“I’m glad you’re here,” Pippa said, as she let Pam in. “Jolena is back from skiing in New Zealand,” she told her. “She was just getting ready to show us her photos!”
“But it’s summer,” Pam pointed out. “I know you need snow to ski. We get snow in the winter.”
“But they do have snow in New Zealand,” Pippa told her. “The whole Southern Hemisphere (HEM-iss-feer) has snow right now.”
“It must be very cold in the Southern Hem-Hemisphere!” Pam struggled with the new word. “Do human people live there? I know human people don’t like the cold. It’s why they heat their houses.”
“It’s colder there right now,” Pippa told her friend as they walked down the hall. “but that’s because they have winter when we have summer. It’s complicated. Just ask Mandy to explain it.”
While Billy was setting up The Writer’s laptop so they could all look at the photos, the other dolls settled in their places, where they could see the screen. Billy made sure he could turn the laptop easily, to allow each of them to see. Before Pam arrived, he had shown Jolena how to send her photos to the cloud, so they could pull them up on the laptop. (She wondered how the photos knew which cloud to go to, but she was happy to see her pictures appear on the screen.)
“Did you get to practice your Spanish?” Pippa asked the older doll.
“Only with the team from Spain,” Jolena replied. “There are lots of countries where Spanish is spoken, but most of them are in South America, where it’s winter now, too, so they can practice at home.”
“They don’t speak Spanish in New Zealand,” Jolena said, “unless they know Spanish and someone who speaks it is visiting. I mean it’s not an official language of the country.”
“What language do they speak there?” Billy asked. “Did you have time to learn it before you went?”
Jolena laughed, “I’ve had plenty of time to learn it,” she replied. “Most human people speak English there, like here, and the dolls do, too, although it does sound a little different from how English sounds here.”
“I did find out, though,” she went on, “that New Zealand has two other official languages. One is Māori (MAH-oh-ree), or Te Reo Māori. That’s the language spoken by the human people who were already living in New Zealand before the English-speaking people came to live there. That's my first picture,” she told them.
“We went to see a music and dance performance of the Māori people while we were there,” Jolena said.
The dolls all looked at the photo. Billy turned the laptop a bit, so Pippa and Pam could see. When they had had time to look at the picture, he turned it back so Emil could see, too.
Jolena turned to Emil. “And Emil, you will like this!” she said. “New Zealand Sign Language is the third official language of the country.”
She knew he would be interested, because he was learning a sign language called Signing Exact English, so he could understand what human people who couldn’t hear, even with special glasses, were saying when they use their hands to talk. He had taught Pippa a few signs.
“I wonder how it’s different,” Emil pondered.
“I wondered that, too,” Jolena told them, “so I asked. I found out that there are lots of different kinds of sign language, just as there are many spoken languages all over the world.”
“New Zealand Sign Language,” Jolena said, “isn’t just American Sign Language or even British Sign Language with an accent (AK-sent), because an accent is the way the words sound. It borrowed from British Sign Language, but it has changed over the years.”
“What else did you learn about New Zealand?” Billy asked.
“Well,” Jolena began, “I learned that the country is made up of mostly of two big islands. Where’s the photo of the map, the one I took at the airport after we landed?” she asked Billy.
He found the photo of the map of New Zealand and brought it to the screen.
“We went to the island on the bottom,” she told them. “That’s South Island. We flew into Christchurch. That’s a city on South Island.” Jolena showed them where it was on the map. She had to climb up onto the table to be able to reach the screen to point to the right place. When Billy and Emil had seen where she was pointing, she moved the laptop around so the two smaller dolls could see.
“Then we took a short flight to another place, closer to where we would be skiing,” she explained. “The name of that place is Queenstown.” She pointed to where that town was on the map. Then she turned the laptop back so Billy and Emil could see.
“From there,” Jolena went on, as she climbed back onto the big chair, “we had a bus that took us to the ski area. I took the next photo out of the bus.”
Billy turned the laptop so the smaller dolls could see.
“I took another photo from where we were staying at the ski resort,” she told them.
Billy turned the laptop around again for Pippa and Pam.
“You can tell it was getting late by then. They had lights turned on on the runs the skiers were using,” she added.
“Did you win any medals in New Zealand?” Pippa asked.
“This was just practice,” Jolena replied. “We’re getting ready for the competitions next February, but it was great for practice. I finally did a triple cork. I was really nervous when I was ready for my turn, because I knew I was going for it,” she added. “This photo was taken by our coach. I think you can see how nervous I was!”
“What’s a triple cork?” Pam asked.
“A triple cork,” Jolena told them, “is where you go up into the air and turn over three times. I could only do two times before. (That’s what we call a double cork.) Maybe I’ll even get a medal next time we compete, if I can do it right again.”
“After I took off my skis, my teammates all cheered and clapped their hands,” Jolena told them, remembering how proud she felt. “My teammate Elizabeth took this photo while they were clapping.”
“Wow!” the other dolls all said at once.
“You must be happy about improving your tricks,” Emil suggested.
Jolena thought about it and agreed. It made her feel good that all her practice was paying off.
“It sounds like a lot of work,” Billy said.
“It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun, too. We went back to Queenstown on our way to come home,” Jolena continued, “and we went to a special zoo there.”
Billy brought back the map of New Zealand so they could all look at it again and remember where Queenstown was.
“We saw some animals only found in New Zealand, unless they're in a zoo,” she told them. “I took a photo of a kiwi (KEE-wee),” Jolena said, as Billy found the kiwi and the dolls saw it on the screen.
“It looks like a bird,” Pippa said.
“That’s what it is,” Jolena agreed. “The kiwi has wings, but they’re so tiny, you can’t see them, and they can’t fly. They are native (NAY-tiv) to New Zealand. That means they evolved (ee-VOLVD) there.”
“I found out that if you call someone a Kiwi, it isn’t an insult. It just means the person is from New Zealand. The kiwi sleeps in the daytime and comes out at night,” Jolena explained. “The bird, I mean, not the person. Well, maybe some human people do that, too. They say a creature is nocturnal (nok-TER-nel) when it is only active at night and sleeps during the daytime.”
“Another one of New Zealand’s special animals is a bird, too,” Jolena told them. “That bird is called a kea (KEE-uh). The kea is a kind of parrot, and the only parrot in the world that lives in the mountains.”
Billy pulled up the photo of the kea.
“It’s kind of plain,” Pam pointed out. “The parrots in Maryanne’s bird book are all bright colors.”
“The kea hides its bright colors under its wings,” Jolena told her. “It shows in the next picture.” She looked at Billy, so he would know she was ready for the next one.
Billy brought the photo Jolena was talking about onto the screen and turned the laptop so Pam and Pippa could see.
When the dolls had seen all of Jolena’s photos, Pam climbed down from the chair in the dining room. “This has been fun, but I need to talk to Mandy,” she told them. “I need to find out about this alternate universe you can go to where it can be winter in summertime and summer in wintertime.”
Just like that, she was gone.
The three larger dolls looked at each other and then at Pippa. “Alternate universe?” Jolena asked.
“The Southern Hemisphere,” Pippa replied with a sigh.
Cast--
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Emil: Götz Happy Kidz Emilia
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
Copyright © 2024 by Peggy Stuart
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