My holiday so far

At the beginning of the summer holidays here, Mum, Dad and I went to the south of France. A small village called Barjac to be specific. We stayed in Mum's friend Mary's chateau. She's from NZ too. Mum's bestest friend (also a kiwi), Brendan and his boyfrend Martijn (said:Martain(not martian)) came too.

Martijn had been to the south of France before and was tired from the journey, so didn't come on our expeditions. In their car (RED CONVERTIBLE!!!!!) on the first day, we went to a market and bought food, then went to an abandoned chateau and had a picnic. After that we went to a river and went swimming with tiny fish! There were some larger ones as well but only about five.We went out to a fancy resturant for dinner. It was really, really good!!

The next day we went to a medieval town called Uzes. There were some fountains you could drink from dotted around and there was a bigger one you could dip your feet in. I did. After Uzes we went to the river again. For dinner we bought pizza.

On our last day we drove in to Avignon and there was a festival going on. It was really cool! There was a guy doing magic tricks in French, some women singing in French and a bunch of people walking around dressed up really weirdly having a conversation in French. They speak a lot of French in France. :)

A couple of days after we got home from France, my Nana and Grandad came to stay for about 5 days.They taught us the card game 'Stop the Bus'. I love it! I'm not too good at it but it's lots of fun. We went to an embroidery shop in a place called Rugeley so Nana could get some fabric. We went to a kind of park there and had a picnic.

We went to Coventry and saw the old cathedral in all its glory, except for the fact that there was a ginormous stage in the middle of it! They were preparing for a performance of 'Beauty and the Beast'. Oh well...

I've seen two movies so far but want to see more in the holidays. I've seen Fantastic 4 with Mum. It was fantastic (pun intended) and left it open for a second film. With the school holiday programme thingy (the Arc), two school supervisors, a girl from my class called Natalie and I went and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That was a scarily bizzare at points, but overall, a very good film.

I went on another trip with the Arc, we went to Warwick Castle. It was awesome! We missed the firing of the Trebuchet but we saw jousting, archery, swordfights and the birds of prey like owls and vultures (my fav) and eagles.

I got a new PC game lately called Scrapland. You're a robot journalist called D-Tritus on the remains of earth. There are no humans as they're hated and feared. Solve the dark mystery behind the murders that threaten to destroy the world of Scrapland. Your role has been decided: how you play is up to you!

Dad's downloaded the first two series of 'Sports Night' and the first one of 'Lost'. 'Lost' is SOOOOOOOOO good!!!!! And I love 'Sports Night'! I've been staying up late watching them.

Last Sunday I started Capoeira! It's really cool but my muscles hurt, especially my stomach :(
Capoeira is like a mix between a martial art and a dance. You start off slow but as you get more experienced you can go faster and faster.

Unlucky Visitors

This weekend we had some guests over. Sam and Anna-Louise from NZ. I kindly let them have my room, while I slept on the airbed in Mum and Dad's room.

I wanted to show Sam my Enter the Matrix game on the PC, but it crashed! That was just the beginning of their unluckyness (actually it really started just before they came over, in Edinburgh with the riots!) ...

The next day we were all in town at a dragon festival. It was really fun and there were performers, free table soccer (football) and boat races. Mum went home first, Then Dad and I, but Sam and Anna-Louise stayed to go to the movies. That was when their bad luck struck again!! When they went into the movie, everything was normal, but when they came out, there was a bomb scare going on! AAAARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 20,000 people were evacuated! All the hotels, everywhere except the bars.


They got home OK and no one was hurt.

Last week I didn't do a lot. A test in science, preparing for the end of school, boring stuff like that. sigh...

Edinburgh

Yesterday my parents and I went to Edinburgh for the day. We woke up a 2 in the morning and left for the coach at around about 3.15. We took a taxi to where we needed to go and waited for everyone to arrive. Eventually we split up onto two coaches and left.

At about 8 in the morning we stopped for 15 minutes at a service station called Moto. We arrived at Edinburgh at about 11 am.

We were all given arrest cards just in case and then set off. Mum, Dad and I went and got a vege burger and it was goooooooooood!!!!! Then we went to wait to go on the march.

Two hours later we left because we saw the Maori independence flag and hung out with them until they started marching. We followed them for a bit then went and joined someone else, they led us to the now moving march and off we went!

We took ages to get out of the gate and everyone was pushing. We marched with them for about half an hour then went and had a milkshake. I had toasted marshmallow flavour, Dad had butterscotch. Mum didn't have a milkshake, she had lentil soup. :}

Then we went and listened to people ranting and some music. At 3 o'clock everyone had a minute of silence, then a minute of NOISE!!!!!!!!!!! I ran out of breath twice.

Next we bought some chips and went on the coach home. I was so tired, I went to sleep before I closed my eyes! Weirdly!!

I'm back!!!

I haven't written for ages - but here I am.

School's okay, getting better because the Summer holidays are coming up! Six weeks. The classes are just as boring but the last week will be almost non-stop movie watching. Mmmmmm...

I suddenly have a Star Wars games obsession. I've ordered one off E-Bay (7 days overdue!! Grrrr!) called Star Wars Battlefront, and this morning I downloaded a demo of one called X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter where you fly an X-Wing in space and blow stuff up! I like almost every game except the LEGO one. LEGO, Star Wars and PC games do not go together.

This is my homework, poetry for science! I had to write a poem describing an animal, without using the name, and see if the class could work it out! I did it as a sonnet. Here it is:

Chameleon
An animal with very sticky feet
It is about the same size as a shoe
It’s nice to look at but not good to eat
It’s green and red and brown and purple too
Its tongue is just as long as head to toe
Some look like tigers but they’re really not
They don’t move fast they are extremely slow
They’re reptiles so their blood is cold not hot
It looks around with really wonky eyes
Its skin is made of mirrors but not glass
It really likes to eat bugs not mince pies
It lives amongst the forest trees and grass
I wish we had one right here in our class

My second Jakecast

Now you can hear my amazing voice once more... in my second Jakecast! WOOOOOO! YEAH! Happy Easter to all readers of Call me Jake (and listeners now too!) .

Download the mp3.

Parental advisory

Hi - this is Jake's Dad.

As an experiment, we've let Jake try a podcast rather than a blog post - though he will be strongly encouraged, reminded and cajoled into writing more on his blog. There will probably be lulls like this again, but the rule is still supposed to be one a week minimum.

As you'll hear, he doesn't have that much of a problem telling stories verbally. He'd be better off practising his writing. But this will do for now.

Click here to download the Jakecast mp3.

The previous week

In answer to your question Steve, I didn't get a mark, I got a comment from my teacher. I was very disappionted. They said it was very good, but I got no mark!! Grrrr.

This is what she said:

Jake, this is so imaginative. Well done! The last two chapters are particularly good and have the elements of a myth that we asked you to include. You worked very hard on this.

Today is mothers day over here! It's in a different place in the year to NZ. Dad and I gave Mum a fancy apron and a nice card, which I wrote in (the card, not the apron). I've been trying to do cool magic tricks, but they're either not watching or not interested. Oh well. :(

I made breakfast in bed for Mum, and Dad and I ate the leftovers. Strangly, Dad keeps on saying that HE made the breakfast! He must be going crazy from old age!

Dad and I have been trying to get a LAN connection between our two computers so I can play NWN with Dad! We can't get it working and that's annoying. Also, NWN keeps on freezing with a black screen, forcing me to restart the PC! That's a grrrrrrrr type of prob. More ram should fix it.

On the whole though, I've had a pretty good week. I'll post again soon.