My Dream Career

My Career Essay
By Charlie Gilbert

My chosen career is a farm manager. This is because I love farming and feel that is what I would like to do when I leave school.

A farm manager's job is to produce milk/wool/meat and grain products from livestock and your machinery. You care for your livestock and raise good crops that are put into foods. You plan your day to day jobs and you must be punctual. Farming offers freedom of your own little country to do what you want on it.                        
To work on a farm you need a basic knowledge of animals, machinery and agriculture.  Having your driving licence is essential, driving trucks/trailers/motorbikes and tractors is important to run a farm and help with day to day jobs.
After finishing school, you can study agriculture at Lincoln University near Christchurch.  Your course covers things like looking after animals, studying weather patterns, crops, machinery, agricultural spraying and drilling, fencing and other practical aspects of farm work.
Getting on the job experience is important and you can work in a variety of different farm operations, dairying, sheep, crop, forestry, pig and chicken farms etc.
A good basic maths knowledge is important for measuring and working out spraying amounts and drilling quantities.  You need to keep good records of what is happening in your business and work well with others like contractors who come in to do special jobs for you on the farm. You need to be physically fit and strong and be calm when things go wrong. Having common sense is really great when you are working with animals that don't always do what you want them to do.
I enjoy working outdoors, am physically fit and like the freedom to choose what we are doing each day. I am safety conscious around the farm and driving my motorbike.  I am prepared to work in all conditions.  This year I have been helping Dad with lambing, it has been very cold and tough on the animals but it's great to see them doing well and being happy.


       

Timaru 2nd August swim meet

At the beginning of August was the Timaru Winter Swim Meet held over two days.  For the first time, instead of  just entering everything I decided to enter the events I thought I could make better times in.
I entered the 200 IM, 100m, 200m and 400m freestyles, 200m and 50m breaststroke.
I knew the best Canterbury swimmers would be there and the competition would be tough.
I had a great day Saturday and swam great personal bests, on Sunday I had the 400m free which is 16 lengths of the pool.  I often forget to count and so I keep my eye on the best swimmer and when they're finished then I know I'm nearly finished.
I was totally focused on getting a good time, I started off strong and after three lengths i could hear Narcis, my coach, whistling at me to hurry up.  Every time I put my head to the side to breathe I heard his whistle, he knows how to time it just right.  With about five lengths to go I could also see Narcis walking up and down whistling, waving his arms to go harder.  It really hurt and I breathed on the other side so I couldn't see him egging me on.
When I had finished I felt dead.  My body ached and i was exhausted.  I took nearly a whole minute off my best time!  I went back to the team, Narcis said...."listen very carefully Charlie, very, very good...but i get half the credit for that!"  Turns out I qualified for the Junior Nationals with that time, but, unfortunately I turn 13 eight days before the Nationals so I cannot go.
We celebrated on the way home with Burger King!    

Swimming Results

Hello everyone. I have just finished my swimming at the Neptune swim meet in Dunedin and will tell you the results....

[ IM is all the strokes in one race]
[ Relay is a group that swim a part each]

200m Breaststroke I got 6th place
100m IM I got 16th
50m Breaststroke I got 10th
100m Freestyle I got 15th
200m IM Relay we got 4th
50m Freestyle I got 19th
100m Fly I got 9th
200 Freestyle relay we got 3rd
200 Freestyle I got 8th
200 IM I got 12th

There were nearly 500 swimmers from all over the South Island.

Thank you for reading. I will keep you posted....

Hey everyone and welcome back to term two. I hope you all have had a wonderful holidays and hopefully enjoying the new term. I am very excited because on the Queens birthday weekend I'm going to dunedin to do some more competitive swimming against the south of New Zealand. I am really looking forward to it and I will post my results

What i know about St Peter

St. Peter was one of Jesus's disciples. Jesus told him that he is going to deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter said he would always stand by Jesus and so didn't believe him.  When the time came and Peter was asked if he was a follower of Jesus, Peter denied it for fear of his own life. Peter continued to deny knowing Jesus a further two times just as Jesus had said he would. After Jesus's death Peter was filled with the holy spirit and continued to spread the word of Jesus's life.

at the moment i am watching the cricket world cup india vs pakistan i hope new zealand wins and everyone has a good celebration

Grandma

My Grandma died from cancer in november 25th 2014 She died at  only 66!

She loved to play the piano with my brother Danny He has a blog on the yr 6 2015 site.

My grandma didn't cook very often but did amazing dinners. My Grandma used to buy  really hot mustard and my Mum fainted it was so hot.

Grandma lived with my uncle Evan and my Grandad in a small house on a farm that my Grandad runs. My Grandad owns lots of sheep and irrigation but not big machinery. Grandma had lots of brothers and sisters and her  brother is a Minister.

She used to call all of her grandchildren once a week to see what everyone was up to. She loved doing patch work and made us all a quilt each. She was always helping in the community and at church.

When she found out she was dying she had two wishes. One of those wishes was to see our school swim sports. She loved watching our races and told everyone it was one of the happiest days of her life.

At her funeral i was asked to do a reading, I was pretty nervous but everyone said what a great job I did and how proud my Grandmother would have been.

I wish I could see her again and some day be with her in heaven.

By Charlie