Hannah’s Blog

During summer on Sunday mornings my Dad wakes me up at 5:00 am to go surfing in Raglan. We put the bags and boards in the car and when we get there we wait for Eric and Richard(Dads friend + Erics dad). I have my dads old board  and we have to walk down a steep hill to get to the beach. My Dad, Eric and Richard go for a surf while I wait for my Dad (and for it to get warmer). When dad comes in he takes me out on my board to give me lessons (I’m not allowed out in Raglan by myself yet). I enjoy surfing and I want to become a really good surfer once I’m older.

I aim to finish work on time.To achieve this I will stay on task and find ways to write faster. I think I have done well on this goal. I can definitly finish work faster than I used to.

 This term I will push myself to keep up with the rest of the band(to learn the band music also).To do this I will practise my flute harder and longer. I think my flute has improved. I need to learn my slurring and high notes but I am doing well.

 This year I also aim to get a honours or distinction in my dancing exams.Which I will achieve by pushing my self . Dancing exams atill haven’t come round.

The first half of this year I aim to become level 3 in maths.To do this I must stay on task. I still have not achieved this goal. It will become one of my Term 3 & 4 goals.

I also want to be able to play softball well by the end of term2 at a maximum.I’m still not to sure how to achieve this. I still can not play softball and the softball season is over.

The Olympics are a series of sport’s that people from around the world compete in. They are held every 4 year’s in a different host country. The Olympics allow other countries to compete without war. An important part is lighting the Olympic torch. It was first lit at the temple of Hera in Greece as a symbol of friendship, competition and love.

The Olympics started (approx) in 776 BC in Greece. They are the most important and valued of the 4 Greek festivals. The Olympics were held in Olympia, Greece in the sanctuary of the god Zeus, at the bottom of the mountain, Mt Kornos. The sports are a religious festival held for Zeus. Only men were allowed to compete in the Olympics. The woman did not; they weren’t even allowed to be spectators. They had a special version of the Olympics called the Heraea in which there were fewer sports than the Olympics. Before the Olympics began the athletes trained for 4-10 months and swear an oath that they were freeborn men and that they would not cheat. The 190 metre sprint was the first sport at the Olympics.  Other sports in the ancient Olympics included horse racing, boxing, pankration, chariot racing, pentathlon, race in amour, wrestling, javelin hurling and the jumping event.  The winners of the Olympics/Heraea were crowned with wild olives and the men got privileges, honors and valuable gifts. In 1900 woman were allowed to enter the Olympics. They were only allowed to enter either golf or tennis but they feared losing their femininity entering the Olympics. The Olympics were eventually stopped in the 4^th century when emperor Theodosius said it was a pagan spectacle.

They started again in 1986 in Athens, after the founding of Olympia. The modern Olympics allowed both genders (woman had made first appearance at Olympics in 1912) to participate in any sport in the Olympics. New sports like synchronized swimming and gymnastics were introduced as well. The Olympics were continued to be held every four years with the commonwealth games and winter Olympics in between. Poor organization and absence of worldwide athletes hampered the Olympic games in St Louis and in Paris. At the turn of the 3^rd millennium 40% of the competitors were woman.  Some sports in the Olympics include swimming, cycling, sprints, high jump and many more.

In between the Olympics the winter games and commonwealth games are held. The common wealth games include sports like the ones in the Olympics. The winter games include games like ice hockey, bobsledding and skiing.

Overall I think the Olympics is a important celebration to Greece and the rest of the world.  It lets countries compete without war and aguments.

Chapter 3

Another week went past after this and Rex was starting to make sounds with his beak. Bob didn’t worry about this because he knew Rex was a special duck. This kept going until one day the sounds began forming into words. 5 weeks after this Rex could say the, first, duck, Jack, Bob, my, Rex, can and many more. Rex’s vocabulary knowledge increased over the month and he could speak fluently with most English. Though Bob shouldn’t be worrying, he was. A talking duck attracted a lot of attention and Rex was becoming stressed. Either something was troubling him or Rex just didn’t enjoy attention.

Bob consulted him that night but the answer he got was not very positive. Rex dragged out a pack of magnet letters to help Bob understand what he was saying. With the letters Rex spelt out a sentence. The words were wobbly and unclear and Bob couldn’t read some. From what Bob could read he got “I come ____ the ____ above. Something is ________ there and I ___ leave you for a _____ to save my country, ______ .”Bob wrote it down to try and find the missing words. While doing this he promised his duck (even though he didn’t know were to go) that he would travel with Rex ’to save his country’.

Bob studied the letters hard and found all of the words except one. “I come from the land above. Something is stirring there and I must leave you from a while to save my country, ______. ” Were Rex came from stayed a mystery until they set of  that night.

Bob and Rex were excited. Rex led Bob to a large cave just on the outskirts of jumble jamble woods. He led Bob deep into the cave and called out in a high pitched quack. The earth suddenly began to rumble and a hole at the back of the cave formed. Rex jumped through. Bob hesitated at first, but jumped through after Rex.

BAZIL 

Years ago my family had a bird called Bazil. He was a green and yellow budgie that enjoyed life until he died. I don’t remember him much but I know he was big. I don’t know if I enjoyed playing with Bazil but we have a dog that is named after our bird Bazil.

NEVILLE

On the 15 of June 2008 I got my very own bird. He is a cockatiel. I wanted to name him after one of the characters in my favourite series of books. Harry Potter. I came up with Potter or Draco than mum suggested Neville. Neville, it seemed, liked the name so I decided on that. He has bright orange cheeks and a grey crest. He is a light grey and has a white stripe down the edge of his wing.

Chapter Two

 The Incident

Having a pet that had supernatural powers was starting to become more and more exciting for Bob. He enjoyed telling the daughters of the farm workers  stories of  his pet, sometimes over exaggerating. But the 3 year old girls were gullible even to believe the more impossible stories.

A year went past and if Bob had an average duck it would most likely be dead. But Rex was special. To celebrate Rex’s 1st birthday Bob threw him a birthday party. Bob’s cats and the other ducks from the stream came. Rex arrived in Bob’s remote control helicopter. They ate raspberry flavour paper and green popcorn. There was a pool and floaters for the younger ducks. At the birthday party a small duckling was learning to swim in the pool when she started to sink under the water from wing cramp. Rex noticed this first and yet again spread his wings and the small duck lifted from the water squirming to get to solid ground.

 The stream was fill of talk about this incident over the week. At a special assembly run by mayor duck. Rex got a silver medal and duck treats.  

This is the first chapter of a story I am writing for a blog post (along with other posts).

Chapter one

On a sunny morning in lollieland a little boy called Bob went out to fish for trout. While he was fishing a storm struck and destroyed the earth. Bob took shelter under a large red rock near the stream/river. Lying down he saw a little duckling waddling over the shaking earth. Risking his life he ran out and carried the little duckling back to the rock. It took an hour for the storm to cease and when it did the ground was unrecognisable. There was no longer a stream but a lake that was ankle deep. A large purple boulder sat were the duckling was an hour ago. But Bob didn’t need to look at the scenery. He ran all the way back to the farm and into the garage. Bob found some old rags and a box scattered on the floor and took them up to his ,now, pigsty bedroom. After placing the duck in the box he ran downstairs to find his grandma dying her hair green. His mum was tidying the lounge and his dad making pancakes with bacon and sushi. Bob started helping his mum tidy the lounge by dusting the pink and purple polka-dot carpet. While he was doing that he told his mum of his duck.

 A week or so later Bob was again fishing with his duck. He had not caught anything yet and was starting to complain to the duck (Rex) about this. In one quick movement Rex suddenly spread his wings and nibbles began vibrating up the rod. Bob jerked the rod over and over again and the fish finally had been caught on the hook. Bob pulled and pulled and a large blue fish the length of the height of a chair broke the waters surface.

Experiences like these continued throughout the next month whenever rex spread his wings. After the 10th time this happened Bob decided that Rex was magic.

Chapter two ?????????????????

On Thursdays each week a group of students attend band. Our school band includes trombones, saxophones, flutes, clarinets, trumpets, cornets, drums/tambourine’s/triangle etc. I’m in school band and play the c flute with 3 other girls in senior band. In senior band we play pieces like Bluesville, Eye of the Tiger and Latin Fire. Junior band have at least 6 flutes and they play pieces like Mickey Mouse Club and Geronimo. Everyone in band takes after-school classes in the studios. I take classes after school at 3:15. At practise we play pieces out of our tutor book like, Grandfathers Clock and Talis Cannon. At the moment the flutes are trying to learn to play Rondo for our exams. A flute is a metal instrument with round keys on top. The keys are padded with a soft material. Under the keys are holes that get covered when you push down the keys. I have a imperial flute that is silver. My friends play the clarinet, cornet, saxophone or trombone. Our school band has been to totara springs band camp and we will be going to a band festival soon. We also are playing at the opening of our tech-art block in term3. I’m only year 7 but so far I have enjoyed band greatly especially totara springs. Band is the best thing I have signed up for this year. Flute is a cool instrument but next year Ill probably play the saxophone.

I had just come back from Totara springs and I was about to compete against the top readers in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty region in the annual kids literature quiz. Our school had entered two teams of four into the competition:team one Briar, Lizzie, Ivan, Zac and team two: me, Hayley, Megan and Gregory. I got ready to go and when 4:50 or so struck mum drove me to my school (Tai). Here I met the rest of my team and found out who the captains were. Hayley was our teams captain and Lizzie was team ones captain. The last person to arrive was Briar and then we were off. We stopped at McDonald’s for dinner and then, it happened. As we drove off one of the doors on the car wasn’t shut properly so we stopped and Mrs Bethell got out to shut it properly. When Mrs Shaw had stopped she had parked behind another van(she did not notice ) and when this van tried to pull out it backed into us. We all screamed as the van hitting us rocked the school van causing us to hold on to our dinners. We traveled the rest of the way to St Paul’s church, some of us in shock. We got there and began setting up. There was lots of teams there like, Tauranga Intermediate and Rotoroa. First we needed to select a category that would be our double up category. Then we were instructed to write each category on the numbered pages, one catagory per page. Surprisingly, we weren’t nervous when the competition started. The first category was cetaceans(whales and dolphins). The ‘quiz-master’asked us questions about stories of whales and dolphins and we done quite well. We handed in our answers and it was time for a question for the audience. The ‘quiz-master ‘ asked the audience a question and someone from the audience answered it. They got a 10 dollar voucher and a book of their choice. Then it was the 5 dollar question for the kids. The person who got the question right won 5 dollars.

 The next category was on constructions. Our team done fine on the catagory. After handing in our sheet and done the questions we started the next category, creatures. after doing well in this one we were starting to regret putting our double up on magic. We started and ended the last two categories (before interval) elephants and dragons. Interval lasted around quarter of an hour before the last 5 categories.

The second half of the game started with catagory the galaxy followed  by Maori (by now we were completely regretting picking magic) magic, powers and spiders. We scraped a poor score of 4 or so for magic which was not great compered to the other scores we got. After about five minutes of waiting in silence the ‘quiz-master’ announced the winners. I cant remember 3rd or 2nd prize but first prize came as a real shock, tauranga intermediate. Now if your wondering why it came as a real shock and surprised me (i think) my cousins attend that school. So for me all hope is not lost. We went home knowing we were some the best readers in Waikato and Bay of Plenty.

On Tuesday the 8th of April rooms 3 and 7 went on camp to Ohope for the week. The ride to Ohope took around two hours not including the stop at lake oakitina for lunch and a bush walk.When we got to camp everyone found there cabins and explored the camp grounds. After about 20 minutes we went down to the beach across the road. We stayed at the beach  for about 45 minutes and went back to camp. Then we all grabbed our togs and went down to the pools ,the hydro slide there was booked so everyone who wanted to go got a turn. When we got back it was late and we were all hungry but dinner wasn’t ready yet but after a while we were eating spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. The next day we had breakfast and headed out for the days activities. Room 7 split into three groups with each heading to either kayaking wharf fishing or Shelley bay(they would rotate through the day). Room 3 split into there car groups and went to the high ropes.Then after four hours at the high ropes room 3 went to the amazing maze in maize. when we got back to camp we went to the pools again. when we got back we had chicken pumpkin and potatoes for dinner. The next day we had breakfast and split into our classes. Room 7 were doing the high ropes and the maze. Room 3 split into three activity groups and went to either fishing kayaking or Shelley bay. At fishing many people caught a fish and we saw rock pools at Shelley bay. That night we went to the hot pools and we had a barbecue there. The next day was a day of traveling and SLEEPING.