Tuesday 29 January 2019

Congratulations Mulan (again)

Yesterday, Mulan finished her Khan Academy 7th Grade maths.  Again.

She completed it last April, but then Khan Academy added lots of new stuff in many of the grades.  So, Mulan went back and for the past few months she has been doing the earlier grades.

She will start back again today with 8th Grade, which she is currently 49% of her way through.  Our aim is for her to work through this steadily, but do more problems to help with speeding up her problem-solving time.

A very relaxed and flexible goal is for her to finish 8th Grade by the middle of the year.  In the imaginary world in which she lives and schools in the US, she would then be two years ahead of her age.

---

Meanwhile, Miya is continuing to work through both 3rd Grade (88% complete) and 4th Grade (67% complete).

Her main goal at the moment is to finish learning her times tables.  She now knows most of them, but occasionally she needs to calculate them in her head.  So, it is about speeding this up and making it automatic.

I think this would enable Miya to speed though the remainder of both 3rd and 4th Grade.  She might then start 5th Grade before mid year, which, in that imaginary world, would make her between one and two years ahead of her age.

(One of the strange things about the schooling system(s) is that here in New Zealand there are four school years separating Mulan and Miya, while in China (and I think the US) there are only three school years separating them.)

Thursday 24 January 2019

Algies Bay

On Saturday, just a couple of hours before Mama and I arrived back home in Auckland from our big Tongariro Alpine Crossing expedition, Mulan and Miya took off away from Auckland in the opposite direction.

Here's what happened.

Gugu, Gufu and the cousins were heading up north to Algies Bay for several days of camping at Bethshan.  Nainai and Yeye decided to go up for a few days too, staying in one of the motel units at the camping ground.  Mulan and Miya went along with them.

So, when Mama and I arrived home we had another couple of nights alone with no children.  It was very peaceful and quiet, and we missed them.

On Monday morning I drove up to Algies Bay to join them all.  Mama stayed behind at home alone -- she's not so keen on beach-style camping, so had conveniently scheduled work for herself.

I stayed there one night in the motel unit, and then on Tuesday evening Mulan, Miya and I drove back home again.

It was a very relaxing and peaceful couple of days for me.  Bethshan is a small camping ground/motel, and there were very few people around.  Here's a photo from our motel:


The beach is very safe, and the kids did lots of rowing in the free-to-use kayaks and dingies.  The trampolines and swing were also well used.

Mulan and Miya are keen to go back next summer -- and next time take our tent.  We'll see.

Sunday 20 January 2019

Tongariro Alpine Crossing

It was almost as crowded as China.

I'm talking about the track on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.  Mama and I walked the 19.4 km on Thursday.

Mulan and Miya weren't with us.  They had a holiday at Nainai and Yeye's place, while Mama and I had our first trip away together since the girls were born.

We drove down to Tongariro National Park on Wednesday, and stayed for three nights at New Zealand's highest hotel, Skotel Alpine Resort, in Whakapapa Village.  Here's the view of Mt Ruapehu from our room:


We were up before dawn on Thursday, needing to drive the 15 minutes to National Park, where we caught the 6 am shuttle bus to the start of the walk.  This is us at 6:40 am, looking a little worried:


What can I say about the walk?  It's a must-do, and a lot of people know it.  The track was constantly busy throughout the day -- the track in the distance sometimes looked like an ant trail.


(This is a look back along the track, with Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro mountains.)

The walk starts at an altitude of 1100m, steadily rising to 1900m (the top of the track in the photo above), before dropping back down to 800m at the end.  The beginning is pleasant, the middle is stunning beautiful, and the end is a tiring slog to the finish line.

It took us 8 hours and 45 minutes from start to finish.  We went slower than most people.  But that's okay, we were probably twice the age of most of the walkers who passed us.  I was the slow one, with my old injuries and achy knee and feet, and Mama often had to wait for me to catch her up.

We weren't sure what to take with us, and in the end we probably over-prepared and took too much.  A sizable minority of people simply wore shorts, T-shirts and sneakers, and the perfect weather meant that that was all they needed.  We carried unused our thermal polypro, as well as thicker rain jackets, though I can see that if the weather turned bad, then that sort of alpine clothing would be essential.  We also wore our hiking boots and used hiking poles -- these were very useful and many people had the same.  One very smart thing we did was pack our walking sandals.  Hiking boots were important in the middle section, but for the final couple of hours or so the track downhill was smooth enough such that walking sandals were the ideal footwear.

Here's another couple of photos of the stunning middle section:




The final shuttle bus back to National Park was 5:30 pm, and those who missed it would have to pay extra.  We managed to catch the 3:30 pm bus.

The next day, Friday, we were both pretty stiff and sore.  The Crossing really was a full body workout, as even the arms and shoulders were achy from using the hiking poles.  We rested in our hotel room in the morning, before heading out in the afternoon for a slow wander around the Whakapapa Village area.  We did a couple of short local walks there.

Friday evening we drove up Mt Ruapehu, intending to walk to Meads Wall (apparently it has become quite famous because it is one of the Lord of the Rings sites).  Unfortunately, there's lots of construction happening in the area (lots of new stuff for the coming winter ski season), and the walk detour closed at 5 pm.  Instead we stayed at the road to watch the sun set.


Oh, and we did a few obligatory jumping photos:


Saturday morning, Mama did a two-hour walk from the hotel to see a waterfall.  I stayed behind and further rested my slowly-recovering body.

During the drive back to Auckland on Saturday, we stopped off for lunch at the Hamilton Gardens.  This is another must-see; the various theme gardens are both clever and beautiful.

Saturday 5 January 2019

Woodwork project and music area

Mulan and Miya's recorder teacher, Kevin, has a lot of different sized recorders.  Mulan and Miya are starting to get a fair few, too.

In class, Kevin sometimes brings along a (homemade) recorder stand for his recorders.  I thought it would be a brilliant woodwork project for Mulan and Miya to make one for themselves.

Here is the girls' completed homemade stand (I supervised/instructed, but the girls did most of the work):


The girls measured and cut the base, which was two rectangular pieces of plywood (leftover pieces from some house repairs).  They then planed and sanded smooth the edges.  We bought three thicknesses of dowel from the local hardware shop, then measured and cut the lengths (different lengths/thicknesses for different sized recorders).  Next, we measured and drilled the holes in the upper piece of plywood, then sanded the holes smooth.  Then it was time to glue the pieces together -- first the two base pieces then the nine dowel rods in the holes.  When the glue was dry Mulan stained it.  Finally, the girls stuck on four non-slip feet on the bottom (also bought from the hardware shop).

It was a great little first-off woodwork project for Mulan.  When I was her age, at intermediate school I made a few similar sorts of things in woodwork class.

At the same time, we've been rearranging our music area in our living room.  We've been getting too many new instruments!  Here it is: