Latest News

Turtles, lighthouses and a lot of sand, say bonjour to the beautiful Amédée Island! Today the students spent an excursion day at Amédée island, where the students explored the great lighthouse, slithery snakes and delicious food of Tahitian culture.

Now ordering a meal in French was definitely a challenge for our French students today, because who knew there could be so many different prices for a kilo of bananas? In New Caledonia the prices are much more expensive than New Zealand, even for a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate! So the task of the students for the morning at Institue Voltaire, was to investigate the prices of New Caledonian fruits and vegetables at the markets and compare to our prices at home.

After two big days of excitement Thursday rolled around quickly with the students starting off the day by visiting the Consulate General of New Zealand. The journey however took longer than expected as our navigation and mapping skills weren’t very good at leading us in the right direct. Yet after some time of exploring the interesting streets and receiving some help from the locals, we finally found the place.

Year 7s and 8s are underway learning dance, giving up their late starts and lunch times to practice for upcoming events. There are two groups: Hip Hop choreographed by Berlin Mangu and Contemporary choreographed by Sydney Causer.

For the first time, Sancta Maria College is having a Year 7/8 film competition. With Miss Black in charge, students need to create a film around the topic of culture. Students will be judged on the video quality and storyline. There will be prizes for the winners, although at the moment it is not known what these will be.

We arrived in wonderful New Caledonia. The weather was very humid which was a nice change from the cold weather we had been used to in Auckland for sure. The night was spent at a lovely French restaurant by our hotel eating delicious ham and cheese crêpes for dinner and immersing ourselves in the French culture. Close to our hotel is the beach, which looked amazing at sunrise the following morning. As we returned to our hotel many of us were exhausted and full from the delicious cuisine, so a big sleep was needed for the busy day to come.

Pulse racing, heart beating rapidly and the feeling of unease was what our Year 7 and 8 basketball boys were feeling on Wednesday night as they made their way to Botany College to compete for the Eastern Zone ABSL Championships.

Our French students are off to New Caledonia for their holiday break to experience French life and put their newly acquired language skills into practise.

As you all should know, 8DNN won the Bully-Free Week competition. We were allowed to choose either a shared pizza lunch (and one period off) or two periods doing anything we wanted. We chose the two periods because we could have more periods off school – smart, right?