Bonjour tout le monde! The project between Nga Diocesan School in Marton, NZ, and the College Jules Ferry in Conty, France, is going well.

So far my pupils have all written letters to prospective penpals and are currently awaiting responses. My senior pupils and I have visited the memorial in Bulls to Bess, the only horse to return to NZ after 4 years of war. We made a film of our visit and sent it to Conty. On the same day we went to the Army Museum in Waiouru where there was a fascinating exhibition about the role of the horse in the war and we again made a film which I have sent to Conty. We are all very aware of the hardship the horses suffered and the loyalty they showed to their masters, as well as the skills they used to help in the war, e.g sensing danger before the humans did, etc.

We have also watched the movie War Horse, by Steven Spielberg, which reinforced our impressions of the skills of the horses. My English class has now done some creative writing imagining they are animals and writing in the first person, as Joey did in the Michael Morpurgo novel. We were also privileged to go and see the movie of the National Theatre production of War Horse, in which the horses were depicted by puppets made by a South African company. After watching Spielberg's version of the book we could not imagine such a production but we were moved and stunned by the skill of the puppeteers and the producers and staging of the play. There was also a very interesting interview with Michael Morpurgo at half time, in which he said that he chose to write the book from the horses's point of view because the horse was neutral and he could remain unbiased in his writing.

The pupils from our partner school in Conty are due to visit the war museum of the Somme and we look forward to seeing their filming of their trip.

Our project is very exciting for us because we have an Equestrian Academy at Nga Tawa and the girls are all very interested in the horse's role in World war One. We hope to host a group from Conty in October and we plan to visit them next year also.

Carol Coleman.