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WEEK 3
Dear Lincoln, Lilliana, Leni, Juliana, Evyn, Jack, Faye, Chloe, Emerson, Lake, Rita, Violet, and Ella,
Well, kids, I am completely exhausted because this week I stayed with the most active, energetic kids I have ever met. Aidan and Luke do more sports than you could even think of! Aidan is 10 and his brother, Luke, is 8. I came to stay with them the weekend before Christmas. They live in the most beautiful house. Their mom and dad had this house built, and they designed it all themselves, so it is like the perfect house. If I could pick everything out for my own house, I’d probably copy everything they have, because it’s awesome! Before this house, they lived in an old house but on the same piece of land. Someone bought that house and came and carried it away on a truck in the middle of the night, like in the pictures I showed you the first week I was here. Then the builders started building this house and it got finished a few months ago and now they have moved in and they love it. They have their own bedrooms and a big playroom with some very cool computer games. Aidan’s favorite game is Singstar on Wii. He has a great singing voice and can beat me at singing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are The Champions! Luke’s favorite game is Aragorn’s Quest because his favorite film is Lord of the Rings.
However, Aidan and Luke don’t get a lot of time to play on their computer games because most of the time they are outside doing sports. They do everything. They do Surf Lifesaving, Beach Series, Flippaball, Soccer, Touch Rugby and if they could fit in Trampolining they would, but it’s okay because they have a big trampoline in their back yard so they get to bounce on that whenever they want!
Surf Lifesaving is so cool. All the kids have their own clubs depending on which beach they live near. Then they have big Surf Lifesaving Carnivals so they can compete against each other. New Zealand is therefore never short of good lifesavers!
I got to go with Aidan and Luke to their Lifesaving Carnival and saw all the teams compete. They have running races along the beach. Luke is so fast I could hardly see him go by! For their warm up they have to do push ups, which are very hard when you are sinking into soft sand!
They also have a race called “Flags” where you start by lying down in the sand, then when the buzzer goes, you have to jump up and turn around and race to touch a flag.
Aidan is very fast at swimming. They go out and swim their race in the ocean. They have to wear bright colored swim hats so that they can always be seen by lifeguards, and if they get into trouble they know they have to raise their hand and they will be rescued in the speed boat. They swim 250 meters, which is almost a quarter of a mile, and most of it is over waves, and against the tide, and they can’t touch the bottom because they are in the middle of the sea!
These surf lifesaving kids are some of the bravest kids I’ve ever met; they swim out further than I ever would!
The next sport I saw Aidan and Luke compete in was Flippaball. If you’ve ever seen water polo, it’s like that but the younger kids do it in a shallower, smaller pool. It’s like playing soccer with your hands. They have to wear special swim caps with protection over their ears because it’s easy to crash into each other in the pool.
Aidan and Luke have finished school for the summer (remember December and January are summer here... I still can’t get used to it!), so we had lots of fun this week. Because they live only five minutes walk from the beach, we have been going down to the beach every day to swim and play games. One day after our morning on the beach, Aidan said to me,
“This is the most fun we’ve had in ages and it’s mostly because of you!” And I told him it was the most fun I’d had in ages and that was mostly because of him and Luke! We built some sandcastles and dug holes and made tunnels between the holes, and we played catch with a tennis ball in the sea, and we did some swimming races. Luckily Aidan and Luke’s mom always has lots of good healthy snacks for us, as we are always hungry after playing so much on the beach!
Last Tuesday we walked down to the beach in the dark to see the lunar eclipse. Did you see it in California? It was awesome. The earth cast a shadow over the moon and the whole sky went red.
Aidan and Luke’s house is very close to their school. They can walk home from school themselves (like Isabella and Sam do) but before they turned 8, they used to walk to school on the “Walking School Bus.”
This is not a bus that walks! But the picture on the street looks like a walking bus. What it actually is, is a group of kids who are between 5 and 8, and instead of all their moms and dads driving them to school, to save money and help the environment, they all meet near their houses and walk to school in a big group, with one mom or dad in the front and one in the back (the moms and dads takes turns when they are not working). The best thing about the walking school bus is that they get to go through the wild woods behind the street where they all live. Aidan and Luke and their mom took me on a long walk through these woods.
First we walked across the golf course (not the way the walking school bus goes, but they wanted to show me how cool the golf course is, and I’m glad they did because we saw a whole family of rabbits hanging out there!)
After the golf course we went further and further into the woods and I thought it was a little dark and spooky until I saw there were signs pointing you in the right direction everywhere!
It had rained the day before our walk so there were lots of rivers in the woods, with little wooden bridges over them. They were the perfect rivers for playing Pooh Sticks.
Aidan and Luke hadn’t heard of Pooh Sticks so I got to teach them something for once! It’s a game that Winnie The Pooh made up. Everyone gets a stick and throws it over one side of the bridge, into the flowing river. Then you go to the other side of the bridge and wait to see whose stick comes through first, to see who’s the winner. They love this game and I think we’ve played it every day since I’ve been here.
Next week I’ll tell you all about Christmas with Aidan and Luke, and “Beach Series” where they do amazing races on the beach with moms and dads and kids all racing together, and I’ll tell you about their cats, and skinks and Kiwi Christmas trees (that are not really Christmas trees!) They’ve gone to stay with their grandparents for a few days but when they get back, we’re having a New Year’s Eve party AND it’s Aidan’s birthday, so I’ll have lots to tell you then!
Hope you’re having a great Christmas... see you in 2011!
Love you and miss you all,
Susie xxxx
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