Lots of things I haven't already said...

We have been back for a week now and during that time people have been looking at the blog from various locations around the world - I find this really exciting! But also it has prompted me to add an extra post because during this last week I've realise that I didn't blog about many other activities we participated in during our time in New Zealand which were as much part of the week as the other events.

I've been looking at Bristol Grammar's blog and realised that because I, as an adult, am writing most of this, the points of view of our team have not been as important as if they'd written it themselves. Comments about the boarding house, the dormitories, the meals we enjoyed, the library where we all congregated, the great relationships our teams forged in the short time they were together - all details which 'made' our trip for our students but these have been missed out, not because they weren't important but because, to my regret, I didn't have time to record every detail!

So here are a few more highlights from our week:

On Sunday: travelling by bus to enjoy shopping at Westfield Mall in Hamilton prior to watching Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows part 2 (in 3D which was great!)

On Monday morning: visiting our buddy school, Peachgrove Intermediate, and putting faces to names! Some of their students had made contact with ours in the lead-up to our trip and it was great for our team to finally meet these people. We were treated to a presentation where we were introduced to some of their favourite NZ authors and ended up with lots of recommended reads to look out for. Thanks to Peachgrove, we now have some of these books to add to our school library - titles we can't get in the UK but which look really promising. I have them at home with me for the summer and hope to get through most of them before September so I can recommend them to our students.

Teams from Cockermouth & Peachgrove in their library

In the afternoon we were joined by the other teams and their buddies from Southwell School, Morrinsville Intermediate and Fairfield Intermediate for a scavenger hunt around the school which was designed to introduce us all to some of the traditions of New Zealand storytelling. It was begun by the Assistant Principal from Peachgrove, Wayne 'Mr B' Brommell, reading a traditional Maori tale and then we split into teams to explore some of the stories which make NZ children's literature unique.

'Mr B' telling us a Maori tale

Some photos taken during the Scavenger Hunt:

The lads were singularly unimpressed by the dressing up they were asked to take part in -

but threw themselves into an impromptu 'haka' with enthusiasm!

Alistair's face says it all!

Hearing that they were going to have to perform their National Anthem...

... singing with more enthusiasm than we could muster for ours...

... and finding out the winners of the Scavenger Hunt.

During the evening on Monday the team representing New Zealand, Tahuna Intermediate School from Dunedin, arrived and gifts were exchanged with buddy schools and members of the Waikato Children's Literature Association who had worked so hard to organise the whole week for us. This was followed by a 'Welcome' dinner with Wayne who had arrived for the Quiz final the next day.

Tuesday's highlight, the Quiz final has been described elsewhere but when I blogged about it, we hadn't had the Gala Dinner that evening. This took place in Southwell School's flat floor theatre and was a resounding success, being MCd by Gerri Judkins and introducing us to several NZ authors and their writing. I was sitting next to David Hill (whom I had heard of so he must be pretty famous!). Others were Jenny Hessell, Tessa Duder and Brian Falkner.

We were greatly entertained by Brian Falkner, an internationally known NZ author now living in Australia but who came to Hamilton for the Dinner. He introduced us to some of his thoughts about how and why he gets his ideas for writing Sci Fi and read some of his work to us, as did the other authors whose writing represents the best of NZ literature for teens (and younger readers). It was revealing that many of the teenage waiters and waitresses were past members of Kids' Lit Quiz teams who had volunteered for the job in order to meet some of their favourite authors.

Another highlight from our week was the excellent meals we were served by the catering team at Southwell School. During the week I overheard many comments along the lines of, "School meals weren't like this in my day...!" so very many thanks to them all. The staff were invariably cheerful and chatty, always interested in hearing what we'd been doing and where we came from, and the food was great.