South Island/ Victoria University

Since we have not have internet for the last few days, I have not been able to post my blogs. I had already written them out, so I am going to post two together. The first post is about our time on the South Island and the other talks about our trip to Victoria University.

South Island Trip

We flew from Auckland to Christchurch and stayed the night in a jail that has been renovated into a hotel. The next morning we took the TranzAlpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth. The train ride was beautiful! The scenery was breathtaking, and I took a lot of great pictures. Greymouth was a small town. Brittany and I spent most of the weekend relaxing and watching movies on the wonderful movie channel. There was a small shopping plaza that we spend the first day browsing around in.

On Saturday we took the train back to Christchurch and stayed at the jail again. On Sunday morning, we went back to the train station and took a bus ride up the coast to Picton.  We supposed to take a train, but the train is no longer running since the earthquake.  Luckily, the bus ride was really pretty and went a long side the coast. I even got to see some seals resting on rocks.

After the four hour bus ride, we got onto the Interislander Ferry which took us from the south island to the north island. The ferry ride was beautiful as well. I will never get tired of seeing New Zealand scenery! The ferry took us to Wellington where we are staying until Tuesday evening. We are visiting Victoria University and their normal school.

Victoria University

Today, we visited our second University. Unfortunately, all of the students were out at field experience so we could not observe any classes. Instead, we met with a few literacy people who gave us some great information.

The fist people we spoke to were two women who were literacy advisors assigned by the ministry to go into schools.  They told us some of the things that they have been seeing in schools. Then, we talked with the man in charge of two literacy classes. The class is very condensed and I find it hard to believe that the students learn how to teach good literacy courses in such a short amount of time. The last woman we met with confirmed that literacy courses are being cut from the university. I am very thankfully that there are literacy courses offered to ALL students at Morehead.

When we left the University, we went to wellington Botanical Gardens. We walked around the rose garden which was very pretty. Some of the roses had very unique coloring and I enjoyed seeing the many different types.

For dinner we stopped at a nice fish restaurant that was right on Oriental Bay. The restaurant had a great view. After dinner we got ice cream. The ice cream here is so delicious and much creamier. Tomorrow is our last full day in NZ. This trip has flown by!