Year: 2022

Diary Entry- Abbas’ POV

400 people at the mercy of the unrelenting waves. Any sign of hope was lost when the engine broke down. People panicked, the children trembled in fear of the void below. Everyone had given up, that was until a brave soul, still clinging to the sliver of hope we had left, put up a giant sign, made of spare clothes and rubbish that read “SOS”. I had absolutely no clue as to what it meant, but apparently, it was key to our survival. 

Trying to live on this floating corpse on water was a nightmare come true. The living conditions were horrendous. Everything smelled like sweat, we had to pee through a small hole which led into the ocean, and people were throwing up everywhere. 

Later, a plane flew overhead. We could only hope that someone saw the message, but, then again, hope was a distant feeling on the Palapa. 

Someone had sighted a boat on the horizon, I immediately rushed over to check it out. Turns out, that someone was right, there was a boat on the horizon, and it was heading straight for us

A moment passed and suddenly, this enormous hunk of metal was sitting right next to us. “This is it, we’re saved” we all thought. Someone on board lowers a ladder down to the tiny Palapa. A head peeks over the edge. A man said something in another language, then people started climbing the ladder, one by one. For some reason, we left all our belongings behind on the Palapa. Once we were all on the gigantic boat, the small, old fishing vessel sank, never to be seen again. We remained seated on what seemed to be the main area of the ship. A man, who looked like a captain appeared in front of us. He said something in what I assume is English and began talking to the other crew members. Someone later translated what he said to us people who couldn’t speak English, he said 

“ Welcome aboard the Tampa, you’re in our care now”

Diary Entry- Abbas’ POV

Slow echoing whispers, the creaking of the battered wood floor, My family, hastily rummaging through their belongings. I fought the urge to fall asleep as I too prepared for the journey ahead.

The night was cold and merciless. The constant silence gave off an eerie vibe. You could just barely hear the old rickety bus, waiting patiently for us in the background. 

I was first to step out of the door. The ground was soggy and mushy, dampened by the rain. The surrounding  had a strong, tropical smell. Soon, my family and I were hurrying to the bus, wary of the dangers lurking in the night.

It was old and beat up. The paint had been scratched away from years of driving through the impressive yet terrifying jungles of Indonesia.

I hopped into the bus. The insides were compact and cramped. I plopped myself down at the back. Before the bus departed, I took one last look at the shabby old cabin we had lived in for 2 months. Soon, we would be living in a different place, somewhere far worse.

You may have noticed that the statements in the poem don’t exactly “connect” properly. Well, that’s because these statements were all written from different people from Room 8. For a cool little project, our class decided to do 6 roll and write poems. This way, everyone could contribute. We then split into groups, each group focusing on one bundle of statements. The category my group did was “Happiness”. We cut the statements into individual pieces and re-arranged them into a poem. Of course, the grammar could never be perfect, but the final project was good enough to present to the class and blog.

For RE we looked  at the role of the parish priest. To help out Junior school understand the priests role we created some slides

This week, my class and I learnt about the Sacraments of Initiation, Healing and Commitment. I created an app/poster to demonstrate my understanding.

A few days ago my class decided to look into the new bishop of Auckland, Stephen Lowe. One of the things we looked at was his coat of arms. Everything on his coat of arms signified something. It seemed cool so our teacher decided we should make our own coat of arms. Our coat of arms not only had to be good looking, it also had to be personal.

The color resembles the Filipino and American flag

The cross signifies me as being catholic, the jewels are the number of people in my main family

The seven stars on the blue banner represents me and my dad both being born on the seventh day in our birth month

The suns and the lion represents my zodiac sign, Leo

The grape vine represents all of my extended family, the right side is my dad’s, the left side is my mom’s. The grapes that are blue have died, the ones surrounded by thorns are divorced

The motto is my favorite part of the coat of arms. It means that you should live the way you want to live, don’t let other people’s standards and expectations change who you are, be your natural self.

Those are all the hidden meanings in my coat of arms. All of these relate to me in some way.

The map above is a map of Michael Joseph Savage’s funeral train, as well as all the places visited by the train. When Savage died, the whole country mourned. To send him off, they held a funeral train traversing the whole north island. The train stopped at around 20 stations, those stations were filled with people, all with many prayers to offer. The train eventually stopped in Auckland, burying him in Bastion Point.