story by kids I work with. This time it’s by some 2nd and 3rd graders. And as with last time, I have only done some smoothing of edges.

There once lived a man named Bob who lived in Ye Olde Town of Medfield. He was a hobo, and would wander the town looking for work. Sometimes he found small jobs to do, but he never had enough work to have a place to stay. One day, as he was walking around, he noticed something odd. There was a mouse on the corner, and it was singing! Bob stopped, amazed. Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s not entirely cheese related. It’s also not entirely mine. It was mostly written by some kindergarteners I work with at MAP (Medfield Afterschool Program). I just sort of filled in the edges. Enjoy.

Once upon a time, there was a MAP site on the side of a volcano where the kids would come to play. There were four teachers working there, Zack, Emily, Tara, and Michaela. The kids had a lot of fun, playing games, singing songs, and doing projects. It was a really happy place for everyone.
One day, Chicken Pock, one of the children, heard a rumbling from deep in the volcano. He tried to warn the teachers, but he didn’t have time. The volcano erupted, and the MAP building went flying up in the air. Everyone was scared at first, but it landed safely in the water by the edge of the volcano. Then everyone noticed that Michaela was not in the building. In fact, she had been thrown out into the air when the volcano erupted. Fortunately, there was a kite flying by, and she grabbed it and sailed back down. But when she got to the MAP building, she stubbed her toe on the wall. Just then a snowman was walking along and saw her hurt toe. He gave her a band-aid, and then started to dance. She was so amused by this that she decided to dance with him.
Right about the same time, a frog was coming out of the ocean. He was hungry, so he looked around for some food. He looked up and down and all around, then saw the sun shining up in the sky. Mmm, that looks good, he thought, and jumped up to eat it. Of course, it was too hot to eat, so he spit it out and jumped back in the water and had a big drink to cool his throat. Then he thought of the moon, which he knew was made of green cheese. So he jumped up and ate the moon. It was delicious, and his color changed from red to green. Then he jumped back down to take a nap next to the volcano.
After a while, a squirrel came sniffing along and saw the frog. The squirrel was hungry too, and swallowed the frog up in one big gulp! Then the squirrel lay down to take a nap right in the same spot. Well, wouldn’t you know it, along came a fox, also looking for food! When the fox saw the squirrel, she went over and gobbled it up in one gulp. This finally woke up the frog, who was stuck in the squirrel’s belly. He got out his walkie-talkie, called the squirrel and said “Let me out of here!” Of course, the squirrel was stuck in the fox’s belly, so the squirrel had to call up the fox on the walkie-talkie. “Let me out of here!” said the squirrel. So the fox coughed up the squirrel, and the squirrel coughed up the frog. The frog landed in the volcano, which was so hot, it turned him red again. He hopped out into the water to cool off, then hopped away.
Meanwhile, the kids at MAP had decided they liked the building being in the water. From that day on, the kids would go swimming whenever they were at MAP.

It’s about 12:30 in the morning and we are staying in a nice little backpackers in Picton. Picton is the port town in the south island that the ferries all go to from Wellington. You’d think a port town with this much traffic would be big, but no. It’s a quiet little town with a main street that’s about three blocks long. The place we are staying in is called the Juggler’s Rest, and sure enough, there are juggling batons for use out front. We have a nice little wood shack next to the house, which is actually nicer than it sounds. It is very new, and smells nicely of wood, and has a rather comfy bed. The house is fairly small, but very clean, and the guy running the place seems to run a tight ship, if somewhat informal. Checkout is 10:30, or thereabouts, if we run a little late, eh, that’s okay. We spent two nights here, doing some resting and catching our breath in this quiet, peaceful atmosphere. We finally got some wireless internet, but it took a day and a half to get it going. So there are some pictures up on flickr, although we have lots more that will have to wait. Too many to put up all at once.
The ferry ride over was not the most pleasant. The ship was really big, possibly the biggest ship either of us has been on. Despite this, the wind had it tilted at an awkward angle almost the whole ride over, which apparently is pretty normal. Although, according to the guy running this hostel, the sea was so bad once that the ship almost capsized and the 3 hour crossing took close to 9 hours. Can’t wait to take it back.
Tomorrow we head south, and maybe stop off in Blenheim for some wine tasting at one of the vineyards. Then on to Kaikoura, the whale watching capital of New Zealand. Will we go on one? Tune in to further episodes to find out!

Just another quick post, since we have lost our free internet connect, and are once again paying for it when possible. We left Auckland on Saturday, and picked up a rental car. Driving on the left is not so bad, but the steering wheel is on the right side of the car, and so the car itself feels backwards. We hiked ONe Tree Hill, just south of the city, and it was beautiful. We then drove along the Bay of Plenty, stopping in Thames. Yesterday we arrived in Rotorua, home of thermal springs, and stinky egg sulphur smells. Today we are off to see Hell’s Gate, a large thermal area, and then head south again. More updates to come…

I don’t like flying, it quite frankly scares me. I’m not as bad as I used to be, but I still get pretty anxious when I get on a plane. Plus I don’t really fit well in the seats. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I got on our flight to New Zealand. And it really wasn’t that bad. Ok, the seats were cramped, and we couldn’t move or stretch out, because it was a completely full flight. But the take off was smooth, and I realized that you don’t feel the flying quite as much in a bigger airplane. And it was big, a 747, one of the two-story planes. (we passed the stairs on the way to our seats) And they took care of us. Every seat had a little video screen that had a remote control tucked into the armrest that you could pull out and select what you wanted to watch. They had about 25-30 movies, a bunch of TV shows, some programs about NZ, and even video games! The TV remote turned sideways and became a game controller. Sarah and I both played a bunch of Tetris. They also had pretty good food, and free wine. Flying internationally apparently has benefits.
Of course, it also lasted forever. I set the timer on my watch to count down the 12 hours and 15 minutes we were going to be in the air. At some point in the flight, after I had played video games, eaten dinner, watched half of a rugby match and an entire movie, I tried getting some sleep. I drifted off for probably a few hours, woke up and looked at my watch. Five hours to go. So I went back to sleep for what seemed like a long time. I woke up again thinking we must be close, and looked at my watch again. Three hours to go. We were never getting off that plane. After an eternity, we finally started our descent into Auckland, only to have the captain come on and say that we were having technical diffculties, and would be holding for about 5-10 minutes while they figured it out. Of course, my first thought was that the landing gear was broken, and we’d be making an emergency landing. But, sure enough, about 5 minutes later, the captain told us the problem was fixed, and we proceeded to make a rather smooth landing.
Maybe someday I’ll be better with flying. Maybe.

We spent the middle of the week in San Francisco, and it was great. It’s really a beautiful city. It actually reminds me of Boston in some ways. The physical size is similar, and even some of the architecture is reminiscent. (The occasional brick building was very refreshing.) We drove around the city, wandered around Golden Gate Park, climbed the hills called Twin Peaks, and got an up close look at the Golden Gate Bridge. By the way, the bridge and the park are not next to each other. They’re actually a couple of miles apart. We also went to Chinatown and had some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. And the next night we went to Berkely for some Chicago-style pizza that was some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. (Thanks Colleen and Saskia!)
My only complaint about San Francisco is the parking. I thought it was bad in Boston, but there are meters in the city that literally give you 5 minutes for a quarter. Unreal. Still, we enjoyed it, and were sad to go.
We left on Friday and drove down to Monterey, which is a nice little seaside town. We got out at the docks and were met with the echoing calls of the seals that were all around the harbor. I took some videos that I will try to post soon, and I caught the seals playing around, swimming, and barking. I don’t think the sound on the videos really captures the way the sounds of their calls were just reverberating around the harbor.
We then drove down the coast a ways, with the intention of camping somewhere in Big Sur for the night. The first place we checked out was a state campground. We pulled into this dusty parking area, and went up to the booth that was manned by an unhappy looking park employee. (ranger?) He proceeded to tell us that the caping was in a field about a third of a mile away, the only facilities were the crappy looking bathrooms next to the parking area, and don’t drink the water. After pondering the rattle snake warnings signs posted on the booth, we decided to keep going. About a mile away we stopped at a privately run, very clean and very friendly campground. They had spaces for camping, showers, and even laundry rooms. We were sold. It was very nice, and also very cold, and the ground was very hard. So while we enjoyed ourselves, we were not well rested.
The next day was another long trek back to LA, and we got completely burnt out on such long drives. When we’re in New Zealand, if we have a car, we are going to limit the amount of driving we do in a day.
So this is it, we leave tonight, and soon we will be in New Zealand. I don’t think it will completely sink in until we are there, but it is very exciting.

We drove up the coast yesterday, from LA up to San Francisco. It was a beautiful drive (mostly), and it also took a couple of hours longer than I thought it would. I think it was because we did a stretch that I thought would be coastal, but in fact only went through farmland. See, there are two highways that overlap each other that run up either along or near the coast, highways 1 and 101. (and as Sarah mentioned in her last post, people refer to them as the 1 and the 101. They do that with all the highways, excuse me, freeways, here. I was often corrected when I lived here. I’d say route 10, and someone would say it’s called the 10. Weird.) Anyway, 1 runs along the coast most of the way, but overlaps with 101 through some stretches a little farther inland. The map showed one section that split off from 101 and ran towards the water. Well, it only wound slowly through these really flat farms. Some of the farms seemed to be growing grass(?) and some were growing lettuce and maybe cabbage. And they all smelled kinda funny. Like the veggies were a little dank.
The coastal parts were very beautiful. There are some places where you drive along beaches and there are ranches on the other side of the street. It must be incredible to live on one of those ranches: “I’m just going to ride the horse down to the water.” There are also passes through the mountains, which Sarah pointed out are not like mountains back home. They are not covered with trees and green, but are instead rocky outcroppings with only hiints of dry vegetation.
Then the really spectacular length of the drive happens in the stretch of coast south of Big Sur. (we’re not sure if Big Sur is actually a town, or an area, or a mountain…) This is a winding, curving road that hugs the side off the mountains that drop off in great cliffs into the sea. It was especially breathtaking, because we hit that area as the sun was starting to set. Of course, that also made for much more difficult driving, as we had to fight the sun from our eyes and try to stay safely on the road. The sun then sank behind a giant, solid bank of clouds that had the look of a mountain range far off over the water. Sarah said it looked like an enormous, slow moving tsunami.
The the sun went down. And it got dark.
We were mostly through the mountains, but not quite. And let me say that driving twisty roads next to a cliff with no streetlights in the dark is an excersise in concentration. It’s also very tiring. But we made it through, and finally reached SF, and now we are here and excited to go exploring.