Tuesday 6th March 2007. Wellington. New Zealand.

After breakfast with Gary and Gretchen I am off to Tawa College. I really enjoyed my day at the school and I must thank the English department greatly for their support.

I got a true sense of the success of Maori integration (in comparison to the situation of the Aboriginal) with Maori words (as well as works of literature) integrated in the curriculum as standard and used in conjunction with standard English. This was not the education of paying lip-service.

The school also practice an excellent reading programme with a certificate of reading competence the final outcome. The activities associated with gaining the certificate are inventive with the students writing biography or autobiography interviews with famous authors like Jane Austen or William Shakespeare for example.

Again integration is a focus and work must include a Maori writer, poet etc.

Covering fiction, non-fiction, short-story, novel, pre-1900 and another culture (of which Maori is not seen as another culture; Maori can be taken as covering the New Zealand author section); the programme is very popular with the students.

Back in town tonight I dine at Hope Bros on Beef Wellington before heading to Molly Malone's to hear what turn out to be a disappointing Irish Band.

On my stroll around the city tonight I saw what is arguably the world's most inspiring piece of graffiti which read...

We did not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrowed it from our children.