My Home City

Christchurch is my home city in New Zealand. This is where I went to University and lived until I moved to Hong Kong in 2006. Christchurch is also known as 'The Garden City' because it is famous for beautiful gardens and parks.
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of NZ and has a population of 350 000 people, which is not very many people compared to HK!
The photo on the left is a photo that I took at Christmas time when I went back to NZ. It is the Christchurch (or Chch for short) Botanic Gardens, which are very beautiful. The building you can see was once the Head Gardeners house but now it is a restaurant.
I like Chch very much, even though it can get very cold in the winter. It usually snows but only about once or twice a year. I like it because it is very green and spacious.
The next photo is a fountain which is also in the Botanic Gardens, I took the photo one night when going for a walk.

My last photo for this post if of the famous Christchurch Catherdral which is in the centre of the city. It is a popular place for tourists to visit, and you can climb the stairs all the way to the top, I have done it and it makes you very tired but you get a great view from the top.

New Zealand Maori

Thank you to everyone who has read my blog and has written comments.
The photo in my last blog was taken in the North Island. I was born in the North Island and went to school there too. My family still lives there but I moved to the South Island to go to university and stayed there teaching until I came to Hong Kong.

In this blog, I thought I would tell you something about the native people of New Zealand, the Maori. Maori have been living in New Zealand for about 1000 years and sailed to New Zealand from the Pacific Islands. Europeans have only been living in New Zealand for less than 200 years.

Maori were once fierce warriors and often had wars with other tribes of Maori many years ago.
Although, this does not happen any more (New Zealand is quite a peaceful place), some of the Maori songs and war chants are still known by people today. The most famous is the 'Haka', which was a war dance and chant that was done by warriors before fighting. Now, though it is performed by New Zealand's famous rugby sports team, 'The All Blacks'. Most people from New Zealand know the words and actions to the 'Haka'. You can view the 'Haka' on You Tube by copying and pasting this link: http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=-_CaSu-fnGg&feature=related

Students at school learn to write and speak some Maori language, and there are many places in New Zealand with Maori names. Although, I forgotten many words since I have been in Hong Kong!

I hope you enjoy the video and I will try and find and post some more photos for you on this subject.

A button to my blog

Hello again.
Now, you can find my blog by going into the English part of the school intranet homepage and then clicking on my photo. It's not a very nice photo but I don't mind.
Thank you to Rita and Angee who have already read my blog and made a comment.

I thought that I would post some photos of New Zealand that I took when I went there at Christmas time. I hope you enjoy looking at them and you can ask me questions about the photos or anything about New Zealand.
This photo is of me and there is the beautiful sea and trees behind me. It was a hot day. The photo was taken at a Macadamia Nut Orchard. That is where they grow the trees and pick the nuts off the tree for people to eat. They also made delicious ice cream!

I will add some more photos later so you can have a look at them.