White Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone

As most of you know we are in Carcassonne for Christmas. We are with Amelia, Helen, Alex, Chloe, Margie, Alban, Catherine and Henry. We had fun catching up with everyone. we spent an afternoon in the city of carcassonne where we went iceskating in a rink set up in the square for a month over christmas, we got caught in a Parade and then went on the ferris wheel.

Christmas was cool we got heaps of presents and had a yummy late lunch...plus all the yummy treats that santa had left us.

We (well really mum wanted) a white Christmas and we got it (well it was on boxing day!) but it really cool...we went down stairs in the morning and saw that there was snow upstairs so we went and woke Mum and Dad. We had a snowfight with Dad and then later made snowmen. It was pretty hard until aunty Catherine told us how to do it easily by rolling the snow into balls.

Hope you all had fun.

Bye for now Ariki and Tamati (and Mum and Dad)

First Snow

We decided to come home from Montpellier via the Millau viaduct
(photos to come later) and on the way home we found our first snow of
the season. Here we are throwing snowballs at Dad in a little town
called St Leon near millau.
Ps... Don't eat yellow snow!

On the train

on the tour train around nice
Posted via Pixelpipe.

We are in Nice because it is school holidays. Here we are by the mediteranian sea

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Blog update -sorry for the delay!

We have been having lots of fun and haven’t updated the Blog for a while...actually it’s been ages we have just had 9 weeks of school holidays, and now we are nearly at the end of the school term. For the holidays Mum went to school to learn to speak French, while we looked after Dad.
We took Dad to a place like rainbows ends, there was a pirate ship ride, car rides where kids could drive!, Massive slides, Tea Cup rides, 3 Roller coasters, Horse rides, Train rides, Swinging chairs (where a girl next to us screamed the whole time), a Log Flume - where dad got soaked (haha) and rides where you got to wet heaps of people.

Mum and Dad have been learning to fly, at a place called Limoges (3 Hours north of Toulouse). We have been having a fun time at the place where we are all staying. It’s a farm and they have lots of animals, Ducks, Hens, Rabbits, Pigs, Dogs and Horses that all need feeding. There is a pool, it was pretty cool. You can see from some of the pictures we turned the horse training yard into a Plage (beach) for fun. It was really cool to have heaps of space to run around and play in.

Back to school - It is good to be back at school and see lots of our friends, we are also doing a lot more French with our Tutor. Her name is Evelyne she is very nice and often we end up making stuff like Cakes and Pizza. We only talk in French. It is Fun. We have had taken lots of time off school to be with her and Mum and Dad say it’s paying off really well. We can watch French TV and understand a lot of what’s going on.

At the moment there is a Fete on just up the road...its massive, about 4 times the size of the winter show (in Hamilton). With loads of rides and games. It’s there for about a month and finishes this weekend. Our favourite ride was the Dodgem cars which we did lots of times. One of the French lessons we had to go and have a look and talk in French and find out when and for how long it was going to be there. There was a Grand Roue (Ferris wheel) which was very high. The highest and what we thought was the scariest ride was like a Wind turbine, with seats attached at the end of the propellers, and people would get spun around and around – we didn’t want to go on that as it was fast. There was a four story play ground that had lots of cool things in it for kids. Other rides were Slides, lots of stalls and shooting games. There were trampolines where you are attached and can bounce real high. This weekend we are going pick Mum up from the airport, she is flying down from Limoges where she is at the moment learning to fly, and we hope to take her to the fete as well. We will see if she wants to go on the Wind turbine ride...

Anyway we hope you all are having fun as well and we will update our blog a little more regularly

Au Revoir Ariki and Tamati

Les Velos

All over town there are velo stations where you can hire a bike for a day or an hour or whatever you like. There are 2 right near us and more just a couple of minutes away.

The idea is that you can pick up a bike wherever you like and put it back at a different place, then pick up another one somewhere else and come home.

We are JUST big enough to ride them if dad puts the seat down.

We rode around for about an hour, but we stayed mainly in the parks and walkways because Frances roads have lots of cars on them... and they drive fast!

The Broken down Castle/The Ruins

(I wanted to call this post the ruins but Tamati wanted to call it the broken down castle.... so it is called both!)

Last week we went and visited some friends of Mum and Dad in Saissac. After lunch we went to visit the local chateau (castle) which is really old! One of the rooms has been fixed up and is used for parties and stuff.

The castle is all broken but you are allowed to climb it and you can go down the path next to it and find the old village. It is so old you cant see any walls there is only one layer of bricks where the houses used to be - the houses only had one room.

It was fun to climb around and look at the old towers which used to be used to guard the village.

La Plage

La Plage is the french word for beach.

Just up the road the city council have set up a free temporary beach for summer. they have covered a couple of streets with sand and bought in a whole lot of cool stuff. Its all free and it lasts about 2 months.

We have been there twice now. They have rock climbing, slides, trampolines, a blow up water slide, a soccor field and other stuff to do. On Wednesday we went and buried ourselves in the sand.

Bastille Day

Monday was July 14 which is bastille day. They have lots of fire works on bastille day (they dont do guy fawkes here) and have big displays all over France.

In Toulouse the display was right opposite our maison so we had heaps of friends over for dinner and to watch the fire works.

The fire works didn't start until 10.30pm so it was really late. The fireworks were way biger than any fireworks we have ever seen (except for disneyland which still beats them all) and was done to music. They were doing diffent countries so played the english national anthem with red and blue fire works, the french one with red, white and blue and the italian with red, green and white. We could hear the music accross the river and some of the fire works were in shapes like hearts.

The photos didn't come out very well but here is one of us watching it

Tour de France

This morning the tour de france passed by our back door. We heard the first vehicles at 8am so rushed out to make sure we didn't miss anything. There were heaps of police around making sure no one was driving on the road. The "Caravane" went first which was a big parade that lasted about an hour and they threw lots of stuff out. We got hats, bags, armbands, keychains and stuff from the sponsors. Then there was a gap of about an hour and the cyclists went past. it took mabye 10 seconds and they were gone!! Mum and dad nearly missed the photos because they were so fast. But they managed a little bit - take a look.

Tonight we are going for a bbq at a friends place (the dad is from NZ) , and tomorrow we have people coming here to watch the Bastille Day Fireworks which we should be able to see really well from our deck.

Bye

Ariki and Tamati

Some Culture

This week we have tried to experience some French culture

On the weekend we decided to go and see some of Toulouse. First we went to the Victor Hugo markets; which is a big food market on the bottom floor of a car park building. It had all sorts of fresh food, and some pre-made that you could buy. We saw pizzas, lasagne and snails in a tomato sauce... kind of like snail stew.... we didn’t think we would try that!

On the 1st floor they have heaps of restaurants that only serve food made from the fresh food downstairs. There were probably 20 different restaurant “stalls”. We had lunch at one.

Then we went to the Museum Augustine which was an art museum (it was all old art and statues which we didn’t really get!) but it was in a building that looks like Harry Potters school which was cool.

After that we went to one of the parks, there was a Japanese garden that looks like it was built by the same people that made Hamilton’s one! It has the same house and lake... then we saw this cool dragon sculpture in the lake at the park.

Today we accidently experienced some more French culture. Apparently the French are famous for their strikes and at the moment they are protesting the high oil prices... so what they do, to get on TV, is they block up all the motorways. 2 or 3 or 4 trucks (1 for every lane) get side by side and drive really sloooowwwlyyyy so no one can get where they need to go on time. This morning it took 1 hour to get to school which is only 14km away. This doesn’t seem to worry any of the French people, because they are used to it, and the teachers didn’t mind because everyone was late.

2 minutes later

and this is what it looked like a couple of minutes later.

it kept going for another 15 minutes and then we had a "snowball" - really a hailball - fight with some people in other appartments. It was fun!

Hailstorm

Last night there was a huge hailstorm that lasted about 20 minutes. We were in bed and mum and dad got us up to see what was going on -heres how it started!

Brussels

Because there were holidays on Thursday and Monday (Lundi de Pentecôte) we took a long weekend and flew to visit Aunty Helen in Brussels. The flight was an hour and a half.

We went to see the Manneken-Pis. It is a lot smaller than we thought - because when you hear so much about it you expect it to be big but when you see it is actually small and it would be easy to walk past without even noticing it.

We went for dinner in the Grand Place. We are trying to eat the local food whoever we go so Ariki and Dad had Stoemp which is Sausages, Bacon, Mashed Potato and Gravy. (I think every restaurant has its own way of making it) and mum had chicken waterzooi which is a bit like chowder but made with chicken - both were really good.

Belgium is also famous for frites (hot chips) and gaufres (waffles) so we tried them out too... the waffles were not that good, but the chips... c’est bon

This means we have now been to America, England, France and Belgium – so 4 countries so far....

First Week at School

First week of school

Our first week of school was cool. We get a cooked lunch every day and have made lots of new friends like Jay, Hugo, Fred and Jazz. There are 3 classes with about 83 kids aged 2-12. We are both in the 6-12 class – there are 46 children in our class. Our teacher’s names are Christina and Sandrine.

Christina can speak English and French and teaches lessons in both. Sandrine only speaks French, (although she can speak a little bit of English). We do our afternoon lessons with Sandrine – sometimes we know what she is saying and sometimes the other English speaking children need to tell us.

There are about 10 kids who speak English and have learned French since they started at school. At the moment there are only 3 of us that are learning to speak French, but there is another boy coming soon who speaks German and doesn’t know any French. We do our work in English and there is a whole set of English level books. While it is different, it is similar to our old school and felt OK as soon as we arrived so it was easy to get started. We like our teachers. They are nice and help us.

Dad said we should try and make a list of the things which are different from our old school, some of the things are
The cooked lunch. We have an entree (which is usually vegetables or savoury crepes), then for main we have roast meat or pasta or omelettes, and then we have some dairy product like cheese or yoghurt and then pudding. Today we got the menu for the rest of the term. There are some days we will make sure we don’t miss – even if we are really sick!
The school is smaller but it is all together in one building with 2 storeys. Our class is spread out over 3 rooms which includes a room which us upstairs. We can work almost anywhere and move around but Ariki usually works upstairs and Tamati usually downstairs.
On Wednesdays we don’t have school. Instead we have sports from 9.30-11.30 at the local tennis club. Last week we played badminton but sometimes we will play tennis or soccer. The teachers don’t go to this.
At lunch time (after we have finished eating) we can go outside and play, but there is no playground or much grass. We play soccer and running games, and stuff.
We don’t need a school bag. On the first day we took gumboots and slippers which stay there and a pencil case, but we don’t need anything else and all the food is provided so we don’t have a school bag.
We are having fun but we didn’t take any photos of the school yet so will take some this week and put them here.

Apartment
Last week we moved into a temporary appartment hotel until we find a proper house. We like it because it has a swimming pool and we have our own room with bunk beds (which Ariki likes and Tamati doesn’t). On the weekend the swimming pool opened for the summer and we went for a swim. It has been quite hot and it was nice to cool down in the pool. When there were not too many other people around we played with our soccer ball in the pool and did Canon Balls (bombs).
Our apartment is near the airport and about every 3 minutes a huge plane flies over us which is noisy but we are used to it now. One of the planes that flies over is the Airbus which they build in Toulouse and they are testing, it looks like a cartoon plane.

This week we have a holiday on Thursday (WWII victory day) and Monday (whit Sunday) so we are going away for the weekend. Hopefully to visit our Aunty Helen in Brussels.

More Dominos

And here is Tamati's

Dominos at Home

We have been relaxing at home today because we move out tomorrow. We have spent most of last week doing jobs and seeing the sights so it is nice to be at home. Ariki and Tamati have been building domino creations and wanted to show you their work!

First Week in France

We arrived in France from Uncle Albans house on Tuesday the 15th so have now been here for 9 days.

The first few days we didn't do much as we were Jet-lagged, but we have started going out and doing stuff as it is school holidays and we don't start school until Monday 28th.

We went to a place called Carcasonne Cite which had a castle in the centre. All the streets and shops are inside a big wall and you have to cross 2 moats to get in (but there is not any water in the moats anymore).

Yesterday mum typed Park into the GPS and it took us to a rope course place with flying foxes and stuff. We all had harnesses with carabinas and our own roller to make a flying fox. Dad and Ariki flew on a flying fox across the lake but Tamati couldn't because he was 1cm too short - so we will go back when he has grown! Tamati liked to wobble the wires whenever mum stepped onto them... she didn't like that very much at all! It was fun because none of us knew where we were going - not even Mum and Dad.

Mum and Dad have been looking at houses to rent as we are staying at a house that is an hour and a half from our school so we need to move soon. Most mornings we have pain au chocolat and french bread for breakfast from the local shop, which mum has to ask for in french and for lunch we have a "sandwhich" which is make in a baggette and is half as long as our arms.

We are looking forward to starting school .. will let you know how we get on

Have fun

Surprise....Disneyland!!

Our trip over was pretty uneventful.  We had a fairly rough landing but we are fine.  We travelled via Las Angeles and Mum and Dad surprised us with 2 days at disneyland, and one day at universal studios.  It was really cool.  We saw heaps of disney characters and went on some really scary rides.  

Our Favourite rides were : Ariki's - the Log flume (mainly because Dad was at the front and got soaking wet) and the roller coaster.

Tamati's - the roller coaster (probably because mum and dad made us do it and we didn't want to but after we did it we wanted to do it again!) and Star wars flight simulator.

FYI disneyland is split into 2 main parks the original is still there but recently they added another park, that is in what was the main car park, called California.  It has a whole lot of fast rides!

Universal studio's was cool as well.  It is where they make alot of movies and Tamati's favourite rides were the 'special effect show' and the 'shrek 4d movie' - where the chairs move, and when donkey sneezes water would squirt out and wet you!

Ariki enjoyed the studio tour, which showed you where they filmed many movies like 'King kong' and 'evan almighty'.  Animal antics were another great show where animals would interact with the crowd.

Another cool thing was the 'water world show' which was set around a big pool and it had jet skis, boats and planes!  with this show if you sat up the front you would get completley wet!  We were lucky to be sitting just out of the Wet Zone!

We are now in england staying with Uncle Alban and Auntie Catherine, until we head off to france on Tuesday - hopefully the flight is better than our last flights

No More Bed

The moving company is coming today to move us out. Last night we slept on the spare double bed because there was no other bed, and now dad is packing it up! Only three more sleeps and we are on our way. We are starting to get really excited now!

5 More Sleeps...

Hi

Ariki and Tamati Thomson are leaving NZ with their mum and dad for France in only a few more days. They have set up this blog so they can keep you informed of their travels and adventures.

Feel free to add your comments to this or any other "post" on our blog.

In the meantime Au Revior