O Christós anésti

Hi,welcome back to my blog. As you know Easter is here and in the Greek Orthodox church it is the biggest thing thing they celebrate. I was baptised Greek Orthodox but last year converted to being Catholic.  Because I am a quatre Greek we still do some of the Greek traditions. For example, If lockdown was not happening and the Greek Orthodox church  was still open we would have gone to church. One of the sayings there is that is always said at this particular Mass is O Christós anésti. It is said by the priest and means Christ has risen. Some other traditions are painting eggs red to symbolize the blood that christ spilled for us and after the service we celebrate with easter bread. A sweet type of bread had on easter. Me and Mum would like to try and make it but we may not be able to get the yeast. Something that is not a tradition but I like to do anyway is to make trifle. One of the components in trifle is a Greek cake that we call chocolate olive oil cake. It sounds a bit gross but it is delicious and tastes good in trifle too.

Do you have any traditions that you do on Easter if so what and why?

It has arrived

Finally I had been waiting for ages and now it has arrived. Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you a short story about a missing parcel. When we went into lockdown my Mum was not prepared that well so we had to dig through all the boxes of random stuff to find things to do. For example, puzzles, sewing things, colored pencils and more. Lucky my Yiayia ( Grandmother ) was prepared with stuff to do. She sent up two packages from Timaru for me and my Brother and a package for my baby cousin Henry. We got our package two days after the lookdown started but the second packed was nowhere to be seen. Then a week after lockdown started, Henry got his package. We were wondering what had happened to our package.  We knew that it should be here and that the couriers were still delivering, because my Dads' endless supply of bike stuff and tools aren't enough and he keeps buying more which were still arriving. Yesterday there was a knock on the door. Mum opened it to find the courier with the package. It turns out that my Yiayia had written the wrong address on the package. Lucky my Dad orders so much stuff, the the courier had grown accustomed to our house and recognised our name on the package and she could bring it to our house.  Has something like that happend to you before?

Hansel and Gretel

Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you about my opinion and summary of Hansel and Gretel by the RNZB ( The Royal New Zealand Ballet ). They performed the show last year but luckily had it recorded so in the last couple of days they have been doing free showings of the recordings, so that people can watch the show from home. There were certain times when we could see the show and Mum decided that 10:30 am on Sunday was the best time for us.  Dad had said that he could put it on the computer that had been sitting on the garage for ever, so we were waiting and counting down the time until the show started.

It was spectacular. They did it in an old fashioned way almost black and white, until the witch came in with her flamboyant style and colourful clothing. The story line was a bit different.  The parent where kind and loving the whole time and the witch made her first appearance when the  other school children were teasing Hansel and Gretel for being poor and different. The witch appeared as an ice cream lady and all the children lined up for ice cream, unfortunately for Hansel and Gretel it cost money so they felt left out once again.

Hansel and Gretel were portrayed as poor children that loved each other but liked teasing each other, wishing for more.  They ran away because they had been about to take more food than they had been given and thought that their Mum had caught them. They got lost but luckily dew fairies found them and helped them sleep. When they woke up they were lost in a forest, so while they were trying to get out the stumbled across a gingerbread house. They start to eat it then they found the door to go inside. There the witch was waiting. She pretends to be nice to them for a bit, giving them sweet food and acting sweet then the lights went out. When they came back on Hansel was in a cage and was quite fat. Gretel was very upset but didn't have time to save Hansel because the witch came in. She makes Gretel start the oven but Gretel pretend that she doesn't know how to, so the witch had to do it herself. While she was half in the oven trying to get it started Gretel pushes her in and gets Hansel out of the cage. Meanwhile their parents have been looking for them and have found the dew faires who help them look for Hansel and Gretel. They found them at the gingerbread house with a lot of money from the witches lackeys who are very grateful to Gretel for killing the witch.

Over all I loved the show, the sets were incredible, especially the way they portrayed the forest with knives and forks acting as trees and I loved the colourfulness of the witches house and how it was so different to the bleakness at the beginning.  The dancing was beautiful and my favourite part was the dew fairy queens par de deux with the dew fairy king - I loved how they were so light, posed and the light made them sparkle and look like stars. The costumes contrasted darkness and lightness depending on the characters - Hansel and Gretel and their parents all wore dark colours and the witches, her lackeys and witch friends were all colourful.  Pink and red were their predominant colors.  The music was an original score and was stunning overall.  I can't wait until I can see another one.

Gretel holding the bellows to start the oven

That was a quick summary of Hansel and Gretel. I thought that it was incredible. Have you seen it and if so what did you think of it?

Challenge

Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you a bit more about my pointe shoes and about what I have been doing in the last couple of days.  As you may know I have just broken in my pointe shoes and some of you may have been wondering how and why I have to break in my pointe shoes. When you get pointe shoes they are very hard and you can barely walk in them. What you have to do tho is put them on and then walk for as long as you can without the heels slipping off. When they do slip off you sit down and go through the long process of putting them on again, then you start to walk. Once you can walk comfortably without the heels slipping off, then you start to pony trot in them. When the heels slip off you sit down and put them on again.  This can take over a week. After that you should be able to go up on to pointe and demi pointe ( your tippy toes ) without the heel slipping off.  In pointe shoes you have a very small space to balance on, so it takes a lot of effort to stay on pointe. Your feet have to be very strong and they have to stay very strong. Some ways of getting stronger in your feet are to do one legged rises. They are when you stand on one leg with your other foot at your ankle holding on to a barre or something like it, and rise up slowly onto your highest demi pointe and go down slowly keeping your weight on the ball of your foot and always trying to pull up and be taller. Normally you do 35 of these but to start off, do as many as you can. I always count the amount of hours I spend in my pointe shoes so I know that I am not pushing my feet to hard. The last few days I have spent trying to get stronger and fitter since I now have ballet classes and although they are online and the teacher can only see one of us at a time, it will still be as hard as it is in the normal studio. Because one of my friends is a cheerleader she is always working on handstands and cartwheels and how to be more flexible, so me and her often give each other exercises because often our goals align. Yesterday she sent me through a challenge that had gone viral and a video of her doing it, so I tried. It took me almost 1000 tries to get it right but I did.

Have you seen the challenge and do you think that you can do it?

Finally

Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you about how excited I was to finally have a zoom meeting with my ballet teacher, Miss Lucy.  It took a while to get the link up as the password was not working but once I did get to see her I was really excited.  Funnily she called me Sina - another girl in my dance class and I didn't have the courage to correct her as almost everyone is terrified of her.  We had a lovely talk about what we were currently doing and when our online classes will begin.  I can't wait to get started! Today I also finished breaking in my pointe shoes. Yay! It took a month and 3 hours. It was worth it though and now I can start to get my feet stronger in them. I am a bit scared about working in them more as I went on point for 10 seconds a week and then went for a run and I was constantly getting a shock of pain going up through my shins. Although I could break my ankles, knees, or just my legs going on point I am ecstatic about going on pointe as I have been working at ballet since I was 2 and a half years old and it is most definitely my favorite thing to do.

Me in my pointe shoes

What is your favorite thing to do and why.

Delicious

Hi, welcome back to my blog. As you may know I have been going on bike rides to Burwood forest and this afternoon I went on a bike ride and it was incredible. I have always loved this time of the day and going through the forest made it even better. I love this part of the day because it always feels so still and peaceful. I  love how the sun is at a point that makes the light filter through the trees casting golden spots on the forest floor.  I also love how the dust has been illuminated is such a way that it looks like mist flowering through the gaps in the trees which also look good in the light. especially the ones furthest away because in the shadow of the other trees they look so green and dark in contrast to the tiny pieces of broken shells sparkle like a thousand diamonds in the sun. Another reason I love this time of the day is because dinner is almost ready and tonight Mum is making butter chicken.  She is testing out a new recipe for the dish and it tastes incredible. It tasted so good that I stood at the stove spooning it into a mini bowl while the rice was cooking.

The butter chicken.
Have you had butter chicken before?

Bakeing

Hi, welcome back to my blog.  You may know this already but I love to bake and quarantine gives me a chance to experiment with different recipes. I have made quite a lot of baking since lockdown.  Unfortunately or fortunately my Dad keeps eating all the baking so I get to make more. I have made Afghans biscuits, Banana muffins, blondies and more Afghans biscuits. Today I am going to make a lemon cake and I hope it tastes good.  I also love to be in nature and since yesterday was sunny me, my brother and my Mum went for a bike ride in Burwood Forest, it was really fun. We went on a awesome track and got to go up lots of hills. My brother is a great mountain biker and loves to go down hill but dislikes uphill and I am an average mountain biker, love to go uphill and dislikes down hill. I am really glad that we are allowed to go outside for walks and bike rides and am grateful that I live in an area that is safe to do so.

                                                                      My lemon cake
Do you like to bake and if so why and what?

Favorite things to do

Hi, Welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you a bit more about what I like to do while I'm in quarantine. As I said in my previous blog post I love to read. Right now I am reading book 4 of the Twilight series and I am really enjoying reading the book. I love to read about any mythical creatures and vampires are my favorite type of 'monster'.  In between having my " nose in my book " as my Mum likes to say, I like to dance. Yesterday I had my first two online dance classes. It was really nice seeing everyone from my dance class, but it came as a bit of a shock when I found out how inflexible I had become within 5 days. I think that it is really nice how the dance school is trying to still keep up the lessons, but still I wish that my ballet school would put up dance classes online. I thought that the online class when really well considering how much space most people had. We learnt the rest of the syllabus for contemporary and learnt a combo to a Billie Eilish song - Everything I wanted. I also got to do some work in my pointe shoes. ( It is my first year with pointe shoes so I am super excited to use them )

My Pointe shoes

That's what I like to do in quarantine. What do you like to do and why?

Quarantine

Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you about what I have been doing in quarantine, what I like about it and what I don't like. When I first heard that school would be shutting down I was quite nervous because that meant that Covid-19 was in the community, but it was not that bad.  This is day 8 of quarantine and I am still alive. We are allowed to go outside for walks around our area as long as we keep two meters from other people and don't play or touch playgrounds. At home I have to still do maths, reading and writing but I can also play a lot more and I have more time to myself. One of my favorite things to do while in quarantine is to read. I love reading and now I have a whole lot more time to read. I am a bit disappointed because I cannot go to my dance class and even though I can dance at home I still have a LOT of things that I can improve on, that my dance teacher could help me with if I could go to dance class.  I  have a online class with my contemporary and lyrical dance teacher today but it will be different and I wish I could have a class with my ballet teacher too.  something else that I enjoy is sewing and knitting and I have had the chance to finishes a unicorn pillow that I have had for ages. 

                                                                  ( My Uni pillow)


That is what I have been doing in quarantine I am now of to bake a cake. Have you been in quarantine before and if so how was or is it.

Waitangi

Hi, for Waitangi week we have been completing slides about the Treaty of Waitangi. On the last slide we have to make a DLO on the Treaty. This is mine.




That was my time line about the Treaty of Waitangi. What do you know about the Treaty?

Welcome back

Hi welcome back to my blog. This term is the first term of 2020 and and I am going to tell you about something that I did in the Christmas holidays. Every Christmas holidays me, my family and our closest family Friends drive to Kaiteriteri. This year we stayed for 11 days and it was so fun. When we got there it was raining so we had to stay inside our tents. Unfortunately when it started raining again me and my friend where in the kitchen tent so to avoided getting the tents wet on the inside we had to wait there for the rain to stop. The proper day in Kaiteriteri it was sunny so we all went down to the beach. The water was so warm and nice to swim in.  The next day we went to Takaka. It was really fun. We went to the park and had pizza for lunch. Then we went to a watering hole and swam there before going home. There where lots of cool places that we also went while we where there and the hole trip was fun but  Unfortunately we had to pack up and go home. On the way home we stopped at Pelorus so that was not so bad. That was my favourite thing I did in the holidays I will now tell you about the hopes I have for this year. One of them is to make centrals again and to do better that I did. Another one is to get faster at getting my work done and to keep completing my work to a high standard. I look forward to athletes so I can try get to centrals again and I also look forward to leadership groups.
What do you look forward to?

Pool day

Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be telling you about pool day. Week 7 of term 4 Friday my hub and the year 5-6 hub went to pool day. When we got there we had to put on sunscreen first and then we where allowed in the pool. I thought that the water was freezing and wished that the sun would come out and the wind would stop. The water got a little warmer when I played in it for a little longer with my friends but ended up getting out for food sooner than I had imagined. After that I got back into the water for a little bit but couldn't stop shriving so I got out for the rest of the day. It was actually quite nice just sitting on my towel reading because I didn't have to worry about anything I could just relax. I thought that pool day was fun and hope that I can do something like that again.

Lorde

Hi, welcome back to my blog. Today I will be showing you a profile page about Lorde that I created.




That was my profile page. Do you know some of lordes music.

France

Hi, for the last 3 weeks and this week my hub have been writing information reports on different country's. we have organised what info we would have to have in each paragraphs. I will now share with you what I am putting in my information report.

Intro

Population : 65,182,396

It has grown by 0.3 percent from 2017 -2018

It is growing at a steady pace but the pace of growth is slower than in previous years.

Flag: blue white and red equal strips.

Location: the countries that border it are Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and it is near the medatrainin Sea

Capital 

Paris is the city that has lots of famous landmarks

Paragraph 2

History- Key influences main events: 

1789: The French Revolution- During the French Revolution the French citizens redesigned the political landscape, 843: 

Signing of the Treaty of Verdun - the treaty of Verdun was a treaty partitioning the Carolingian empire  among the three surviving sons of the emperor Louis I , 1461-1483: 

The Reign of Louis XI- He continued the work of his father, Charles VII, in strengthening and unifying France.

Paragraph 3

Religion: Catholicism

France is one of the main principle Catholic countries

 45% of people in France claim to be Christian most of them are Catholic.

Politics: 

They vote for a president every 5 years.

Potential candidates must secure 500 signatures from elected officials, such as mayors,
to secure a spot on the ballot.

Paragraph 4

Education: subjects taught at primary school: French, history, geography and civic studies; mathematics, science and technology; physical education and sport, arts and crafts, and music.

Ecoamany:

France is one of the major economic powers of the world.

It is ranked among countries like the United States, Japan, Germany and Italy

Jobs: there is a wide range of jobs in France such as Marketing Managers

Or Airplane Pilots.

All the jobs in France are good paying jobs and you can make a living of them

Paragraph 5

Celebrations:

Mid-February: Nice Carnival. There are 15 days (and nights)
of carnival parades with amazing decorated floats and humongous paper-mache figurines.
During the Flower Parade, beautifully dressed characters throw a huge number of flowers into the crowd
and more than 1,000 dancers and musicians from around the world perform at the carnival.

Food

Herb Buttered Snails (Escargots au Beurre Persillé)  These are from Burgundy in France. They are cooked with a butter parsley cream. They are presented in there shells and you eat them with a little skewer.

Breton Buckwheat Pancakes (Galettes Bretonnes)  you can find these almost everywhere in France. Traditional fillings like ham, cheese, and eggs or andouille and onions are usually used but people have become more creative over time. 

Attractions:

Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is one of the world's most Iconic landmarks.

It was originally hated by critics but now has earned the title: The iron lady.

Louvre Museum

In the former royal palace of French Kings, the Louvre is a magnificent museum that ranks
among the top European collections of fine arts.

Prehistoric Cave Paintings in Lascaux

Visitors can discover the fascinating world of prehistoric art in Lascaux, the best example of stone age
art in the world. 

Paragraph 6

Dance: 

Ballet - stated in Italy in the fifteenth century and came to France were it was further developed into a concert dance and now has its own vocabulary based on French words.

Branle

The simplest of the dances was the branle, which was originally as a circle or line dance of kicking or gliding steps often used  at weddings or popular festivities. 

Galliards

 are festive dances that normally come right after the slow pavanes. In this dance, both the man and the woman perform four little kicks, followed by one bigger hop

Sport:

 Football

Football is most definitely the most important, most watched, and most played sport in the country. 
Local teams are quite competitive with the rivalries running deep and being taken extremely seriously.  

Cycling

Most people are familiar with the Tour de France.  It is the country's most important cycling race.
The three-week long race takes a different route over France each year and is followed by crowds from
different countries. It attracts the biggest names in cycling and  is one of the greatest achievements a
road cyclist can dream of.

That was my plan of my report. Have you done anything like this.

  

how to make Zimtsterne

Hi, today I will be sharing with you my recipe for how to make Zimtsterne a traditional German cookie that is used at Christmas. Enjoy

That was my recipe. Do you think that you can make the cookies?

Attitude

Hi, welcome back to my blog.  Today I will be telling you about Attitude!!!!

Attitude came to  talk to us about puberty - and the effects it has our bodies as we get toward being a teenager.  For example we may get pimples on our faces and mood swings which are triggered by hormones.  A girls body will change and they will grow breasts, pubic hair and get their period.  A boys body changes and they get a deeper voice, pubic hair and they will become more muscular.   Something else I learned is that in puberty you will have a lot of growth spurts - first your hands and feet grow, the the rest of your body.The guy form attitude was quite funny and made a lot of jokes which helped the lesson be less awkward.  This is the logo from Attitude

Hope you enjoyed my blog post. Have you heard of Attitude?

Camp Term 4

Hi, welcome to my blog. Today I will be sharing with you my experience from camp. We went to Wainui camp YMCA Powell village, week 3 of term 4 and it was so fun. The activities we did were: Coastairing, Kayaking, High Ropes, Outdoor Living,  Search and Rescue , Archery, Orienteering and School Led Actives.

My favourite part of the trip was spending time with my friends outside of school and getting to try out things that I had never done before. I really enjoyed all the activities but my favourite was kayaking even though the water was freezing, and I was dying to get warm again. My second  favourite would have to be the rest of them because they where all so fun to do, and I hope I get the chance to do them again.

Something I learnt was that a lot things may seen easy but they can be almost impossible. I found this out on the high ropes when I tried to climb a large wooden ladder with the gaps in between the rungs  getting bigger and bigger, and it got harder and harder to climb. I also found this out belaying at high ropes because it is quite hard to always keep tension on the rope without giving the climber a wedge.  So next time I will definitely pay more attention to the rope and how much tension I am putting on the rope.

Something that I found challenging was sleeping because I kept getting woken up at 4:00 and 4:53 so I found it hard to get back to sleep. It was also hard to get to sleep in the first place because most people were talking. I  found Archery challenging as well because it was very hard to even hit the target and most of the time I had terrible aim and my arrow plunged into the hay. I think that I need a lot more practise in Archery.

Something I am grateful for is the camp instructors and parents volunteering so that we could have a safe and enjoyable camp. I am also grateful for the experiences that I could have and that my school can help us to have good experiences . I am truly thankful that I could go to camp .  I really hope that in the future I can go to Wainui YMCA camp again and have as much fun as I had this time.

Wainui YMCA Powell village


Have you gone to camp before and if so how was it? If not would you like to go? Why? Why not? Please let me know in a comment.
Bye.

Science Investigation

Hi, today I will be showing you my Science Investigation.
Here it is.

That was my Science Investigation I hope you enjoyed it and learnt something. Do you do Science experiences.

On two feat and wings

Hi, today I will be sharing with you my novel that I am reading. How we chose our novels was that we had a reading cafe and we went around taste testing ( reading) some different story's. We then had to rate the books we read from most favorite to least favorite. My favorite was: On two wings and feat by Abbas Kazerooni. I liked it because it was exciting and it was based on a real life story. It was also sad because the main charter had to leave the country alone because the people in charge had lowed the recruitment age down to 8. Abbas ( the main charter) is 9 so his dad thinks that he would be drafted first. when Abbas is trying to get his visa so he can go to England he gets beaten up twice and has to survive by him self for a month.

Would you cope that long?

The food bank

Hi, today I will be telling you about Volunteering Week. Week 7 of term 3 my hub did either: graffiti removal, carpet bank of food bank. I chose to do food bank and luckily I got put in a group with one of my friends, Taylor. When we got there we where so surprised at all the food they had. We could not believe that all this food got donated to them. The first thing that we had to do was to make up a package of food. The people that worked there and already made up one package so what we had to do was to find all the food that was in the made package and put it into 8 unmade packages. There where 3 types of packages. Large, medium and small. We started with the large packages then we did the medium and lastly we did the small packages. This is a photo of what sort of things we where doing.