Day: May 25, 2022

Information Report on Honduras

For this week’s writing my literacy class had to write an information report. It was about the country Honduras. I really enjoyed writing about this country, because I never have heard of it. So it was really interesting to research about the country. I hope that you learn something fro this just like I did. ENJOY!

Honduras, the country that is a part of the mesoamerican reef. Not much is really known about this country. However, by the time you finish reading this piece. You might learn a thing or 2 about this awesome country.

Writing:

Honduras was first sighted by Europeans, when Christopher Columbus arrived at the Bay Islands. Which was very close to the island of Guanaja on 30 July 1502. On the 14th of August, 1502 Columbus landed on the mainland near modern Trujillo. Columbus named the country Honduras for the deep waters off its coast. Honduras became independent from Spain in 1821. However in 1822 it was joined with Mexico and 4 other nations. Which consist of  Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Yet the 5 central American nations broke away from Mexico in 1823. Honduras finally became completely independent in 1839.

Honduras is a very diverse country. Therefore having 90 percent of the population being Mesitizo. Which is a mix of European and Latin American. Honduras can also be split up into 4 regions. Those regions consist of the Pacific lowlands,eastern Caribbean lowlands,Northern coastal plains and mountains.They also have 2 main cities. Which is Toguaged (the capital) and San Pedro Sala.

Now for some facts. Did you know that the nickname for the country is The Banana Republic? Not only that, but the country also owns 1 of the oldest clocks in the world. Plus an interesting one is that it was the first country to ever ban smoking in their own houses. They also take soccer very seriously. Last one is that the country has the biggest wilderness area in Central America and the world’s largest barrier reef.

To sum up, everything that has been stated in this information report.It’s brief history, along with its culture/people are amazing. Also the cool facts about this country. Honduras is a pretty cool place. I hope you learned something from this.

Camp Reflection!

WOW! I can’t believe that Year 8 camp was last week. I had an AWESOME TIME.  I mean the fun activities we did and the Camp concert, Year 8 camp was overall a BLAST. Here are some of the things we got up to at Year 8 leadership camp. Along with some of my top highlights.

First of all before even going to the campsite we went to Parakai. Which is a swimming pool for those who don’t know. Even though I didn’t get to swim I still had a great time. I mean I had to make the most of the 3 HOURS we were there. Spending time with my friends at Parakai was fun. Not only that, but seeing everyone enjoying the time was also cool to see. My favourite part of being at Parakai was looking at the people swimming having battles. By that I mean people getting on other people’s shoulders and battling against others. I cheered on Lesieli & Paula who demolished the competition. 

One highlight of camp was getting to see the place and the cabins. In my cabin I had Kiarah,Ema,Lesieli,Latiana,Melelupe,Finau,Luka,Cherish & Jayla. I had an awesome time with those girls in my cabin. I remember the laughs we had and waking up in the middle of the night just to see everyone talking and standing in the middle of the room.

Oh and the place was amazing. We had our camp at Carey Park Christain Camp. Which had everything we needed. There was a big Gymnasisum, which had an upstairs area along with a park.Oh and before I forget to mention there was a lovely water area which had a little waterfall. It was the place to calm down or the place where you just wanted peace. There was also a dining hall that came along with some pretty delicious food.  

Now for one of my top highlight CAMP CONCERT. OMG! Camp concert was lit. Seeing everyone perform their chants and items were cool to see. The teams we had was  WWW (Dub,dub,dub),Waitakarei,Henderson and Westside. I was in Westside along with Ema,Latiana,Lesieli,Jade,Exodus,Toks,Israel,Gabriel,Zecariah,Sheldon,Witari,Mr Moran and Tyson. Which is also the WINNING TEAM of the night. Yep, thats right Westside won Camp concert. However I was still very entertained by the other groups. Honestly my favourite performance was Henderson’s. It was really strange, but really entertaining at the same time. Apparently it was synchronised swimming going along with the beauty and the beast song.

Also the EPIC dance off that happened was the best part of the camp concert in my opinion. We had to choose the 2 best dancers of each group to compete in the dance off. For my team we choose Exodus and Lesieli. My team and I were screaming and cheering for them as they got up and in all honesty Exodus stole the show. I mean he was doing all these crazy and funny dance moves which made the crowd go WILD!  Even though he didn’t make it to the finals we still had Lesieli in the game. Who KILLED IT she was whipping her hair everywhere and even did the splits at one point. 

Now for my second highlight. The activities we did were not only fun, but really cool as well. My group got to do the flying fox first. Initially I thought that it was a normal flying fox where you just sit on the seat and go, but I was wrong. We had to get all harnessed up to go on it. I was the 3rd person to go on it and I had a blast. If I’m being honest I was quite scared at the beginning, but once I went off I really enjoyed it. Soon after we did archery,air riflies,rock climbing and crate stacking. Unfortunately we couldn’t do the confidence course due to the weather, but it was still fun doing the others. In my opinion my top activity would be crate stacking. I got up to 8 crates, which was higher than I thought I would get. However my favourite part of crate stacking was seeing Mr Wiseman and Mr Moran go against each other. Of course we got this on video and what do you know Mr Wiseman beat Mr Moran by 2 crates. The score was 7 to 9.

We even had 2 fun games, that the people at Carey Park hosted. The first was rainbow tag and the second was top teams. Out of the 2 my favourite would have to be the rainbow tag one. The aim of the game was to find all four colours and get back to the area where we started, but the trick was that the teachers were hiding around the whole campsite with the colours we needed. There were also bad people who had towels and if you got hit with one all of the colours you got were erased and you’d have to start all over again.I remeber running away from Mr Moran who was trying to throw the towel at me and I dodged it. As everyone was looking for the colours no one seemed to find Mr Wiseman. Who I believe had the colour white. As time went on the siren rang and we all had to head back up to the area we all started at. Now looking around I saw that no one had found Mr Wiseman which meant that the teachers won and the students lost. Mr Wiseman was really smart. He hid in the confidence course, but had a green jacket that matched the leaves and was just crotched down having some leaves on top of him,which made him blend in.

Some there you have it. These are some of my highlights and what we got up to at camp. I just want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all the teachers who came along and a special one to Ms Flavelle who organised everything. Also a huge THANK YOU to the staff at Carey Park for letting us stay over for the week. I am still really sad that the camp has ended but I’m really happy about the fun memories I made over there. I really hope that Team 5 or just the year 8’s could have something like this happen again in the near future.

Maungarei Drawing

Last week  in extension we had to think hard about what we thought Maungarei would look like back then. We first got to see a photo of Maungarei and Miss West then told us what she thought it would look like back then. We also thought about the types of transportation they used back then. The main one being waka’s. Here is my interpretation of what I thought I would look like. The first thing that popped into my head was bushes and trees surrounding the area along with a pond. Huts and house was something that came to my mind as well.I really enjoyed doing this, because it got me thinking of what things look like in the olden days.

Extension Scratch Project (Whakatauki)

Last term my extension class was learning about Whakatauki’s. Which are like quotes in Maori. However we had to do one that was related to the sea/ocean. The one I chose was “He toka tu moana, ara he toa rongonui”. Which in English translate to “Your strength is like a rock standing in raging water”. To me this Whakatauki meant that no matter how hard the situation was, I knew that the strength I had could push through that situation. We also had to create a scratch project that showcased our Whakatauki. Mine is a turtle trying to push through the waves, but once the turtle gets stronger it can go right through the waves. I really enjoyed doing this. I hope I get to to this again!