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This is the bird-eye view of my hometown now. I sometime got lost, and had to rely on the gps.

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This was my hometown when I was little, barely had any buildings.

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When I was 7

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Hi, It’s me!

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Xuan, Vasanthy, Karen, Abbey, Taylor, Te Kohau, Tania

Our countries are China, Sri Lanka, USA, NZ/Aotearoa

Our cities are Hamilton, Knoxville, Auckland

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Taupo

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Kauriki, the school is next door. The church and cemetary is across the road. Taumarunui

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second tallest

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X -When I was in, say, 5th grade, my family moved to the south of my city but I stayed in the old school. It takes roughly 30 minutes to walk from my home to school. The school day began at 7 am and finished at 7 pm. So, every day I had to leave the house in the very early morning (around 6 am) when the sky was still dark and when I arrived home at night, it was almost 8 pm… Weekends and school holidays do not exist in my childhood memories. I always got a bunch of homework to do during the weekends.

T- Most of my memories when it comes to my education were more of social learning and the people that I was surrounded by. I specifically remember from kindergarten to second grade I went to one elementary school and have very fond memories and thoughts about my teachers and my best friends went there. In third grade, I moved to a different school in my county and remember that my teacher did a lot of yelling and it scared me because I was not used to that. I do remember that school was more of a time for me to see my friends and be around peers. I went to public schools from kindergarten- 12th grade and graduated with over 500 others so I was used to being around people and learning in a collaborative way. We did learn a lot but that is not really what I remember about my early education.

V- I studied at a private Montessori school from the age of three which was located near to my town. My uncle would drop me to school and my Aunty would pick me up. It was nice to wait for them because they would bring me something to eat every day. My Montessori teachers were friendly and strict. My school taught me to read and write in Tamil and English. I would mainly bring home work to complete. I never had free play to engage with but mostly did academic studies. Our school opened from 9to1pm and I would start my tuition classes from three in the evening…My Montessori was a structured program. The teachers were qualified and graduated from the Northern part of the University. The environment was well prepared and our country has a long history in bilingual education. I started to learn my second language when I started to study at primary school.

K - I have vague memories of attending playcentre (a preschool/ kindergarten where children attend with a parent/caregiver) as a young child. Once I was 5 I started school at the small local rural primary school, guessing around 60 children. A bus would pick us up outside our house and return us at the end of the day. My mother was usually home before and after school expect during calving. The bus picked up and delivered all the children in the area but delivered the Māori children to one school and the Pākehā (European) children to a different school. The next school I attended was of similar size and the only memory I have of a teacher is him lifting a ‘naughty’ child off his chair by his hair! As well as trying to rote learning the maths timetables.

There is a complete contrast between schooling in China/Sri Lanka and US/NZ.  Both China & Sri Lanka had a long learning day, very long in the case of China, with no holidays or free time. Academic memories predominate in the China/Sri Lanka memories and social aspects of schooling feature in US/NZ memories. Though our education experiences have been different we are all doing a similar degree now. Which experience would a child prefer?

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X I was born in the fourth-tier city in the east part of China, by the Yangtse River. It is not a big city like Beijing or Shanghai, but decent size with around 4 million population. Back to 1980’s, most cities in China were quite underdeveloped. I still remembered that the electricity blacked out every Friday night whenever it was winter or summer. So, I had to light up the candles and kept studying until the midnight…I am lucky to have been born in an era of economic boom in China, my hometown is looked totally different from the one lives in my memory, it is so modernized now. I left my hometown in 2002 and had lived in Beijing for eight years before I moved to New Zealand. I went back once every year, but I was astonished in my every visit. Where is the park I used to hang out with my cousin when I was little? Where is the primary school I spent 6 years in? Where are my childhood friends?

V I spent my childhood in a small village in the Northern part of Sri Lanka until the age of eight and moved to the city to live out the rest of my life in Colombo,the capital of Sri Lanka. We lived in a small village called Kaithady.. My childhood was free and relaxed. I used to play with my neighbouring friends and cousins and used the water well for my daily bath.

K Entertainment was found on the farm, tagging along behind my older brother and his mates. We made rafts to float down the river, and these were made more elaborate each following summer. Tree huts were made and cubby houses in the garden for me to play with my toys and cats. Playing in the hay barns, swimming in the rivers and cow troughs, exploring every part of the farm, including the places we were told not to go…When the cows calved, mum would have to feed the calves and milk cows when the crops were being planted/harvested it was during these times I was expected to do more for myself and the running of the household. I remember a lot of board games and cards being played in the evenings, mainly with Mum, but Dad would sometimes join in.

T - I was born in Taupo (a town) and grew up there and in Taumarunui (a town) on a farm. The overgrown section next door - the grass was over our heads so we could run through it, play tiggy through it and make houses in it by flattening the grass to make rooms. The Lake - during summer we would be at the lake every day. The Library - Another public place. We loved reading.

We did not all grow up in modern urban environments but we live in them now. Our memories of our towns, cities, farms and villages centres around what we did there. Will our children have positive memories about the places they are growing up in?

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It takes a village to raise a child. Who was your village? 

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It takes a village to raise a child. Who was your village? 

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A …we did not live near our extended family like grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. The closest any of my relatives lived to us were my grandparents who lived two hours away. That was a big part of my childhood because we would take weekend trips there to stay with them during the school year and week-long trips in the summers over the years. …We also had lots of babysitters growing up. Over the years we had probably two or three girls who were our usual babysitters. These women were important people to me growing up because they were so fun and we spent a lot of time with them! I was even in one of their weddings later on and have babysat their children now that we are older.

K. My Father was a farm worker and we lived in the farm worker cottages on the farms that we worked…My Mother was a stay at home mum that gardened, cooked sewed our clothes, knitted and mended just about everything we needed to stretch Dads wages further. I have one older brother, who I was either fighting with or getting up to no good with. My Grandparents lives nearly 2 hours away and with the ties to the farm and my mother not getting her driver’s license until we were older, we didn’t see them that much. I remember catching a bus in the school holidays (feeling very grown up) to visit them. They lived in the city (Auckland) and had shops, take a ways, my cousins nearby and I would go to the retirement village where my nana worked and see all the ‘oldies’, who loved seeing a young child. Other holidays my Grandparents would take me to the beach where they set up a tent and we would camp for a week or so, collecting pipis (a shellfish), a being spoilt.

V. I was the second child born to my parents and lived with my mother’s siblings and relatives. There were ten children at home ; my two sisters and one brother and six cousins. Our grandparents who were farmers made sure we helped out with house work. .. Hindu religion involves gods worshiped in temple. Religion and traditions played a large role at that time. We went to the temple every Friday.

T. Some places that were very important to me growing up was my church, my house and my cheerleading gym. Since I was little I was raised a Christian and attended church at least once a week. I remember growing up in the church that my family still goes to. I grew up with my mom and dad, my older sister, younger brother, and younger sister. Being in a big family I felt like I was always around people and had people to play with and talk to. I loved to stay home and be with my family. When I was younger, my cheerleading gym was also a place that I spent almost every day of the week. I was very competitive and wanted to be the best that I could be so I would go in not only for my team practices, but tumbling class, conditioning class, flexibility class and open gym. I spent so much time there that it started to be like a family to me.

X.I consider my generation is the “loneliest generation” in China history, because of the One-Child policy. I don’t have any siblings, and the only child I could play with was my cousin. However, we did not live together, and we only saw each other once a week. Can you image that, when both of my parents went to work, I ended up spending a lot of time alone at home and that might be of the reasons that I am more of an introvert? Despite being alone all the time, I sometimes appreciate I am the only child of my parents, which means I do not need to share anything with brothers or sisters. You may argue that I am being a typically selfish only child, or that I just don’t understand how siblings having really works, but I loved being the centre of attention.

T. My mother died when I was 6, my younger brothers were 5, and my older brother was 7. It is the job of the older children to look after the younger children. My older brother and I had the responsibility of caring for the twins when my father was not there…It seemed that we had more freedom in that we were more unsupervised than our friends but we had more responsibilities as well.

Our village across different countries and times was a nuclear family usually, with some influences from grandparents, extracurricular activities and religion for some people. Being from rural or urban, developing or developed country, younger or older made little difference. Mum and dad were usually busy working. Sometimes family, other carers or no carers looked after us. We usually had siblings with one exception, but that exception made the most impact in our group.