Final New Zealand photos... finally!

Hello! Renée's mum has emailed the final photos, so I can catch you up with the last weekend of my trip to New Zealand. We went to the Auckland museum (www.aucklandmuseum.com) with Renée's brother (Rob), his wife (Pen, short for Penelope) and Renée's nieces, Alice and Isla. They've just built a new conference/events centre and foyer in the Museum and it's pretty impressive. We went for a tour of the new bit, and Renee took this photo of Alice and me. That's the Sky Tower you can see in the background, which is the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere. You can bungee jump off it, but I didn't try that!

This is Renée, Alice and me in front of a traditional Maori storage building, called a pataka. They were built on stilts so no animals could get in and steal the food. The figure on the top with his tongue poking out is called a tiki, and he is a warrior. All the carvings on the building tell stories about the tribe of people who built it, their ancestors and their family history. The carvings are very intricate and beautiful.

This is me with a girl in traditional Maori costume. She is standing in front of a Maori building, or whare (the 'wh' is pronounced like a soft 'f'). This one would have been a communal sleeping and meeting house, on a marae. Agian, the carvings tell stories about the tangata whenua, the people who lived there.

Renée and Simon are moving flat this weekend, so I should be heading off to Australia this week. I'm quite glad - apparently Perth is very hot, so a bit different to our current snowy conditions

Hope you are all enjoying being back at school.

Love,

Sophie :o)