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.