Conrad and Callum

Conrad‘s guitar lessons are going really well. He has to learn notes because he never did music before and so far enjoys playing the guitar despite his limited knoweldge.

His soccer team (Oatlery RSL U10 B) are doing well even though they had their first loss for this season on the weekend. At school he was in the Newcomb ball finals last Friday and Hurstville South Public School came second.

At the moment he is reading ‘The boy in the striped Pyjamas’, which was made into a movie recently. His teacher thought he might like to read the book and lent him a copy. As it is a book for adults it is taking him a while to read it but he understands the concepts and ideas in it very well and enjoys (if one can use the word enjoy about such a serious topic) reading it very much. As I have told him quite a lot about some of the Jewish people I know and the stories many Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany have told me he is familiar with the subject and has great empathy for their suffering during WWII. He appreciates that his teacher encourages him to read books he would not normally read.

Callum was a bit unlucky just before 2nd term because he injured his right foot on the last day of the holidays and so could not take part in the second instalment of the try-outs for the Blakehurst High School soccer team.He was quite concerned because he did want to get into a team for Blakhurst, especially because he had played Mini-soccer during first term. But to his surprise, despite not having been at sport in the first week, he got in the B team and is exctatic about it. I went to see the sports teacher because he hadn’t been able to find out what was happening and when I told him the good news that afternoon he was so happy he nearly jumped up and down. He playes in his first match for the season and Blakehurst HS won. So they had a great start.
After school Callum is online with the Kansas City Chiefs (American NFL team) most days and has become friends with people from the US on the fan site. He talks online to some of them and is very familiar with the team and their news. He loves being part if the ‘Chief’s Crowd’ (the Fan site) and it looks like he is communication very well with all the American members of the group. Some of them even write to him and they discuss lots of team issues with him.