Tsai Family of the Parklands

Yesterday morning after Melinda's flute lesson, our family picked up Grandma to go to the Rio. We gathered at the designated dining destination. Joshua chose Guapo's, a Mexican restaurant. We enjoyed our delectable meals of chimichangas, huevos rancheros, steak, chicken, and nachos. As an added surprise, the restaurant staff came out with glass of ice cream and a maraschino cherry on top. They gave Joshua a sombrero and sang Happy Birthday and clapped. Then they took a nice photo of him in a sombrero and the lighted candle on top of the ice cream and gave a printed copy for him. Last night, Megan gave Joshua a puppet show that featured rhyming words with the "oo" sound. Here is the poem she made up: Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Joshua! Happy birthday to you! Say oo! "oo!" Switcharoo, kangaroo, peek a boo, lulluroo, Kalamazoo, aaaawwwwwwooooooooooooooooooooooo!! Hhhhhhooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

This is Jessica reporting from Auckland, New Zealand. It is currently 73 degrees Fahrenheit on March 17, 2009- Happy St. Patrick's Day! Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be such a big deal around here, at least not at the school I'm teaching at (Ranui Primary School). But Amy and I (Amy is my roommate, also from BYU) dressed in green for fun because Americans just like to dress up for fun. Anyway, looking back on this semester, I feel like I've accomplished and learned so much about life and teaching. The first month here we squeezed all of our BYU courses and we were taught by New Zealand professors, as well as our director who came with us from BYU (Dr. Jacobs, we call him Papa J). So from these courses, we got more of an idea of how to teach in the primary schools (that's what they call elementary schools here). After taking the BYU courses, we took a 2 week holiday to the South Island (Queenstown and Christchurch) and then to Rotorua. For a more detailed a