Summer vs winter in New Zealand

In my opinion, if I was a tourist and I was coming to New Zealand for a holiday, I would much rather go in the summer as opposed to winter and I have a few good reasons why.

Even though we live right next to Australia, New Zealand is not always the warmest. The Winters can get freezing and is still cold and rainy throughout Spring. Like right now. Unlike in summer, there are less free activities to do in New Zealand in the winter without freezing You can go skiing or snowboarding but that costs money to rent equipment or rent a place. And what if you don’t have the proper clothes for it? For a summer in New Zealand, you won’t even need thermals, but if you come in winter, it may cost money to buy the proper gear if you do not already have it. However, in summer, you can rent a cheap place, wear cheap clothes and spend all your time at a beach and be happy.

There are also more things to do in Summer. Some people might think that you can go skiing and everything in the winter, but you can’t in summer, but the weather changes so much here, you might not get the chance. One day, it could be perfect for skiing, but by the time you want to start, the weather could be too bad to ski. Or (though unlikely), the snow could melt too early. In some parts of New Zealand, it doesn’t snow anyway (at least, it isn’t meant to) like Greymouth. And what is the point of coming to New Zealand if you don’t come to Greymouth? Sure you visit the beach and go surfing in the winter, but it might not be very safe.

Summer is also the time for barbeques! In the summer, everybody love going down to the beach or the lake, chilling and having a nice BBQ and ice cream after you have had a swim.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend coming to New Zealand in summer. Or you can just come and live here.

It is wrong to fight.

Throughout history, people have fought. Over the smallest things, people have fought. But what has this achieved? Does fighting really improve anything? In my opinion, scraps and punch ups have no place what-so-ever in our modern society.

There is a difference between defending yourself against someone who just tried to punch you in the face, and being the one throwing the punch. If someone just tried to punch you, then you have all the right in the world to defend yourself. But if you started it, just stop and think for a minute. Will this actually help anything? If you decide to try to solve your problems using your words instead of fists, then you might just work things out. Talking will give you more time to calm down. It will also give you a chance to see the other persons point of view. But what if the other person is just provoking you. What if there is no argument to talk over? What if they are just insulting you and trying to get you to throw the first punch so they can fight back? Can you fight them then? The answer is still no. If you do, you will just be playing right into their hands. However, if you choose to ignore them, they will get frustrated and everybody will see that they are “the bad guy”.

Fighting someone can also create more problems instead of solving them. You may just think that it is just one little scrap, but it could turn into so much more. When you start attacking someone, your instincts will take over and you won’t hold back. What could start as a little argument over a tiny thing could lead to a trip to the hospital and possibly the end of a friendship or social status. All because you decided to throw a punch. Unfortunately, those are not the worst possible outcomes. So many more things could happen. Just imagine what life would be like if having a fight with someone was considered acceptable and normal whenever someone had a little argument with you?

If fighting was an appropriate thing to do, then humans would have made no progress at all in creating a peaceful world. If the only chance to win an argument was to be strong and be able to fight, then what would happen to any small person? People would focus so much time on being fit and strong, they wouldn’t have much time for anything else. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, but not if they did it for the sole purpose of winning an argument/ Think about all the amazing inventions that we have today. No doubt someone worked on them for hours a day. But if they didn’t have time for this because they were spending to much time making sure that they win their next fight. In short, human history would come to a standstill.

All in all, I think that fighting is absolutely useless. Fighting is a horrible thing to do that creates more problems than it solves and more often than not, results in horrible outcomes.

Term 3 reflection.

This term has been so eventful, I honestly can’t believe that it has just been one term. So many exciting things have happened that I just can’t fit it all into one reflection.



One of my favourite things that have happened this term would definitely be Cant-a-maths. It was an overnight trip to Christchurch with the 3 other year 8s and the team of 4 year 7s. We managed to fit a lot into the short time. First, we went for a quick swim as soon as we reached the holiday park. We then left for the competition. Altogether we didn’t do too bad with 50 points! After that, we went ice skating and had a great time. I wish that I could go on the same trip every year.



We also had speeches this term. Unlike in previous years, I knew what I was going to do my speech on. Annoying things that adults say! I spent a long time on it and I memorized the whole speech. I was actually really excited to present my speech this year. I made it into the school speech competition and I think that I did pretty good. I didn’t make it into rotary but the two who did were really good!



I think that I have made a good amount of academic progress this year as well. I have learnt a lot of things in maths and I even managed to complete the basic facts tests! We have also been doing some different things in reading. We have started a Reading log, so whenever we read outside of school, we put it on the reading log so we can see how much we have read. Reciprocal reading is another thing that we’ve been doing for reading. Reciprocal reading is good when everybody works together, but when people don’t, it can be a little frustrating as not much gets done.



Out of all of the great things that have happened this term, the lastest WPCA trip would have to be my favourite. A two-night trip to the Temple Basin ski area! We all had a great time. Twelve year 8s with a teacher, a former teacher, and other parents who came along as well. The trip up was painful but it was worth it. Honestly, I was horrible at skiing at first but I finally got the hang of it by the end of the first day. Yes, right at the end. I was a little bit annoyed that we had to go inside as soon as I learnt how to stop but it turned out that it was a good thing that we went inside because just a couple of minutes later, it started snowing. A lot. The two days were also really fun, but of course, we had to leave. If I could go back one day, I definitely would.



This term has probably been my favourite this year so far. I am really sad that this term is going to be one of my last at this school.

Novel study.

For novel study, I read the book I Am David. It was a really good book. We had to write a short paragraph for each chapter. These are mine.

Chapter one summary.
David starts off in the concentration camp. He was wondering whether he should escape as he was told to by “him”, the prison guard that he must escape that night. He didn’t trust him but he decides to try to escape anyway. He got over the border and started running. He looked behind him and realised no one was following him. He found a bundle put there by “him”. He jumped into a truck while he was not being watched.

Chapter two summary.
He needed to reach Italy by boat. He found one with Italy painted on the stern. He climbed into it and quickly hid. He was found and then he jumped out and swam to shore early in the morning. David sat there for a long time and watched everything around him as he had never seen so much colour. With the soap he was given, he completely cleaned himself and then continued walking. He looked around for a bit. He found a baker and got some bread off him. He continued to do this for a while until he heard some people talking about him.

Chapter three summary.
David was scared at first because he had been travelling through the night and when he woke up, he thought that he had been travelling the wrong way. He quickly recollected himself and continued moving. He started to think about God and then thought of who his God would be. He sat down and started praying to his God of green pastures and still waters. He found some American tourists and David started talking to them. After David left, he found a truck driver and he was offered a ride. He finally found out that not all nice people are very smart as Angelo the truck driver was nice but not very bright.

Chapter four summary.
David has never seen a forest before. He decided that he liked the fact that he could hide easily, but that meant that “they” could as well. David continued walking and came across a boy who looked older than him. The boy started punching him and called David a coward when he didn’t fight back. He went away and David washed his clothes to rid himself completely of the boy. He came across two young boys and an older girl who looked about Davids age playing. The girl got stuck in a fire and David saved her. He met her whole family and they decided that he could stay with them for a while.

Chapter five summary.
David loved living in the house and he tried to learn everything about it while he lived there. He found it hard trying to act “normal” and he found that some of the things the two little boys and the girl Maria did funny. The boy who beat him up was Maria’s older brother, Carlo. He apologized but David still hated him. He overheard there parents talking about him and he decided that he should leave. Maria said goodbye to him and he left.

Chapter six summary.
David tramped on. He found a church and decided to go in. He found a priest and started talking to him as he decided that he must be good. David was in Switzerland and he found a woman. He started talking to the women and decided that he liked her. She invited him to have dinner at her house. The woman, who was called Sophie Hartmann told David of another David she new who apparently died as a baby. That baby and his mother and father were caught by police and put in a concentration camp. Apparently, the father and the baby died, but the mother escaped because one of the guards was in love with her.

Chapter seven summary.
The weather was very cold now and it was snowing. David got a lift to a place called Faido. He was determined to reach Denmark. David now knew that the mother was Davids mother and the guard had actually kept David alive but didn’t tell Davids mother. Davids feet and mind had grown so numb that he nearly let himself walk over a small cliff by accident. David came across a man and new he was one of “them”. David had been captured by a man who made him work as his slave. David hated his whole family but didn’t actually mind staying there too much. He slept in the stable and he made friends with there dog. He escaped before the farmer handed him over to the police and the dog came with him. He had finally escaped and was on his way.

Chapter eight summary.
He was in Switzerland but he couldn’t use the money he had. He wrote a letter to Carlo saying that he forgave him. He found a man named Graf and he gave David and the dog, King some food. When he was only a few days from Denmark, David found a group of “them”. The dog, King, knew that the people were dangerous and attacked them so David could get away, but King was sadly shot. He got a ride from a man who stowed him in the back of his truck as soon as he reached Denmark. He found the address of his mother and he was given a ride there by another woman. He walked up to the house and finally found his mother.

Updated alien invasion!

This is the updated version of the Alien invasion video my friends and I made. I really hope you like it! We made it so we can practise using different camera angles.

Alien invasion!

This is the Alien invasion my friends and I made. I really hope you like it! We made it so we can practise using different camera angles.

Why everybody should have a pet.

Pets are amazing. You don’t believe me? Well, there must be a reason that so many kids have “a pet” written in bold at the top of there Christmas wish list.  In my opinion, everybody should have a pet.

You may be thinking, that some people don’t have either the room or the time for one. But, there are so many different types that you can get, at least one will be perfect for you. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a house with a backyard, you can already get a dog, cat, bird, you name it. If you own a lot of land with fenced-off grass, why don’t you get a horse? Or even a donkey! You may be thinking, what if I don’t have any land at all? What if I live in a small apartment that doesn’t allow dogs or cats or anything that makes much of a noise five stories above the ground? Just get a little pet, like a mouse or a rat. If you are part of a large percentage of people, you will be absolutely disgusted by this idea. But why? What is really that bad about rats? They’ve got tiny little claws and tiny little teeth, sure. But so do humans, and chances are, you don’t mind being around people so much. Besides, you get a pet, and you may just be making their like so much better as well.

Not only are pets great, but they are also great for you. Owning a pet may be just what you need to get up and go for a run at the park. A breath of fresh air and a bit of exercise is good for anybody. That’s not the only reason pets are so good for you. They can also unknowingly teach you things that humans can’t. They teach you loyalty and how to stick with something. Pets also teach you how to look after something. Once people know that you can be trusted to look after an animal, they’ll know you can be trusted.

Pets are marvellous things that everyone should have, and when you get a pet, you gain a companion as well. If you are lonely, you know what you need; a pet. They’re friends that stick with you, that will love you forever. Honestly, sometimes they can be better than having a human friend. Pets can never say the wrong thing so they are automatically masters at emotional support. Besides, it’s far too easy to make a person annoyed compared to a dog. You forget to feed your pet one morning and they’re still your best friend by the time you get home from work. You forget one slightly important thing in the supermarket and suddenly your flatmate doesn’t speak to you for a week. There are so many reasons that pets can be more kind than humans. Anyway, you can argue with your cat, your dog, your mouse, your horse and unless your really unlucky, you will most likely win any arguments with them. Not that there will be much as (added bonus) pets don’t talk back.

Just imagine what it will be like to have such a caring and compassionate friend that sticks by your side to the end of the world that will continue to help you when you need it most and never gives up on you or let you down. What you are imagining is a pet.

S.S.S

Everybody knows that full-on gamers are common and it is not good for you, but do people really know how bad it is? Gaming addiction has actually become known as a small mental health problem. That is pretty bad seeing as it is most likely going to get worse. And it seems even worse when you think of all the starving children in the world that probably haven’t even heard of pocket money when some people are blowing their $10 a week for 10 weeks just to get more addicted! I know someone who wasted $20 on fortnite in a day. But of course, it is not just the money that is an issue. A short time ago, a 9-year-old girl got sent into rehab because of her addiction to fortnite! She was playing for 10 hours a day without taking a break! Just imagine it. Video games are becoming more addictive. People hear of a game, watch it for hours on youtube and eventually get the game, play it day and night and become super lazy. And to think that some people actually get pay heaps more money to play video games and record themselves on youtube than hard working people, who have bought their own house and are doing things for a reason.

And this is why I think gaming addiction is a real and a bad thing.

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Everybody at least knows someone that smokes, and you may think that it is just a normal thing, but it may become a thing of the past. Smoke-free New Zealand may be just around the corner. A.K.A 2025. I hope that people are right about this, because it may just stop a lot of harmful things happening to you and your family. I have listed some of the main things below;

If you do not smoke and you tell your kids that smoking is bad, though if you do smoke and you tell your kids not to smoke, they will probably not listen. And to make matters worse, if they see cigarettes, they might steal one or two, they might get addicted and you will be known as a bad parent.
Around about 500 people in New Zealand die thanks to second-hand smoke.
You will save a lot of money on cigarettes and you can use that money to buy things that you actually need, or if you don’t need it, you can donate it. Think about it, if nobody smokes, lots of people will have more money.
Lung cancer, unhealthy teeth, heart disease and persistent coughing are just some of the many symptoms you could get just by smoking. Do you really want this to happen?

I think that smoking is completely and utterly stupid as you will not gain anything from it other that ugly teeth, smelly hair (true) and a whole lot of other things. Why would you want to waste money on becoming unhealthy?

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People, of course, have different feelings about the upcoming EV revolution (electric vehicle revolution). Lots of gas station owners and workers are annoyed as they think they might go out of business because soon they will not be selling gas anymore, though that is most likely not true because since they also sell food and other useful stuff, so when people go to charge up their electric vehicles, they will probably by some food and stuff there instead of wasting gas (sorry, electricity). Another thing they could do is charge a dollar or two to charge their cars. Besides, even if some gas/electricity stores do lose some money, it goes towards the greater good. Gas pollution is not very good for the environment and if everybody has an electric car, it could greatly reduce the speed that global warming is coming. Right now, there are 97 rapid-charging stations, one is in Greymouth and 30 more are in construction, so there are a total of 127.  New Zealand nearly has a rapid-charging station every 75km. In 2016, the Government had another goal to have 64,000 electric vehicles on the road in New Zealand by 2021.
I hope that they reach this goal, and then a few years after that manage to double it.

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In my opinion, predator-free New Zealand by 2050 may not work, and if it does, they may have to be quite inhumane. What I mean by this, is that traps will not get rid of all of the pests like stoats, rats and others, so they will have to use other means seeing that though one stoat and one rat will get trapped, heaps more will be born. Once they realize this, they would use means like 1080. 1080 is a terrible way to kill as it can actually kill some animals that we are trying to protect. It is also possible that dogs will eat it and they will die a horrible and painful death. What did the cute doggies ever do to you? At least 65 dogs have been poisoned before thanks to 1080. And even if the dog doesn’t eat the 1080 directly, what kind of dog doesn’t sniff at a body of a dead possum? 1080 is a second-handling poison which means that if a possum dies of 1080 and another animal eats it, that animal dies as well. What if a deer eats some and hasn’t died yet and a human eats it? That’s not good. And what happens to the domesticated and trained rats? The only options that I can think of is to kill all the pet rats and that would be downright heartless, make it illegal to own a rat (what about the people that already own them?), or they could let them live and if they did manage to kill all of the other pests, the domesticated ones will spread like rats (literally).
All in all, I don’t think it would be very nice or easy to get to predator-free 2050.

The run

S.S.S Poll Tax.

During the gold rush of the 19th century in New Zealand, The government thought that too much people were coming into New Zealand, and even though there were people coming from all over the world, they seemed to target Chinese families, they bought in “The Chinese Immigrants Act of 1881” which introduced a “poll tax” of £10, which back then was worth nearly around about $1,700, equal to about 10 years of their hard work. And they even lowered the Chinese people being able to enter even more by restricting the number of people coming each boat ride, about 1 person to every 10 tons of cargo. You would think that that was the worst they would see. It wasn’t. In 1896, this was changed to 1 person to 200 tons, and the tax was increased to £100 (nearly $19,000). They finally ended it in the 1930’s and Helen Clark apologized for it in the 12th February 2001.

The Vietnam war.

The war went from 1955-1975. During the Vietnam war, only about ⅓ of soldiers in America were hand picked to fight, and about ⅔ volunteered. The average age of soldiers were only 21. Over 3,000 New Zealanders military and civilian people served in Vietnam between 1963 and 1975. About 3 million people died in this war. the Vietnam War started because of the U.S.’s way of “containment” during the Cold War, which aimed to stop the spread of communism throughout the world. This was the first war that New Zealand did not fight with its traditional ally, England. In the end, it turned out that it was nearly completely useless and no one really won. You can thank the former President John F. Kennedy for that. President Kennedy approves sending 400 Special Forces troops and 100 other U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam. This war was also known as the second Indochina war. The US never really declared war against Vietnam, it should really be called the Vietnam conflict instead of the Vietnam war. During world war 2, there were reportedly 40 days of combat in 4 years, though in the Vietnam war, there were 240 days of combat in one year on average.

Subtraction up to 7-didgets

Can The Referee Always Be Right?

I write this for my writing test and I only had 45 minutes to do it. Hope you enjoy!

You have all been to a sports game, right? Either a friends game, you younger brothers or your own. If you have, then do you ever remember a referee making a good call? No, probably not. But of course, you remember all the bad calls. That’s the thing about being a referee. No one remembers the good things you do but they always remember the bad things. If you don’t believe this, then type up worst referee calls ever. It comes up with so much stuff! But then if you type up best referee calls ever, all it comes up with is bad calls.

Hi, my name is Sinead and I am talking about referees and how they can’t always be right. Whatever a referee does, he or she is still going to do something wrong. They can’t help it. Even if the call is right, one side will be happy… while the other side won’t be. They have to go with their gut instinct, but what if a player is blocking their path? Or they are standing in the wrong place? An example of this is once in a soccer world cup, someone shot a goal, it hit the top of the goal… bounced on the goal… and bounced back out. He had to rely on what he saw but he was standing right in front of the goal so he couldn’t see! After that, he was sacked and came down as one of the worst referees in history. Was it his fault that he couldn’t see? No. There should be more cameras recording the game, and if the referee is stuck on a call, they should be able to rely on the camera.

Another example of this is when, in a women's basketball game, someone took a shot and fell over by the force of it, and just a few milliseconds before that, a person from the other team rushed past and the ref thought it was a foul.

If you are a referee and you haven’t done anything wrong, ever, then you must either be a superman, or you’re just plain lying. No matter what you do, 50% of people will like your call and 50% won’t. You can’t change that, just do what you can do.

I hope that by reading this, you will think about the troubles that referees go through and if you have ever seen or heard a ref make a bad call, just remember that it is not the referee's fault and once he or she makes the call, they can’t change it.

Nuclear Free New Zealand

Nuclear Free New Zealand

You all know that New Zealand's nuclear free, right? But do you know how it happened? In the 1984-1989, David Russell Lange was the Prime Minister and, to put it simply, he HATED nuclear power.

So what he did was, first get his word out to the public and there was a huge debate on it. Many people have said that the debate was like the “David and Goliath story. New Zealand I David and the USA is Goliath. Everyone was surprised when we won and we became nuclear free.You might be thinking that, without nuclear power, we can’t defend ourselves if there is a WWIII, but we can. Even though the USA did not at all agree with us going nuclear free, they are still our allies and they will protect us if we will be attacked. I am really glad that New Zealand has no nuclear power. We don’t like it that much, that if a USA ship comes near us, even if it has only a little bit of nuclear power, we have to send them straight back.

I hope you believe me that it is good that we are nuclear free.

The Haast-Hollyford road

The Haast-Hollyford road

Before I start writing, I would like to say that I do not agree with the supporters of the road and I am taking the perspective of another person with another view. I would also like to say that I only got a really short time to do this.

Everyone loves the view of the Fiordland park, right? Well now lots of people want a road to go through it. There are good things about this like-

• We will be able to get to it easier.
• More tourists will come to see it and we will get much more money.
• Everybody will be able to see the most beautiful place in New Zealand.

Of course, there will be some bad things like it like-

• It’s more accessible so more people can go and throw rubbish in it.
• It could ruin the view.

Sure, it might be bad in a few ways, but if you don’t think that you will want or need it now, in the future, you might find yourself on it. It is a possibility. It is estimated that 98 km of new road will be constructed through wilderness and the Fiordland National Park.

I hope that you will take my point of view as the road could be very useful to you in the future.

The Rainbow Warrior Bombing

The Rainbow Warrior Bombing

Before I start writing, I would like to say that if I was alive when it happened, I would not have been supporting the French Government but for this task, my name was called out to support them.

At just before midnight, July 1985, at the Mururoa Island, the French decided that they wanted to test a nuclear bomb just in case the WWIII (nuclear war) came and they wanted to be prepared. They thought that just because they owned the Mururoa Island, they could set up a nuclear bomb, but there were some people that stood in their way. The Rainbow Warrior from New Zealand didn’t like that idea so whenever they wanted to test it, they ship would sail over to disrupt them. Why would they do that? It was not their place to stand in the way.

In my opinion (as a French agent), the Rainbow Warrior should not have done that as it led to the bombing of the ship and the death of a Portuguese crew member. It was soon discovered that two French Secret Services agents were the two people that bombed them. Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart were arrested on 24 July. Both were charged with murder and pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years in prison which led to the embarrassment of the French Government. It was not their fault that they killed the man but they did mean to bomb them so they would have no choice but to leave.

One of the reasons that the Rainbow Warrior was so mad about the bombing of Mururoa Island, was because New Zealand owns an Island near the soon-to-be-blown-up Island. The radiation from the explosion lead to many people getting sick from eating the contaminated fish.

Just remember, was it really the French fault for all the people getting sick?

1981: The Springbok Tour

1981: The Springbok Tour

I am a protester and I don’t think the rugby game should go ahead because, for starters, I really don’t get why the Springbok players think that they are better than all the other Maori players in the All Blacks. If they didn’t want to play the Maori people, then they shouldn’t have played at all. Why did the Springboks even have the permission to take out certain players? Just imagine if you were the best player in your whole team but you were even part Maori, and you had to sit out of the game because of it, what would you do? Can you even imagine that?

In my opinion no-one should have ever have let the Springboks into our country. You might be wondering what was so bad about this tour. The Springboks, whenever they play against a team, they took out all the coloured people in the team, all the other countries went along with this rule but the New Zealanders said “NO”, well half of us anyway. The Protesters didn’t want the game to go on while all the Rugby Supporters wanted was to watch a game. I my opinion, the Rugby supporters didn’t care about the Maori players and that is bad in its own way.

The fight was chaos. Police on one side, holding batons and there see-through shields and the protesters with their bike helmets to protect their heads and their own shields. One police said, “it was “sheer luck” that nobody even got killed that day.

I reckon that it was terrible for the Springboks to take out certain players because of their colour, after all it was not their fault they were born like that, and I think it was terrible for everybody else to go along with it. And this is why I and a protester.

Term 3 Reflection.

Maths starter

The match stick problem.

Today, our teacher gave us a challenge and we had to complete it. This was the challenge-
What we had to do was move three match sticks to make five squares. This is how to do it-

This is the first move. That makes one more square.                                This is what you do next.
                                         

Move 1

Move 2

Then do this, you might think that it is only 4 but the one on the outside is one as well.

Move 3