I’m sure most of you have seen and heard about the New Zealand earthquake earlier this week.

I’m sure many of you also know I’ve spent a lot of time over there this past year filming at schools and helping students to experience studying English in New Zealand.

When news first broke of the Christchurch earthquake our first action was to make sure that everyone who we’d sent to New Zealand through Genki English was safe and well.  Thankfully they all were.

However I’m also sure you’ve heard the news about Kings Education.

Kings was just about the only school we didn’t film at in Christchurch last year.  But I caught up with the Director, Brian, over a few beers at the ANZA conference in Melbourne a couple of months later.   He was a really top bloke, very on the ball and smart as anything.  He was really into all the projects I was doing and we had a really long chat about the Youtube projects, how to best evaluate our students in India and even Genki Maths and science.    Like most school owners in NZ he was very passionate about education and I learnt a lot over those beers.

I guess living in Japan diminishes the impact of earthquakes a little.  Whilst not “everyday” they happen often, and I’ve been in a few.  It’s only when something like this happens that you remember how bad they can be.