you eat as many beans as you are old. Another popular celebration is Shogatsu, the Japanese new year. You celebrate the New Year by visiting shrines, eating special foods, and visiting family. You can learn so much just by being around the culture, this is another reason why our class should visit Japan.
Including the break, experience and the culture, who wouldn’t want to go to Japan. I strongly believe that our class needs an exhilarating break such as Japan, which would really benefit the students and teachers.
Kea – Alpine Taonga
https://wilderlife.nz/2017/03/a-century-of-kea-quotes/
Which of these quotes do you think is the most positive and which do you think is the most negative? Why?
Most Positive Quote: ‘It is hard to conjure up an image of New Zealand’s mountains without them – these rough, tough parrots with an eye for the main chance, delighting everyone with their monkey-like antics. But they have a dark side: these inquisitive, playful jokers, it seems, are also feathered devils.’
I believe that this quote is the most positive because the writer had a lot of things to say about the kea; he knows that the New Zealand mountains wouldn’t be the same without the Kea.
Most Negative Quote: ‘Kea added variety to camp life. They ate a crampon strap, chewed the tongue out of my boot, and generally tore holes in my tent. We killed two of the younger birds and ate them in a succulent stew of garlic and rice.’
I think that this quote is the most negative because they ate the youngest kea. I know that the kea are a pain in the butt but you don’t have to eat them to get back at them.
‘I once tried to dry out my socks on a mountain ledge. A kea grabbed one of them. It was over the edge as I caught the other end of the sock. After a tussle it let go, but for half an hour afterwards it circled in noisy protest. All it said was “kea-ar, kea-ar,” but the tone would have made a policeman blush.’
This quotation put an image in my mind because of the mountain ledge. I am imagining a massive cliff with a guy trying to stay on the ledge while also keeping hold of a sock that an Evil kea is pulling on.
I think that wonton destruction is destruction without thought. People who don’t like kea are the ones who are hunting these fun loving birds for money. They don’t care about where the kea live, they just want to eliminate these amusing birds.
People consider kea to be feathered devils because they steal things, they are merciless with who they mess with, and they break your stuff which is not good if you are climbing a mountain.
Kea
Mysterious, majestic, magical mountains
Where kea has made his base
An unsuspecting tramper
Who is going to lose his shoelace
Kea shoots down, fast as a jet
To snatch the shoelace up
The tramper is smart,
seeing the threat
Slowly starts to back up
Kea laughing with all his might
tries to stop and quickly takes flight
a shoe flying upward
at lightning speed
But
down
the
mountain
the shoe starts to recede
– Chase