This blog is to share some of our learning. We would love your feedback by making comments. To leave a comment all you have to do is click on Comments at the bottom of each blog post.
Now we moved on to visit London. We spent today having a guided tour of the Tower of London. I was expecting more of a tower but it was more castle like really. We were very impressed with it. The Tower was very beautiful really and just dripping with history of queens being beheaded and traitors being cut up in bits and spread over town. England has a pretty bloodthirsty but entertaining history.
Miss K and Tiny Ted are on a bit of a world tour and the first stop is Hong Kong- we enjoyed a trip by junk out on the harbour.
Tiny Ted had to hold is breath with all the smog- but it was a great view over central Hong Kong from the very top of Victoria Peak. You get there by going up a very steep cable car.
At night they have this really awesome light show where a whole heap of skyscrapers all light up in time to music. Here is a photo of me waiting for the display to start.
To give an idea of how many skyscrapers there are I took this photo from out in the middle of the harbour. Hong Kong has 7 million people living in it and they just about all live in buildings like these!
This is Tasman school playing maths games.
Were practising basic facts. Today a small group of children at Tasman School tried their hand at blogging. This is the first time we have had guest bloggers on our blog.
This is Tasman School practising for the Athletics day.
SUPERMAN !!!!!!!!
Here is Miss K down in Christchurch for a computer conference. I made a poster to share the sorts of things we do in our classroom.
Sooo cute. Here is a Baby Animals Alphabet link I am sure you will enjoy that gives you the all the animals in alphabetical order.
Sausalito was a lovely smaller centre on the coast without the feel of noise like downtown- it reminded me a little of Day's Bay in Wellington with all the craft shops and the like.
We caught the ferry back into the city. Here is me with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.
Little Mini-Dylan is enjoying the trip with me. Today the Adobe Summit starts and work begins.
After that adventure we started to chat with a couple of nice policeman. From TV shows we get in NZ you would think that USA policemen would be mean types but these guys were very happy to chat and laugh.
And then I started chatting to a very talkative homeless guy who was going to college and waiting for subsidised housing. I was evidently sitting in the his spot on some steps taking a rest from all the sightseeing.
We were suprised at how together this homeless guy was and wondered why he was spending his days asking for money on the streets and going through rubbish bins and sleeping in doorways. He said he was a US armed forces veteran waiting for subsidised housing. I hope he gets it soon. He seemed like a nice person.
We enjoyed wandering through China Town as well. Mini-Dylan enjoyed chatting with some very pretty Chinese ladies. Chinatown is full of bustle and noise.
Today we did the tourist bus thing around San Francisco on an open top double decker bus.It was a great tour and we learnt a lot about the city and ists past from his talk. I took lots and lots of photos from the bus as it went over the Golden Gate Bridge and when I get on a decent internet connection I will post the video. Here am I at one end of the bridge looking back over the city views.
Then it was off for a spot of shopping- you should see this one shop called Nostrum Westfield. It was HUGE with nine floors of shopping and interlinked escalators all over the place.
THEN- I saw the big APPLE and a queue of people waiting to get an iPhone. I went inside and spoke to an Apple Genius- that is what their job is called. He helped me buy an 8GB iP od Touch- it is SO cool.
I can't wait to surf the internet from it through a wireless connection.
I have never crossed the international date line before and will cross the equator into the northern hemisphere some time on our trip across the Pacific Ocean. Remember our study Comparing Hemisphere's from last year.
Well now I will get to see for myself what the the northern hemisphere is like- I will look for swirling water, gravity, where the sun is in the sky and what the seasons will be like. Here is a photo of me at Sydney airport with a visual dictionary of Aussie words. It made us laugh.
We booked the cheapest flights we could which meant I had to fly to Auckland, then to Sydney and then the last leg to San Francisco. The plane is packed full of people all trying to sleep sitting upright- we have seen three stink movies in a row so I thought I would start a blog post and hopefully will get the opportunity to post it when we get to America!
Fellow teacher, Colin, from Marina View School in Auckland and I are on an adventure to
fly to San Francisco to represent New Zealand at the Adobe Educational Leaders' Summit
next week.
We are flying over early so we can have a bit of a good look around before the
summit starts.
Mini-Dylan is on this adventure with me and we hope to get out and about seeing some of
the sights and sounds of the big city.
Mini-Dylan had a quick Budweiser beer to quench his thirst as it is summer in San Francisco, California.
Any questions you want to ask or things you would like me to do write them in the
comments and I will see what I can do.
The next few days are open as to what we want to to but on Monday we intend to hire
push bikes and bike over the Golden gate bridge and get a boat back to the city- that
sounds like a fun idea. I want to go shopping in a big department store, maybe go to
Yosemite National Park and generally soak up the atmosphere of being in a totally
different culture. I have been to Australia a few times before and it feels like when I visit I
am visiting my cousin- staying in America is really new territory for me.
Cuddly Kiwi, a cousin of Mini-Dylan and Mr H are on a global journey to a really big computer conference in San Antonio in Texas, USA. They stop at a Starbucks for a quick coffee along the way. They heard that Tiny Ted has been sighted and we hope to have some photos before too long.
They all got into the airport at around 7.15pm Central Standard Time
Enough time to fire off this blog post before looking to eat! 
Cuddly Kiwi and Mini Dylan 'The Dragon' have a quick chat while preparing their journey to NECC08 in San Antonio on Saturday 28th June. They have let Paul into some of their travel plans, however some things they are keeping very much to themselves.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is something that you can recognise all over the world. Mini-Dylan found a good spot to look at the view.
Mini-Dylan and I posed in front of the Sydney Opera House. It is a magnificent building.
We walked through the Botanic Gardens and Mini-Dylan liked this puff-ball plant as their colours matched perfectly.
On the way home we stopped at a wonderful viewing spot for a look at the Opera House at sunset from across the harbour. Miss K couldn't resist taking this video to show her day.
Mini-Dylan and Miss K are in Sydney and we are at an Adobe Educational Leaders get together. Adobe is paying for it and we are very exciting.
We are going to be learning more about lots of exciting things that we can use in the classroom and to communicate with other children and teachers around the world. We have just been given a set of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection which is a heap of extra cool software applications- all for free.
Today Allanah, our ICT facilitator, came into Room 1 to teach Miss W and us how to make a slideshow in Kidpix, using photos. We are going to make a slideshow about Wild Hair Day all by ourselves. Today we made a background for our page. Look at how clever we are.
Kieran has recently blogged about his new boat that he built. He made it out of wood, fishing line, Coke bottles, corks, fabric and string. Very cool Kieran.
I now have my own blog thanks to Miss K.
Do you know how much it weighs. It said 17 pounds. A lot, eh?
AND we got up to a little bit of hunting as well. We caught 3 BOARS. I don't know how much but I think around 1oo pounds but the pig that is only a head was only about 50. 
It is great to see Braden still blogging on our Blogmeister blog- Braden has great computer skills and is a wonderful teacher on how to podcast. He is also a great rugby player.
Posts
All Comments
