"WHAT WE'RE REALLY LIKE"

Rangi Ruru Girls' School Christchurch We have just recieved your views on New Zealand. New Zealand is a bit smaller than England and you are right about New Zealand being an island, infact it is three islands but the third is pretty desolate so we don't count it as a major island. New Zealand has a population of about 3.5 million people much less than you expected. You were mostly right with the position of the country it is SE of Australia. Yes we do speak English!!!!!!!!!!!! Our appearance is not unlike you we range from white to tanned, fat to thin, short to tall and black to light blond hair. Here is some of the kind of wierd things that South Bromsgrove have said about us and what we are really like. HOW BIG IS NEW ZEALAND? Some of the answers that students there gave were: Lots of people thought it wasn't very big Some thought it was bigger that than the U.K but others thought smaller One even thought about the same size as birmingham. We know we are actully bigger than U.K. And we are posivtive we're bigger than Birmingham. WHERE ARE WE? Most people thought it was near or next to Australia but one person thought it was joined on to Australia. Some thought we were close to the south pole, and they thought we would feel very issolated. We are near Australia but not joined on to there and we aren't that close to the south pole. POPULATION? The amount of people that New Zealand had, from their point of view ranged from 55 million to 2 million. There were some slightly silly answers such as 12 thousand and as big as England but most thought less than 10 million We have roughly 3.5 million people here. WHAT IS OUR APPEARANCE? A couple of people thought we had slightly darker skin, many thought like us but tanned. Several thought European and maori (golden skin and dark hair) They also thought we were all were tall smart had long hair and were very thin. They thought that we had either very light hair or very dark not in between like them. In actual fact we are pretty much like them, maybe a little bit more tan. And 90% of us have in between hair. WHAT IS OUR LANGUAGE? Some thought we spoke Australian or maori which is native N.Z. We mainly speak english, a few people speak maori but we definately do not speak australian. WHAT IS OUR NATIVE COSTUME? grass skirts, necklaces, painted faces and bodies, feathers, short weaved bikinis, sacking dresses, indian costumes, shell necklaces, leather sandels. Maoris actually wear normalish clothes but they used to wear flax skirts and clothes like that. WHAT ARE OUR NATIVE NZ'ERS LIKE? They thought Maoris use face paint and hunt for their food with boomerangs. They also thought they perform tribal dances which they only knew because they saw it on the rugby just before we bet Brittan in the rugby! Our native N.Z's tatooed their faces not put face paint on they did not use boomerangs like the aboriginees they didn't even know where they were or who they were. WHAT IS OUR WEATHER AND LANDSCAPE LIKE? They said our country was very GREEN, and had lots of sheep around. Some also thought it had big sandy deserts. They mentioned we had big mountains lots of trees and it is very pretty. Of course it is pretty, but we do not have big sandy deserts the closer thing to them is the plains and the volcanic platter. The weather they said was hot and dry and didn't have much rain, while others thought we had a long rainy seasons. We have a mixture of weather but its not to hot and not that wet. This report was put together by Emma Reedy, Cecilia Landman, Brook Freeman and Astrid Clark