Character Traits

Happiness

Happiness came to life as a beautiful girl a very long time ago. No one knows when happiness was born but what they do know is that she was the little girl of Love and Handsomeness.

Happiness is not Love and Handsomeness’ only child. Happiness also has a younger sister whose name is Fun.

Happiness has a large power on everyone in this world, even the animals. Happiness comes to people when they are not feeling good or when they’re sad. Happiness also comes to you when someone tells you a joke or does something funny.

Sadness takes over when Happiness is not close to you. Happiness tries her hardest to not let that happen but even she can’t get to everyone at one time. She is fighting a constant battle with sadness that neither of them will ever win.

Happiness lives in the thin narrow streets at the back of the town where all the really rich people live. She has chosen to live in that particular place since many rich people are often sadder than other people. Her house is single storey and is the second smallest on her street. Her house is filled with character, light, colour, music and surrounded by large grand exotic trees. She does not have a car; instead she uses a beam of light so that she can visit the largest possible amount of people in one day.

Happiness has worked at a counselling service for a while and everyone felt that she was so skilled that when she wanted to leave the other employees almost persuaded her to stay there. Eventually she did give up that job and she has never worked again since. She decided that work was to exhausting for her and she knew that she would make the people happy without working for the counselling service (so in effect working on her own, not working for someone else).

Nowadays Happiness is often seen comforting sad people as she has always been doing but now she always wears a big smile except when she does not feel happy at all (although this does not happen very often!). Additionally she wears the trend ‘show your true colours’ which simply uses lots of bright colours and also reflects her attitude. She hardly ever has to pay for her clothes as she simply makes the cashier and the staff at the shop happy when they try to get her to pay. This almost always works as the people at the stores are almost always unhappy as they are complaining about not getting enough pay and because they have had too many grumpy customers. Since happiness is only one person she often has trouble reaching all the needy individuals. Therefore she has teamed up with the only other people who can actually consistently improve people’s mood. Her other team mates are Humour, Fun and Love. Because of that she can now once again completely fulfil her task.

My French play

Zac : Bonjour la classe, maintenant nous nous présenterons

Greg : Je m’appelle Greg .  J’ai douze ans

Johannes : je m’appelle Johannes.   J’ai douze ans.

Zac : Merci, je m’appelle monsieur Watson.  J’ai trente ans.

Zac : Maintenant nous aurons un jeu sur les personnes célèbres

D’abord, qui est ceci ?

Greg : Barack Obama !

Oui !

Maintenant, qui est ceci ?

Johannes : Clef de John !

Oui!

Maintenant, qui est ceci ?

Johannes : Le pape !

Oui!

Qui est ceci ?

Greg : Helen Clark !

Maintenant, pour notre question finale, qui est ceci ?

Greg& Johannes : M. Mcabe !

Zac : aujourd’hui est mon anniversaire

Greg and Johannes : joyeux anniversaire !

Zac leaves the room

Johannes: Greg cue qui est. la date aujourd’hui?

Greg: le neuf juin

Johannes: OH

Greg : avez-vous des animaux ?

Johannes: oui, j’ai deux chien.

Johannes : etwa ?

Greg: oui, j’ai un chat

Greg: un perruche ! ! !

We leave the room to look at the parrot

My Film Review

The Devils Arithmetic

Director: Donna Deitch

Hannah Stern is a thirteen year old girl sitting in a tattoo salon with her friends trying to decide which tattoo she is going to get when she realises she is late. She is late for the Passover celebration party which her parents have forced her to go to. The Passover party is held at her Aunt Eva’s house. Every time Aunt Eva sees Hannah she says exactly the same thing, “Every time I see you, you look more like her. The shape of your mouth the colour of your eyes, you’re blessed with her beauty.”She says this because Hannah is named after a Hannah who was Aunt Eva’s cousin and got killed in a gas chamber at a Nazi concentration camp.

At this Passover celebration Hannah is volunteered to open the door for the rabbi. When she does this she mysteriously goes to the time when the Hannah she was named after lived. In fact she is now the earlier Hannah. She takes part in the life of Rivkah who is Aunt Eva as a child. She is totally confused because she had a bad fever and does not know what has just happened. They are just getting ready to go to a wedding in the town. While they are celebrating the Nazis arrive in their big trucks and so round up all the people and herd them into them. From there on they go to a Nazi concentration camp where they have to work really hard and live in appalling conditions. This goes on for a couple of years and in that time one of the ladies has had a baby and some of the men tried to escape and then got hung for trying. In the end the people are brought to a concrete room underground in the forest where they have to undress and then go into the room. The door then gets shut and then the Nazis open a hatch at the top and pour in Zyklon B pellets and then the people start coughing and in ten minutes they are dead. Then the movie goes back to the Passover party where Hannah is lying in a bed and wakes up. She then calls Aunt Eva Rivkah and they have a little private talk about how she knows that. The last scene in the movie is of the whole family having fun and enjoying their Passover party.

This is a deeply moving, well filmed video based on the actions of the Nazis in the holocaust. It plays from 1941 to the end of the war and is very true to life from what I know about the holocaust. There are numerous sad occasions in the movie which help to make it a pretty good movie taking in account the subject it is based on. It builds up quite a bit of suspense sometimes although it is quite predictable on occasions. It is a good length as it is approximately 90 minutes as I find that movies over two hours often get a bit boring but movies that are under 1 hour are two short and frequently leave people with questions. There are quite a few well filmed parts that really showed how gruesome and mean the Nazis really were.

It often features quite dark scenes and so I found it was a little hard to see sometimes. In addition I couldn’t always follow the movie sometimes because it played over several years and it wasn’t always obvious when the years switched. I also did not know what happened when Hannah goes through time and ends up in 1941 and it took me a while to grasp the fact that she had gone through time. In my opinion there is some music that does not fit to the scenes in the movie and sometimes there is some meaningless video. There was one major fault that I noticed though and that was that when the people had to undress to go into the gas chamber they all looked well fed and were not at all malnourished.

Inter-Islander

Her pointy bow slices through the waves.

Her hull is rusting as salt spray flies past.

The ship speeds through the beautiful Marlborough sounds.

She rocks in the water as if she’s sending a baby to sleep.

Inside there is an abundance of sleeping people.

The music of arcade machines is blaring into the room.

Voices of children playing can be heard.

We are playing cards or on arcade machines.

It is Room 3-traveling to Picton.

 

By Johannes

Capital E ONTV

Capital E ONTV

 

 

Starting countdown 5…4…3…2…1… videotape is now on.This is at Capital E’s ONTV childrens TV studio and it is the start of the second and final copy of our ‘this is your life’ show. I am sitting in front of the sound desk preparing to change the sound that gets recorded from the channel where the sound for the introductory credits comes through on to channel 3 for the microphone which our presenter Hayley Kay is holding. So now, I have to change it to channel four for Kara’s microphone. Hey! Why is there no sound coming through? I’ve already got the volume on full so why is there no sound??? Oh, I know she’s got the microphone with the on/off switch and she’s forgotten to turn it on! “Michelle, could you tell Oskar to tell Kara to turn the microphone on and then start again?” Ok good, now it’s working. Anyway, let’s get on with the show.After that I make it so that channels 1 and 2 on air at the same time for Hayley and Briar’s lapel microphones as Briar tells Hayley about this story in her life about how she met her husband who later died in the war.Now I have to change it to change it to channel four again but this time Alice Brown (Jazmine) is interviewing Brooke Smith (Kara) in the Himalayas. They talk about how Brooke met Briar and what happened then.After that it is again channels 1 and 2 for Hayley and Briar but this time they talk about a story from Briar’s school days. It is about  these bullies that always stole her lunch money and sometimes even beat her up. In they end they bully her so much that she punches one of the in the nose and breaks it. But the upside to that is that the bullies never bothered her again.Next it is channel 3 for when Lizzy and Nicky are acting out a scene at the disco where they crash into each other and then call each other a jerk.Second to last it is channels 1 and 2 again for the end of the show where Hayley hands Briar a copy of her own life and then it is the end of the show.Last of all it is channel 8 for the ending credits and we all then come out and get shown behind the writing.I think this was a great experience going to ONTV and I would like to do it again any time soon. I also learnt quite a few things at ONTV for example how to operate a sound desk and lots more.

My book review

Sitting On the Fence

ISBN: 9781869437480

Published:  26 February 2007 by Scholastic

Author:  By Nagelkerke, Bill

Series: My Story

Genre: Diary

Amount of pages: 197

 

Sitting on the fence is the fictional diary of Martin Daly and is based in Christchurch. It is about the springbok tour in 1981 and all the protests about it. It starts off at New Year and continues till almost the end of the year. Martin Daly’s dad is a rugby fan but his sister Sarah (who is 19) is part of the protests. Martin and his Mum are ‘sitting on the fence’ which means that they haven’t made up their mind and are sort of in between. After a short time Sarah leaves the house because she and her Dad were always arguing. As the protests increase Martin and his Mum both find themselves going to the protests with Sarah. This causes the whole family to split up as Martin’s mum moves to live with her Aunty and only Martin still lives with his Dad. The protests increase even more – so far that in Hamilton someone actually stole a plane from the airport and started to do nose-dives into the stadium and back out again. After that the police called the game off and the pilot flew the plane back to Hamilton airport and no-one was hurt. In the end everything is good and the family comes together again.

I enjoyed this book because of its diary form and because it also gives you quite a bit of historical background to do with the events described in the book. I thought it was well written as it can be quite hard to write a book in diary form without it getting boring. Also I liked the topic choice and how it plays among a family, their friends and school. Unlike the other book in the ‘My story’ series that I have read this book was not at all repetitive which in my opinion was pretty good.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the title ‘Sitting On The Fence’ doesn’t actually have much to do with the books subject. But, as you will have noticed in the first paragraph it comes from the time when Martin and his Mum are ‘sitting on the fence’. This title is why I hadn’t read the book yet as the title ‘sitting on the fence’ sounded a bit boring.

 I didn’t like the fact that although the diary is meant to go for a year it starts in January but then instead of ending in December it ends in October. I would have liked to find out what happens to the family in the remaining three months of the year.

I would give this book a 9/10 rating and recommend it to anyone from the age of 11 onwards.

Supermarket Opens After Twenty Years

 

Thousands came, and thousands of others had to be turned away, as Pak ‘n Save finally opened its doors in North Shore City after nearly 20 years of trying.”The crowd was just incredible, and I had to give up looking for a car park after waiting for about half an hour,” said shopper Bee Keng Koh.Another, Nancy Cohan, said she had to queue for 20 minutes at the checkout, but the low prices “definitely made it worth it”.Foodstuffs bought the Wairau Rd land in 1989 and has been waiting to open a store ever since. It received resource consent in October 2004 and the building was completed in 2005. But rival chain Progressive Enterprises challenged Foodstuffs’ resource consent, and the result was a prolonged court battle.As well as Pak ‘n Save, Foodstuffs runs the New World and Four Square chains.Foodstuffs says the new supermarket has created 250 jobs.

I think this is a disgrace and I would like it if Progressive Enterprises would not always object to another supermarket in their vicinity although they are their competitor. From the cases that I know of Foodstuffs has always won the legal battle that Progressive Enterprises started. Also, the same is happening here where I live where Foodstuffs wants to start building a Pak N’ Save but because of Progressive Enterprises arguments Foodstuffs hasn’t got the resource consent so it can start building the supermarket. In my town this has now been going on for at least five years and Foodstuffs still hasn’t been allowed to build anything yet. I hope that Foodstuffs will get the resource consent and in five to ten years we may also be able to enjoy the pleasure of having Pak N’ Saves’ low prices in our town too.

Wellington Camp!

 

On the 29th of March 28 students from Room 3 at Te Awamutu Intermediate School left to go on a class camp to Wellington. We left at 8:30 on Sunday morning for the 8 hour trip to Wellington. On the way there we stop at the Waiouru Army Museum to have lunch and to look around it. It is built in the surrounds of the Waiouru Army training grounds and it is based on World War Two. After lunch we continued on our trip to Wellington. When we arrived in Wellington we had to unpack our bags and get settled in to our cabins and make our bed. After that we had an hour and a half of free time to go on the jumping pillow at our camping ground or to stay in our cabins and play cards etc.

Day 2

The next day at 6:30 we got woken up to have breakfast at 7:00 to go to the Karori Wildlife Reserve at 8:30. At the Karori Wildlife Reserve we had a program about pests and the fence as the Karori Wildlife Reserve is a forest area with a difference. It is fenced out to keep native animals in and pests out to help with conservation efforts in New Zealand. After that we went to the Weta Cave which is the place where they made the characters for the Lord of the Rings, Jane and the Dragon etc. after that we went to the water front to have lunch and then we went in to the national museum – Te Papa. Te Papa is a huge multi-storey museum with heaps of exhibitions for example the colossal squid, the interactive our country exhibit and the matter exhibit where it talked about the inside of the earth and the sun. After that we went to the Capital E Soundhouse which is a place where you can make your own music and your own music video in 3 and a half hours which you then get to take home after that. When we got back to the camping ground we had dinner and had our shower and went to bed.

Day 3

On day three we had to get up at six o clock as we had to leave for the ferry terminal to go to Picton at seven thirty. Our ship the Kaitaki left perfectly on time at 8:45 and we got settled in to the lounge for our three hour trip to Picton. Once we were in Picton we had two hours to go round it and have a look at Picton. It was the first time I had been in the south island in at least nine years! After having a good look around Picton and getting slightly wet (as it was raining) we went back to the ferry terminal and waited for our other ship the Arahura to arrive so that we could go on it and get settled in to the front lounge. We chose the front lounge so that we could get a good view of where we were going and that was also good as it was a bit rough and I was feeling a bit sick so it was good that I could see where we were going. At 5:30 we were finally back from Picton and I was very tired after sitting in a ferry for six hours with only a two hour rest in between.

Day four

On Wednesday we got up at the normal time-6:30 to have break fast at 7:00. At eight o’clock we left to go the Westpac Stadium (or ‘the Cake Tin’ as it is often called) for a detailed tour. After that we went to the St Pauls Cathedral and got shown around the attic of the cathedral and in the bell tower. There are sixteen bells in the bell tower altogether weighing just under six tonnes. After that we went to Parliament and we saw John Key, Helen Clarke and other MP’s. After that we went to the New Dowse art gallery to have a look at some of the art inside. And after that we went to H20 Extreme in upper Hutt to have some fun there. By the time we got back to our camping ground that night it was already almost 8:00 and so we could go straight to the dining room to have dinner.

Day 5

On day five we went to the WW1 museum in Wellington to have a look at the exhibits inside. After that we went to the Wellington Museum of City and Sea for a show to do with the Wahine. The Wahine is the ship that went down in the Wellington Harbour in 1968 with the loss of 51 lives. After that we went to have lunch and then we went to Capital E for our session in the ONTV studio. The ONTV studio is a TV studio for children where we made a TV show similar to the this is your life show on TV. The shows made at Capital E are not put on TV but you get to take them home on a DVD. This was the last thing we did in Wellington. After that we went back to our camping ground and had dinner and packed our bags ready to leave Wellington the next day.

Day 6

This was the day that we left Wellington. Again we got up really early so that we could leave by about 7:15 so that we could get to school before the end of school.

I think this was the best school camp ever and I would like to do it again.

By Johannes

 

 

 

Sayonara Party

Last night I went to the Sayonara party at Te Awamutu Intermediate to farewell the Japanese students from Makuhari High School in Japan after their 12 day long stay in New Zealand( Sayonara means good-bye in Japanese). It was a night where the Kapa Haka performed, the Japanese students played the recorder, danced and sang songs. after that there was supper where every one was required to bring a plate of food Also, at about the same time the Japanese introduced some traditional Japanese games, and they also wrote out your name in Japanese.

Makuhari Students

On Saturday the students from Makuhari Senior high school in Japan arrived at school. I have got a billet myself, his name is Ryosuke and he is living with us until Thursday. Altogether 27 students come to our school for 11 days and there are about two per classroom. Today they are going to Rotorua to see the hot pools and go in the Agrodome where you can go in a zorb which is a ball which you go in and it rolls down a hill. They have already been to Te Awamutu Primary school and to Hamilton to go horse riding and shopping. On Monday they are going to the kiwi house which is a bird house where you can see all sorts of native birds including the Kiwi which is New Zealands national emblem and they are also going to the Waitomo caves.