Waitomo Glowworm Caves

On Saturday we woke up early and headed to Waitomo to see the glowworm caves.  The drive was about two and a half hours with amazing landscape.  In New Zealand they don’t really believe in altering the landscape for roads so almost all of them are curvy and hilly.  On the way we also got to see a Maori burial sight, the Maori people bury their loved ones hills.

  

When we got to the caves we checked in and we went to the Ruakuri Cave. 

According to Maori legend, Ruakuri Cave (‘rua’ meaning den, and ‘kuri’ meaning dog) was first discovered 400-500 years ago by a young Maori hunting for birds. He was attacked by wild dogs just outside the original cave entrance and so he threw the birds he had caught and returned to the tribe empty handed.  We were told that when he returned to the tribe with no birds and explained what happened the Chief told them to kill the dogs and bring them back to him for supper.  So he did, the dogs were thought to be good luck so their chief and his worriers were buried in the cave entrance, and now that original entrance is tapu or sacred.

Because of this we entered though another entrance that was man made.  We walked down a huge spiral and at the bottom was a bolder of sandstone, with water dripping on it from high above.  This was to demonstrate the effect water has on sandstone and show how underwater rivers would have created the caves.  At the end of our journey though this cave we all washed our hands in this water as to leave all parts of the cave in the cave as well as to show respect for the Chief and warriors buried in the cave. 
 

Our tour guide though this cave was awesome.  She was full of knowledge and excited to talk about the caves.  We learned that glowworms are actually insect larvae that glow through bioluminescence.  These larvae are found all over New Zealand but nowhere else are there so many because all of the conditions are right.  We learned that the brightest glowworms are the hungriest and the attract other insects to eat with their light.  Once they turn into a fly they only have about three days to mate and lay eggs before they die of starvation because the fly doesn’t have a digestive tract.  

Then we went to the Aranui Cave.  It is named after Ruruku Aranui, the local Maori man who first discovered this previously hidden gem back in 1910.  Aranui Cave has a natural cave entrance and is the smallest and most delicate of Waitomo's three main caves. As a dry cave without a river running through it, it houses very little life past its entrance.    

 

         

The last cave we went to was the Waitomo Glowworm Cave; unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures in this cave.  But we got to walk though a bit and then we got into a small metal boat and floated down this river through the cave and up on the ceiling were thousands of glowworms.  It was so crazy they looked fake but they weren’t!  It was so cool!

                                         

My New School – Daily Routine

I have been in school almost two weeks now and I am learning a lot.  School is similar and very different all at the same time.  Students are very polite and respectful all of the time.  At my school students have uniforms and for term one and four everyone has to wear sandals to and from school each day.  The funny thing is that once students get to school in the morning they take off their sandals, put them under their desk neatly and that is where they stay for the rest of the day.  Students don’t even wear anything on their feet for Sport of PE!! 

Our daily schedule is something like this:

8:30am students sit quietly and write in their diaries (planners)

8:35am we call roll and announcements.

8:45am block one begins.

-Block one is always maths, reading, and sometimes sport.

9:45am students return to their classroom and we have reading.  

10:30am we have morning tea.  Students take their snack outside and teachers go have a break in the lounge.  We are also told of any new announcements at this time.  The school is required to provide teachers with a hot beverage (tea, coffee, or hot chocolate) everyday.

11:00am block two begins

-Block two is writing, ALJ (Authentic Learning Journey), health, sport, or Tech.  During tech the whole syndicate (4 classes) go to either music, art, dance/drama, foods, hard materials, or graphic design.  The students are all mixed up and rotate every 5-6 weeks.  

12:30pm Lunch

1:30pm Block three begins

-Block three is ALJ, health, Sport, or writing.

2:45pm Afternoon routine.

3:00pm Home Time

We also have an assembly every week wither on Monday or Friday depending if it is a full assembly or just a year seven assembly.  The students walk in silently and sit in perfect silent rows, I experienced this for the first time last week and I was shocked!

I mentioned syndicate.  In my school there are 15 year seven classes and 15 year eight classes.  There are just under 1,000 students at my school, between 30 and 35 in each class.  Each syndicate is made up of three or four classes of either year seven or year eight.  These teachers meet several times a week and share planning, they take turns preparing units, and collaborating on whatever they are doing at the moment.  The teachers in my syndicate are a lot of fun! 

I will leave you with that for now, let me know if you have any questions.

Auckland Zoo

 

On Sunday Laura and I went to the Auckland Zoo.  It was an amazing zoo because it was very natural with plants and trees everywhere.  I was also surprised by the lack of fences on many exhibits.  Obviously some animals had more of an enclosure than others but not nearly as much as in zoos that I have been to in the United States.    

When you first walk in there was a huge metal elephant!  I was so excited about it so I had to get my picture under it.  Then we got to see the giraffes, it was feeding time and they were letting people feed them but we were just a bit to late to get to try.

Then we walked around to see the rhinoceros, they were so close to us I bet we were less then 20 feet away.  Then Burma the elephant was next.  Since elephants are very social animals and the other elephant died in 2009 Burma gets a lot of extra attention.  She gets to take walks around the zoo with her trainers, we got to see her out, and paints regularly.   

We saw the baboons and there were several very small babies.  There were tons of animal statues and a really cool kids playground.  They even had a section with lots of ropes and the sign asked, “How good of a monkey are you?”   

We went into the Kiwi house to see the kiwi.  Unfortunately we were unable to get a good picture because it was so dark, and kiwi are fast but I will try again when we go to Rotorua in two weeks.  

I also really enjoyed this zoo because everything was set up as thought it was a research facility and there were signs at every exhibit explaining the anatomy of the animals, what kind of defense mechanisms they use, where they live in the wild, and lots of other information.

Something that I have notices about maps of the world is they are all set up with this perspective.  I think it is interesting because that is not how we generally view a map of the earth in the United States.  

The Sky Tower

 

After we got done with our meat pie we went to the Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere at 328 meters.  When you get to the Sky Tower you decide what you would like to do.  There are several levels of observation decks, you can walk around the outside on the Sky Walk, or you can do a guided free fall off of one of the upper levels with the Sky Jump.  We decided to just go to the observation decks, which disappointed the people that I am living with but I was satisfied with.  I was already nervous about being up so high much less jump off.    

Laura and I went up to both of the observation levels and luckily for us it had cleared up quite a bit!  We took a 40 second elevator ride in the glass elevator up to the Main Observation Deck at 186 meters.  On this level there is glass floor in sections that is 33mm thick and supposedly as strong as concrete.  There are also windows all around so you can see in all directions.  There were great views of the city, harbor, and surrounding islands.  There were also lots of facts around.  I learned that the sky tower weighs 20,000 tons, consists of 15, 000 cubic meters of concrete, and 2,000 tons of reinforcing steel.

 

 Then we went up to the other observation deck at 194 meters.  On this level there were metal tubes that you could look though that pointed your eyes other significant things in the city.  We also got to see the sunset, which was cool but the clouds were starting to roll back in.