Thursday August 29th

Orienteering and Tropical Fish

Bonjour everyone!  The sun made an appearance this morning and stayed all day. It was a beautiful day!   We walked down to Parc Brunelet for the first two periods this morning and the kids did orienteering with one of the Jean Mariotti PE classes. just   It was good and they paired up with a french student and looked for cones and corresponding codes etc. It was setting them up for a big orienteering morning tomorrow.  The Parc is a lovely green space just a 7 minute walk from the school.  It's a busy  public space and is used by the school for some PE activities and by members of the public for jogging, walking and exercising dogs. The french love their dogs and many families own at least one dog.

                                                 Anse Vata beach early this morning

                                   At the Parc getting first instructions from the PE teacher.

                                              And off they go.......

      Both dogs and their owners stopping for a chat along the walkway that intersects the Parc

                                 Both purple and white Bouganvillea abounded the periphery of the Parc

 A high percentage of the residents in Noumea live in apartments. Land is a treasured resource that only some can afford so it is very normal for people to rent all their lives. There is no land at all left to develop apparently. There are quite a few housing developments on the outskirts of the city that have been slowly going up over the last three years or so, but developers or Council have bought all available.

We walked back to school for break at 9.30am and then had an art class making kanak houses. Their traditional house is called a 'Case' (pronounced cars). Kanaks are the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia and their social organization is traditionally based around clans, which identify as either "land" or "sea" clans, depending on their original location and the occupation of their ancestors. Symbols are very important to them and their houses contain symbols etc that reflect their clan heritage. The kids could see many similarities between a marae and a case. From the meanings of symbols to the placing of carvings etc there were a number of parallels. They were given some materials after the initial explanatory talk from the teacher and told to go for it and build one. Some found this more of a challenge than others!

Mani not too happy with the lean-on his had!

 Lunch was had in the Canteen again today. It's such a novelty for them. Today we had some sort of meat casserole cooked with olives in red wine and was very tasty.  It looked like beef to me so that's what I told the kids who asked 'what is it??'  If I was back in Northern France I wouldn't have been quite so sure as horse is regularly served up on the menu!  I could never quite build up the courage to try it!  I can just imagine Phoenix and her horse loving friends if I told them they'd just eaten horse!
Chips and a green salad accompanied the casserole and they were thrilled to realise that the chips were exactly like Maccers chips. I reminded them where French fries come from so obviously they have to be good! Dessert today was a large mandarin and a piece of smooth creamy cheese to have with the baguette.

 

After lunch we walked down to the Aquarium and saw a variety of the amazing fish that populate these waters.  New Caledonia is surrounded by 24,000 kms of lagoon defined by the outlying reef. This lagoon is the largest in the world and in recent years it has been made a UNESCO world heritage site.  The reef is the longest continuous reef in the world and the third largest after the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and the Belize Barrier Reef.  The tropical fish living in it consist of such an array of diverse, colourful and weird species.  There were lots of 'Wow! Look at this!' comments as they made their way around the Aquarium.

The turtles will always be a favourite for them I think after the experiences they've had with them.  Much nicer though to swim with them in their natural habitat rather than see them in a large tank!

Presenting research findings after our visit.

Another day draws to an end and we are happy that the kids are all a good bunch and we are proud of them. Some have found it a bigger challenge than others but they are so supportive of each other and work so well as a group. each day we discover something new about the host families etc and today's surprise was that Jade was dressed up in a beekeepers outfit yesterday - the family have a beehive on the roof of their house and climb up some stairs to reach it and tend to their bees each day! Mani lives on a four-bedroomed catamaran and is sailing out to visit some island at the weekend - he's loving life at the moment!  Joanne is going zip-lining in a forest park out of the city. Many families are waiting to see what the weather does before they decide on where they are going though.

Au revoir until tomorrow!