School Production

in the life as a teacher there are always things coming up, beyond the class time, the planning and paper work and staff meetings there are things that come up from time to time requiring volunteering more time. a school production is definitely one of those.

Myself and Julia, another new teacher to the school, offered back in February to run production this year and we had a lot of fun over school holidays writing a script. Think Night at the Museum mixed with your typical school play.

there were auditions, rehearsals, prop building, scenery building, teachers in classrooms worked with their kids on each scene and then we had to teach the whole school a song to sing at the end. i got some Canadian content in by doing a simplified version of The Barenaked Ladies - The Big Bang song.

some odd things came up for example how do you transport a giant dinosaur backdrop from a classroom to a school a few blocks away. this thing was huge, he was designed and drawn by a wonderful parent, Julia and I (and Julia's hubbie) painted the big bits but the artist finished his details.

he wouldn't fit in any of the cars any teacher owned, renting a trailer seemed foolish so i did what any sensible teacher would do...i used a bunch of kids.


we drew more than a few stares, and the gusts of wind in Wellington made for some exciting moments. but we made it!

the production itself was awesome...well i'm pretty sure it was, i've never seen it, i was the backstage coordinator. Blaise taped it for us (and the school) but i haven't seen the tape. Mark the principal said it was the best he had seen (but then again it's his job to say that ^^bb) and i totally think he's right.

thanks to everyone who helped make it awesome.

Some Winter Kiting Photos

The regular crew were out in Seatoun last week and a passer by was nice enough to let us know where he'd be posting the pictures he took. Grabbed a few of them, here they are (all rights reserved to him)

Concert of a lifetime!

Ok, so most people won't be too excited or won't know what I'm talking about, but Carly and I just bought tickets for what is likely to be Leonard Cohen's last concert tour!

November 1st, we're heading to TSB Arena for what promises to be an AWESOME concert. Here's hoping nothing comes up for November 1st between now and then.

I'm super excited. Also, I have to admit that years and years of exposure by my mom to Leonard's music has had a lasting effect :)

Kitkat discovers fire is hot...

We have a gas fireplace in our new home in Ngaoi. Its small yet quite potent, kicks out a lot of heat. I've done the sit next to the fire thing myself, doesn't seem hot at first but then you realize you might be a mite close and you quickly move farther away.

Kitkat had gone for her morning constitutional. Its not Canada cold but its getting into kiwi winter, about 14C, you want a jacket but you won't freeze. So she arrived home, a little damp from the morning mist, just as we finished breakfast. Now we had turned the fireplace on to warm up the house and I said to Blaise "its surprising that she doesn't curl up near the fire."

Its true she never has gone near it the last few times we put it on, she's more of a couch cat, so i wasn't expecting her to explore it today. But lo and behold about 10 minutes after i said that a large ball of fur was sniffing the air. She approached from the side, did the whole sniff the air, turn on the spot, lick the fur like she didn't care and then came closer. She obviously recognized this was quite warm but rather than slowly exploring the environment she decided this was excellent and walked straight up the the fireplace and began to nose around the protective plastic cover at the bottom near the floor. It was probably ok where her face was but her ears were high enough to be straight into the heat coming off the fireplace...3...2...1.

Ears suddenly whipped back, hackles went up, cat turned and bolted away from the fireplace. Kitkat discovery of the day, fire is hot. I got a giggle from this one, as did Blaise who had been watching the show. For those of you who think we're cruel, we checked her ears and she's fine, not even a little pink or tender, she also get a 30 minute grooming session afterwards which she really quite enjoyed.

Follow up: cat has discovered optimum point of warm vs not setting ear afire.

Exploring the North Island (pt 2)

Note: all the photos from our trip can be found on our gallery here.

Having checked out the surfing and New Plymouth in general, and, having slept in the car the night before, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dip at the Taranaki Mineral Baths. Very Alkaline, very hot and very relaxing, we spent a half hour working the kinks incurred from our previous night's makeshift camp. A warm shower after that and we were ready to hit the road.

The drive from New Plymouth to Raglan was largely uneventful, punctuated only once by a stop in Pio Pio for some of the best soft ice cream and frozen yogurt I'd ever had. Not sure if this is the norm in New Zealand / elsewhere, but the machine they had was fascinating. Basically it was a giant funnel where you put vanilla ice cream and frozen berries (The shop was part of a blueberry, rasberry and strawberry farm). Then, what can only really be described as a conical drill bit, sized to fit perfectly into the funnel was lowered into the machine and turned on. Obviously very high torque, it ground the berries into the ice cream and extruded it out the bottom into the waiting cone. It was my first time seeing such a device and the results were delicious.

Now I'd booked our stay in Raglan at a Campsite / Eco Retreat called Solscape. The main appeal was that they'd made their cabins out of what they called "cabooses" and the photos and views made it look quite nice. When we got there, we quickly realized that the "Eco" part of the retreat was what their main focus was. Not a bad thing, just not what we expected. We checked into our cabin / caboose: in reality it was an older 30s-40s style train car that had been cut in two and closed up with a proper wall. Great idea, well executed.

However, I'd accidentally booked us a cabin in the middle of the campsite, which turned out to be quite close to the common areas and the outdoor bbq. We went into town for some dinner and then settled in for the night. It was at this point that the fact that this was also a Youth Hostel became abundantly apparent. The partying started around 9 and didn't stop for quite some time. I had earplugs (thank god) so I ended up passing out fairly quickly.

This is where i'd usually list out the things I didn't like about the place. I'm not going to bother. It wasn't for us, but I can definitely see the appeal for many people so I'll leave it at that and move on with our weekend.

Waking up bright and early, we had some breakfast and headed out to the river mouth to check on the wind. Forecast was to get 13-15knots from the West, perfect for Raglan. The reason Raglan is such a kitesurfing destination is that it has a very strong current in the outgoing tide. This compensates for the lighter winds and makes for marble smooth water on which to kite.

Unfortunately, the wind didn't read the forecast and decided to move SW instead and becalmed the river mouth. I bumped into a traveling Kitesurfing instructor there that I'd first met in Wellington and he and some other tourists chatted up one of the locals to find out where to go. With the info at hand, we all headed out to Aotea. It shares many of the same characteristics as Raglan, though it's harder to get to and doesn't have as friendly a launch spot.

View Raglan in a larger map

The blue route is the one we took. It was an hour of gravel roads and windy passages through the hillsides and farm country. Yet again I thanked the excellent engineers at Subaru for building such a fantastic AWD system into our Legacy.

Once we got there however, it was worth it. A nice wind was blowing through the river mouth, perfect direction and to top it off we met some really nice kite surfers from Auckland who were down for the weekend. They'd kited this spot previously and had all the local knowledge needed. So off we went hiking down the waterline to a decent launch spot. In the end there was 5-6 of us out on the water.

The red kite on the left is me. The wind was dropping a bit so I decided to rig up a larger kite. I was obviously a little excited and rushed the setup and didn't notice a small hole in the canopy of my kite. Launched the kite, got back out into the water and things were going great until I got to the other side of the estuary, where one of the other kiters noticed that was the hole getting bigger. I managed to get back to the launch area (which was about a km from the other side where we'd been riding) and after a rather graceless landing saw the extent of the damage:

I think it was about this point that the wind took pity on me and picked up another 3 or 4 knots which allowed me to go back out on my smaller kite and finish the day in style.

The tide was coming back in, the sun was setting and I'd had a great day of kiting in conditions I'd never seen in Wellington



To be continued yet again....

Finally Exploring the North Island.

You'd think, having been in the country more than a year, that we'd have become experts of at least the north island by now? You'd think... But in actuality, other then a few road trips with friends and family (Napier, Hamilton and Pauanui) we really haven't gone off roadtripping.

First, I've got to say, I love road trips. I love driving, winging it and seeing parts of the country you don't see from a plane.

Our plan was fairly simple. Carly got back from a Montessori conference on Tuesday, we leave Tuesday night with an eventual goal of getting to Raglan. Known for its surfing since at least the 60's (there's a famous american surf movie called The Endless Summer that is filmed in part there) and in recent times has become a Kitesurfing destination as well: It's got a strong outgoing tide current that makes for smooth flat water and some fast riding. In fact, one of the large Kite / Parasail manufacturers, Ozone, moved their offices from France to Raglan.

We didn't really have any other plans. We wanted to make it somewhere that had diving for Carly and see parts of the country we'd missed throughout our travels.

Fate had a slightly different plan for us though. BEE, our trusty Legacy, had been having a bit of a bad month, having had a failed MAF and an alternator on the fritz. I'd just finished replacing the alternator when I lightly scraped the front tire on Tuesday morning. With a loud hiss, the sidewall of the tire cracked open. As I was on my way to the Kapiti coast with my friend R. (who was already in the car) we decided to deal with it on Wednesday, delaying our departure.

Tuesday night we also discovered that our dryer had kicked the can, with a full load of wet laundry in it. Not an auspicious beginning to our trip!

Wednesday morning, we slapped the spare on the car, drove to Petone where Carly had found a laundry and I knew of a tireshop with a quick turnaround. By 12:30 we were packed and on the road!

Our first stop was Foxton Beach. I'd had a few adventures trying to Kite there before, but this was the day. A beautiful 20 knot NW wind was blowing through a huge river mouth with flat water, good company (I was kiting with The Wind Warrior and a friend of his) and a beautiful sun. We kited until sundown, packed up and headed back to The Wind Warrior's place for coffee and a bit of a social call.

We hit the road around 7, shooting to get to New Plymouth, find a campsite or holiday park and spend the night. TWW had mentioned that the Women’s Surf Festival and ASP Dream Tour was being hosted there and it would be worth the trip to check out some of the action. What we didn't immediately realize was this would mean there'd be 0 vacancies at any of the parks, motels or hotels.

about an hour and a 1/2 before we arrived in New Plymouth we started trying to find a room. No luck. Once we got to the city, we decided that since we had some camping gear in the car, we might as well find a quiet corner and do some real "car camping". So we pulled into the parking lot for Fitzroy Harbour around 10:30 and, re-arranging our baggage, dropped our sleeping bags in the back of the wagon and slept relatively well! Next time we do this we'll make sure to put the kitesurfing boards on the roof, but really, it's about 6 feet long, perfectly flat, and, with an air mattress and sleeping back, was better then expected!

The next morning, after exploring New Plymouth, we decided to go check out some of the surfing action:

To be continued...

His name is MO

Its been a while hasn't it.

Well here is something exciting ^^ at least from my perspective.
I have a car....I can hear you saying "what?"
I've always been a bus person, its easy, you can sleep, read, daydream and let someone else deal with gas, maintenance and parking. However, with the recent move to Ngaio from Island Bay (I suppose we should have blogged that) my commute to school increased.

BTW here is a gallery of our new home. The commute in the morning went from 20 minutes to 45 minutes, but the afternoon commute home went from 20 minutes to 1:20h (1:00h if i get lucky on connections). I did it for a month and a bit and while i could continue to do it there was a lot of talk of getting me a second car.

The second car also lets me get out of Ngaoi on the weekends to do my own thing when Blaise takes Bee (the 1st car) off to kite surf. In general the freedom is awesome, I take scuba gear in mine and do my thing, he fills his with kite gear and heads out in the opposite direction.

After some initial shopping it came down to the following: small, electric locks and windows, AC, foldable back seats, good gas mileage (oops sorry petrol mileage) and cute...yes that last one was mine.

Shopped around for a bit, trademe, dealers etc and finally found a nice dealer where the man showing the cars spoke to me and actually let me lead the conversation. Huzzah! Ladies don't buy from a dealer that won't talk to you and keeps answering all your questions to the man.

So what did we end up with, everything we wanted and more ^^
Meet MO.


I named him after the character from the animated movie WALL-E. The grill made me think of him. That's his picture beside my MO. Was it geeky and girly, yes, yes it was. His name is MO.

One of the Little Things I like about NZ.

I walk around barefoot a LOT now. After a good day at the beach, the last thing I want to do is slap on some shoes. I typically will be wearing sandles, but they will inevitably get covered in sand and grit, so, embracing my new found kiwidom, I do without.

I've been to grocery stores, restaurants, bars, shops, gas stations and even the bank barefoot. I'm certainly not the only one either; most weekends I see a good number of adults walking around sans-souliers.

From speaking to Carly, it's a battle in the schools to get kids to wear shoes at all! I know whenever we're out about town, there's a 50 / 50 chance that anyone under about the age of 12 will be shoeless.

It's oddly liberating to be honest, and there's certainly no stigma that I've seen around it, especially on a bright sunny day in the beach towns :) Of course, I'm pretty oblivious when it comes down to it.

Our Latest Insectine Visitor

About two weeks ago, while watching TV at night, I looked out the window and promptly freaked out. I saw something. Large. Flying just outside our kitchen window trying to get in to the light.

Got closer and realized it was actually a moth, about the size of a bat, pink, and very fuzzy. So, not terrifying, but definitely out of the ordinary. It took us a little while to find what it was, but we've done so: it was an Emperor Gum Moth. Imported from Australia, these guys grow to a wingspan of about 15 cms, have soft feathery antennae and are generally considered to be relatively harmless to New Zealand.

So here's the wiki entry for them:

Opodiphthera eucalypti

Here's some photos found on the internet about them. Turns out they are kind of cute.

The Ritual

The smell of neoprene mixes with the warm coffee I've just brewed. It's 8:30 and I'm driving up the Coastal Highway heading to Waikanae again. It's become a weekend tradition; wake up early on a Saturday or Sunday, load the car up with gear, get a quick breakfast and hit the road.

Kitesurfing has become a big part of my life. It's been just under a year since my first lesson. Since then, I've gone out 20+ times. Rain, shine, winter, summer so long as the wind's blowing, I head out. In the last 2 months I've really hit my stride. Confidence is up, I'm developing a style and some good endurance. I've gone from 2 to 3 kites, increasing the wind range I'm equipped to deal with to 12-40knots.

I even had my first crazy wind experience, heading out to tackle 30+knot winds. Every time I head out, I learn something new. There's always something to try and as I expand my set of locations, more times I can head out.

I won't always be have the flexibility so I might as well make the most of it while I can.

Christmas Strawberries on the Beach

Christmas has always been an exciting time of year for me. This year in particular I was lucky that my parents were here for the christmas holidays. Last year Blaise and I were in NZ and we had a sedate christmas; a few prezzies, we made pizza and chilled on the couch.

This year we went all out (many thanks to Blaise who cooked and put up with my over excited christmas buzz). Blaise made his first NZ ham, with oranges and cloves including a side dish of grilled kumara. My folks bought way to many prezzies for Blaise and I. The weather was sunny and warm, the sky was blue, it was summer in NZ.

I had this overwhelming desire to have christmas strawberries on the beach. Not really sure why, not sure where the impetus came from but I had to do this for christmas this year!

So after dinner and a brief recovery time we prepped the strawberries, grabbed the folding chairs and hauled my family down to the beach. ...windy Wellington, i moved to a place called windy Wellington. The wind was gusting, the sand was blowing, christmas strawberries on the beach would not be on the line for this year. However not to be denied my prize i got Blaise to snap a few photos of me eating strawberries on the beach and my parents joined in with good humour.

Christmas - check
Strawberries - check
Beach - check
family - check!

Waikanae with Mom and Dad

I've been to Waikanae before with Blaise for his kiting but in all honesty i have never walked the beach there.

First off let me tell you the first weekend after school holidays is not a good time to be on the road. I knew this too because last year we left super early on that Saturday to avoid the traffic. So when it took nearly 1/2 an hour to go from Paraparaumu to Waikanae i'm surprised it to me that long to remember about the holiday travels.

Anyway we finally got there and met up with Blaise who had come in our car with his kite gear. The wind wasn't quite up to snuff but he held out hope it would pick up. There was one lone kiter who was going to give it a go and while Blaise hung out near the car and gear, my folks and i headed for a walk down the beach. I had never walked the beach before, my past experiences with Waikanae were launch Blaise then hunker down against the wind on the beach or return to the car. It was a pretty nice walk and i saw lots of the blue jellyfish Blaise had said you could see on the shore (and in the water i might add).

Do they sting you ask? Blaise says "YES" but the ones on shore are usually dead (or dying) and aren't much of a threat. Do i want to step on one barefooted to test the theory...no.

We walked down the boat launch area and then turned around and headed back. Blaise called my mobile (cell) to say that the wind had picked up and he was going to gear up and head out. We arrived back at the cars just as he was suiting up and more and more kiters were showing up. The call had gone out and they all knew the wind had arrived. We wandered down to watch Blaise launch before heading home and for once i wasn't on launching duty, my dad took over and did a great job too.

We watched him zip around for a bit and then headed back home.

Botanical Gardens with my parents

I hadn't been to the botanical gardens in a while, not since...a while. I had definitely gone between this December and last, and ah yes i remember. I went with Jess and Lauren when they came in August. It was a lot nicer weather this time, still overcast but not the same volume of wind and rain.

When we arrived up at the top via cable car my parents wandered into the cable car museum. You know its weird that i nor Blaise had ever gone into that place before. It was actually quite good, lots of info, not too much to say "oh boring" just enough to make you go "Ooh thats interesting". We spend a bit in there wandering around, taking the occasional photo.


We headed out to the garden and walked the flower path down to the city passing through the australian garden, cacti garden, hydrangea path, main garden, herb gardens...you get the idea. The path eventually takes you back to the city proper after passing through the cemetery that they had to move 20,000 graves to put the highway through. A pleasant walk for the day and I can't speak for my folks but i for one will sleep tonight.

The Parents visit Berhampore / I did what to my ....?

Last day of school today. And what a doozie of a day. I have been sick for a bit now, a particularly virulent little infection, started off with me coughing up green phlegm, took me off school for almost 2 weeks. And just recently the coughing was really starting to hurt my chest. Before we get into that lets do the fun stuff.

So Tuesday December 15th was my last day at Berhampore school for the term. I had a bunch of kids asking me the day before "is tomorrow your last day?" so i expected (correctly) that presents were forthcoming. And they blew me away with the sheer volume of prezzies and cards, next year maybe I'll ask for a goat. Other companies like world vision do this too.

Anyhoo there was a stage show to be presented at lunch which both my parents had expressed interest in attending. The kids had been working on it for the last week and apart from one forgotten line it was very well done. Later that afternoon after lunch I was starting to feel really pained in the chest area. Like hurting to breathe. So i suggested to my teaching partner (who totally approved bless him) that i would run the last 2 spelling bees and then head to a clinic to see a doctor. Dad who had been collecting left-handed players baseball gloves for us in Canada took a group of excited kids down to practice some skills while i stayed up top to run a bee.

The day ended with some proud spelling bee winners and a pleased as punch teacher (ie. me) wishing the school year hadn't ended quite so soon.

Now onto the bad. My coughing and sore chest. The reason I ended up having pains while breathing was because i have gone and torn the costal cartilage on my 6th rib. The coughing was putting pressure on the area, anyone who has heard me cough knows i put out an enormous woofing cough for someone my size. I finally tore it out Tuesday morning when a particular bad coughing streak hit me in the morning. The doctor says i have to stop coughing and then it will be 2-3 weeks for the cartilage to repair. And to make me feel better he gave me 5 drugs, i kid you not 5. An anti-inflammatory for the muscles, an antibiotic to clear out the last of the virus so i would stop coughing, a pain killer called Tramadol which my mother claims my grandmother is using, and 2 pills to take with Tramadol to reduce the effect its going to have on my stomach and guts. I ended up programming my ipod to whistle at me every time i needed to take a pill because with 5 of them multiple times a day i'm never going to get this straight.

The Santa Run

Dad and Blaise headed out to Whaikane (sp) to do the kite surfing thing and I hung out with my mom. I had in passing glanced at something called the "Wendy's Santa Run" a charity 2.5km run where all the participants wear felt Santa suits. I can't even remember where i saw the info but when i told co-workers and the like about it they all said pretty much the same thing "i've never heard of that."

I think they need better advertising.

So we headed down to the wharf and as we got closer we could hear amplified voices on a PA system. Well i thought this had to be the right place. As we tried to get our bearings on where they would run from I glanced left to the wooden bridge that connects the water to the city. Like a train of ants ran a bunch of people in red, zig zagging in lines down the ramps. This was definitely the right spot. As mom and I debated whether to walk over there the fastest of the pack came out right beside us, as luck would have it we were on the running route.

We took a few pictures, male santas, female santas, little santas and a few little elves.


They did their run around Te Papa and came back along our path and headed to the finish line. A couple of Santas stuck out, the group of moms with their babies in prams, they had decorated them up with gold garlands and the older child had a fairy outfit on and a decorated push scooter to use. A couple who upon their run back decided they were warm and they took a dive off the pier into the water below, we tried to get a photo but they jumped to fast. And finally the lady we will refer to as chesty Claus. I'm sure she was going for a costume prize but two rules 1) think about body appropriateness and 2) if you can't jog in it why did you design it.

The only time she moved faster than a walk was the last 20 meters to the finish line.

Still a pretty fun thing to watch and every jogger seemed to have a good time. If you are Wellington next December check it out.