Yamagata Shi, Yamagata Ken

Bali

2012-01-21T17:12:00.001-08:00

I think I'm going through a bit of culture shock. Just a few weeks ago we were in India, and now we are in Bali. It is not normal to be jet-setting as much do currently. It is a strange feeling when going to the airport is a regular routine. Packing is a now fine tuned skill. And within a very short time period our apartment is full of souvenirs picked up from various destinations. Waking up yesterday morning felt like a dream. Where am I now? What am I doing here?

But I'll be honest. That feeling soon disappears when I glance around our ENORMOUS room. The mosquito nets block the view slightly, but they just add to the ambiance. I ventured outside on to our veranda, which is also huge. Equipped with lovely large chairs to sit and enjoy the view. This is a hotel our friends regularly stay at. Unfortunately someone else thought a view of the rice paddies would be a great place to build as well, and have built buildings right in front of the veranda. There is one little space where you can see what once was a beautiful, serene view of rice paddies. Now however the hotel is surrounded by a construction site. The hotel is a bit of a haven. No construction noises breach the walls. But as for the rest of the place, power drills are on for most of the day. Things seem to move slowly here though and they don't tend to start up the power tools until 8am.

We are here in Ubud with our friends Tina and Andrew. They are frequent flyers to Bali, solo and with guests, so they seem to have set places to go visit in Ubud. You know how it is when you have taken people visiting several times. You slowly develop a system and plan. We certainly did in Christchurch. Anyway, it is great. We don't have to think too much. We just jump in the car with Madi, their regular driver, and go with the flow. Yesterday we enjoyed views of rice terraces, attempted to see a volcano but due to fog there was limited visibility, and had our first sips of cat-poo coffee. Ubud is beautiful. It is everything that people say it is. Tranquil, terrific food, stunning scenery, kind people and great shopping.

Yesterday we ticked off one of Dave's "bucket list" items and we sipped our first cat-poo coffee. We were taken to this beautiful plantation, full of fruit, vanilla beans, herbs and several other delicious treats. Wanting us to sample some of the fruit our driver immediatly grabbed a large stick and began hitting a branch high up in the trees, trying to knock down tamarillos for us. After a trying with a couple of different sticks the tomato-looking fruit fell to the ground. I don't think I've ever eaten tamarillo before. Looks like a roma tomato, tastes similar to a passion fruit. So after this first taste test we wind our way through the path and arrive at some tables and chairs, ready with all the fixings to try all the various teas and coffees the plantation produces. The plantation is set up so you sample all the drinks and then you make your way over to the shop and buy what you have just tried. The atmosphere was very relaxed. And after they found out Tina and Andrew had been there several times already, we were nearly left to our own devices. They could probably tell they would get a sell out of us regardless of their speeches. And of course we ended up buying some cat-poo coffee. How could you not? The civet cat chooses the best coffee beans to eat, and then passes them through. I think the acid in their stomachs does something to the coffee beans, they are collected and then roasted. Yum.

The rest of the day consisted of driving through the country side, laying our eyes on rice terrace after rice terrace. The scenery is just beautiful. Everyone is relaxed, people seem to live comfortable lives. I can see why people speak so highly of the area.

Anyway, my coffee awaits. Breakfast is coming. This is photo was taken at from the restaurant of our hotel.

Taking a breath before the next plunge

2012-01-21T17:11:00.001-08:00

I can almost hardly believe we made it on the plane. By Tuesday I wasn't sure if I was going to make it through the week! Looking back it is hard to believe how much was crammed into the last two weeks. Not to mention a visit from friends, a birthday, the ballet and handing out report cards to students.

A cab came and picked us up from school today at 5 o'clock. I had a lovely, meeting free two hours, to tidy up my desk and attempt to put my classroom back into some sort of order. The paperwork on my desk was so bad my computer was hidden. Though I was extremely tired from a late night yesterday, today was a lovely day of Chinese New Year celebrations at school. Most of my students showed up in Chinese outfits, there were activities set up around the school and just an really nice buzz about the place (probably due to teachers who knew they were catching a flight out of there in just a few hours.) We had plenty of time at the airport for a few drinks and food. I have flipped through my In Style magazine and now start to feel like I am unwinding a bit. I can't wait for a few days of sleep next to rice fields.

Return from India.

2012-01-06T19:01:00.001-08:00

We departed India at 10pm. I love watching the inflight entertainment no matter how bad. Gives me a distraction when there is turbulence. As a result I haven't slept yet. I was going to push through the day and go to sleep a normal time but I think Im too tired for that. Dave ANSI have already been fairly productive. A visit to our nearest Coffee Bean. Then a quick trip to the bank. Groceries and then a snack. All the while I can't believe we aren't in India anymore. I will have a nap and our trip will feel like a dream when I wake up

Amritsar

2012-01-04T05:46:00.001-08:00

It is with much sadness I drink a final pitcher of beer and munch on my final plate of peanute masala in Amritsar. This location has been an unsuspecting highlight of the trip. With bellies extremely full from a few days of eating food that has been out-of-this-world, we wait to board an overnight bus back to Delhi. There we get picked up by a driver who will take us to our final destination, the Taj Mahal in Agra.What is to not like of a city that has good food, friendly people, great sites, and a bed that has magical powers where you sleep like a log? Our visit started off a bit slow. Due to heavy fog our train was late getting in. We were pretty tired by the ride and I think we both felt a bit off kilter being in new surroundings. We had a great dinner and fell fast asleep, sleeping in until 10:30 the next day. We had just gotten accustomed to our surroundings in Rajasthan. While each city was very different, there was an undercurrent of Rajasthan that made all of the places a bit similar. A theme of old dynasties, exquisite service, poverty, cow poo, rural country sides, and of course a huge fort. Amritsar, a Punjab city has none of this. For all intense and purposes it is a fairly normal city. It even has a mall. Celebrations Mall. We went there today, curious what an Indian mall entailed. They do a lot of things well, malls might not be one of them. It was an incredible shift of worlds though. Before going to the mall we spent some time wandering through the old city trying to find a well known restaurant called Kesar Da Daba. We got lost along the way and needed to ask for some directions a few times. Fortunately it is a well known restaurant so everyone could point us in the right direction. This restaurant has been in the family for a few hundred years. The restaurant has two parts. There is a room where you eat. The tables and walls look like the restaurant has been around for a few hundred years. Next door is the kitchen. Men sit on benches, leaning against the wall looking out on the street. Huge pots sit in front of them. This is where they cooked up all our fabulous food. I've used this in a previous blog post but the food tasted like a few hundred years of perfection. It was so so so good. All washed down with a huge glass of lassi thick enough we needed spoons. I would have loved to stay to enjoy the atmosphere but it was getting busy and people started hovering over our table when it looked like we were near completion. Then we jumped in an auto-rickshaw and went to the mall. We had a few hours to kill so we bought tickets for the latest Mission Impossible movie. It was dusk when we got out of the movie theatre. I waited for Dave as he collected our camera batteries from security. We had 3 security checks before getting into the theatre. We had to leave our camera batteries with a "coat check-like" man. I suppose this is their attempt to prevent piroting movies. I was feeling skeptical about getting an auto-rickshaw back to the hotel because the mall was a bit out of town. There was one right outside the mall so we headed straight for him, only to find out he had been booked! I immediately thought of our life in Singapore and taxi bookings through our iphone apps and I wondered how one goes about booking an auto-rickshaw. Same same but different I guess. The driver was kind enough to wave down another auto-rickshaw for us. This benefited us in two ways. One, we got a ride. And two, I think we tend to get a better price when a local flags us a ride. This reminds of me of the situation last night. A well-known restaurant called Makhan had evaded us our first night. Try as we might we could not find it. We asked our hotel guy to give instructions to an auto-rickshaw driver to get us there. HAH! Within minutes we were surrounded by guys who were more than welcome to take us but had no idea where the restaurant was. So the hotel guy asked the hotel's taxi driver to drop us off on his way home. The taxi driver got us there no problem. We ushered us into the restaurant, barked some orders at people, bowed to us and left. I guess we had been officially handed over in the care of the restaurant. But that was fine because we knew we were in for a great feast. Again, huge pots of deliciousness cooked away at the front of the restaurant. We sat down and the head guy came over and helped us through our order. We got lots of attention just by being there. It was NOT place tourists would find by just wandering around. One guy from another table came wandering up, stuck his hand out and introduced himself as Paul. "Hello Paul, where do you come from?" "I'm fron near here, but live in Abbortsford." Crazy to hear that name from home all the way here in India. We chatted with Paul, and he finished his converation by telling us he would give us our mobile number and if we needed anything he would help us. So we get our food. Again, delicious. Again, the tandoori chicken I could have lived off of and died a happy person. It was that good. It was obviously a drinking place because there were many men with big bottles of whiskey drinking and eating. By the time a family left I was the only woman there. At one point a man got up, alcohol hitting him hard and he walked right into our table. The entire restaurant watched us. Wrong table to bump into I think. He was ushered out. The table to the other side of us told us we should eat at "safe" establishments. Anyway, we eat our food. We tell the owner that we have been in India for 2 weeks and their food was by far the BEST food we have eaten. We get business cards and walk out the entrance. Now we are on a dark road outside of town. We wonder how we are going to get home, and there is Paul! A bit more drunk than the last time we talked, but there he is nonetheless. He helps us get an auto-rickshaw. Helps with instructions about where our hotel is, and off we go. Before Amritsar we had been saying we felt like we had travelled quite "safe" in this trip. We were fortunate that most of the restaurants at our hotels were quite good and so we just chose to eat there. Also we knew we would have a better chance of not getting sick eating at our hotel. I'm happy that (for the most part) we avoided being sick but you do miss out by eating in the tourist run establishments. Amritsar enabled us to get off the tourist track. Every place we ate was either down some alley or in an obscure location, and the food was terrific. And along the way we had a chance to chat with the locals. (Most of the time we needed help finding our way). So what I'm saying is if you have an opportunity to go to Amritsar you SHOULD! Well, I should get going. I have my beer to finish and Dave has left me one more spoonful of peanute masala. We board a bus in a few hours and then we are nearly back to Singapore. Time has gone by so quickly. I am actually surpsied how much I have enjoyed India. Taj Maha here we come.

Food heaven in Amritsar

2012-01-02T22:38:00.001-08:00

We may have just found food heaven in India. While we have been eating well the entire time we've been here (as my increasingly tight jeans would suggest) things just went up a notch in Amritsar. Two days ago we flew out of Udaipur, spent a night in Delhi and then boarded another early morning train for Amritsar. Amritsar is located in the Punjab province, which is markedly different from Rajasthan in many ways. First of all, the majority of people are Sikh. This means there are significantly less cows, the holy animals in Hindu, wandering the road. This in turn means less cow poo to be concerned about! In fact, all this considering, the roads are fairly well maintained! Yesterday we went wandering down a street that was supposed to have a market. This market however almost resembled a "normal" street of shops. There is certainly more money in this province. Anyway, back to the food.We arrived later than we expected. The train went slow due to heavy winter fog. We got settled into our hotel which was right across the street from the train station and then went for our wander. Amritsar is famous for its snack food so we wanted to find us some of those treats! We ended up in a little cafe down a side alley. We were greeted by the usual group of men who jump to attention when they know you are choosing their restaurant. An old man (obviously the one in charge) barks some orders at them, and before we know it we are seated with water and menues. Then everyone watches as we choose our food. We chose kebabs and a special Sikh paneer curry. It wasn't the snack food we were wanting but it did not disappoint. We wandered back to the hotel, where the restaurant serves draft beer (also a first in India). We did some internet while enjoying a pitcher of beer and my new favourite snack peanut masala. Peanut masala is made of roasted spiced peanuts, chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, sald and pepper and coriander. With beer it is delicious. And then it is dinner time! We had already researched a few places we wanted to go check out. On our last two trips we have used Trip Advisor quite a bit, an online social network for travellers. It is a great place to check out for most up to date reviews. With a restaurant in mind we got in a rickshaw and went our way. Unfortunately we were unable to find the place we wanted to go to. We walked up and down the street, asked several people, some of them gave us directions. None of the directions seemed to coorespond. So we eventually ended up at another restaurant that was on our list, and this did not disappoint either. We enjoyed a beautiful dish of tandoori chicken, a fried fish and a chicken curry. It was so delicious. I could happily eat there for the rest of our stay in India. The tandoori chicken was unlike anything we had eaten before. We found out on our Indian cooking course the orange colour of tandoori chicken is a colouring added to give the appearance of spice. We were pleased to see this tandoori chicken did not have the fake orange colour. It was cooked beautifully, with the crispy bits in all the right places. The seasoning was to die for. It tasted of honed in perfection, worked on through several generations. Feeling quite euphoric over our meal, we got ourselves another rickshaw back to the hotel and flopped into bed, sleeping almost 10 hours. What was in our food??Today we go see the Indian/Pakistan border ceremony, and then the ceremony at the Golden Temple. Followed by more food adventures I'm sure.

R & R in Udaipur

2011-12-30T21:35:00.001-08:00

You know you are on holiday mode when you slowly wander to the hotel's restaurant for breakfast at 10am. I remarked how much warmer it felt today, but I think this is more as a result of us catching the sun at a later time than a different temperature. Dave is chowing down on his chocoloate banana pancake. Washing it down with a strawberry lassi. I have just been served two pots of chai. Now, it won't be as delicious as the chai we learned to make in our cooking class yesterday. But then restaurant food is rarely as good as homecooked treats. Yesterday we were shown how to make ginger chai. Yum. You could feel a slight spice come through the chai. We have played it safe with eating in India, hoping to avoid stomach problems. I unfortunately picked up a bug and on our 3rd or 4rth night in spent hugging the toilet seat. The next day we travelled to Jeisalmer. We were meant to take a bus but I was in no condition to manage that. So we rented a car. Dave enjoyed the view from the front seat and I lay in the fetal position in the back, and slept most of the way. It has taken awhile for me to bounce back. Several banana lassis later I have a more regular appetite and I am beginning to enjoy the Indian cuisine again. Most of the hotels we have stayed at have had really good restaurants. The food is far more than what you would find on the street, however it is a small price to pay to avoid getting sick. We hope to do a walking tour through the markets in Delhi before we go.This isn't to say we haven't enjoyed 'local' cuisine. While in Jeisalmer, Dave was invited twice to a home for dinner. I bowed out of the invitations because of my stomach. And in Jaipur we came across a sweet shop where we ended up with 1kilo of Indian sweets. The sweet shop is called LMB Hotel. It was obviously a popular place because there were lots of people inside. Two long glass cases sat at 90 degree angles. There were some tables set up as well where people seemed to be enjoying their purchased sweets and chai. We must have stood there for a few minutes just trying to understand how the system worked. Customers were shouting orders to the uniformed staff behind the glass counters. There were short women in blue blazers who were taking orders as well. Behind the glass counter sat a very large man, on a bench, perched high enough so he could see the entire shop. All the money went through him. The uniformed boys brought each packaged box of sweets to him to check, and he was the one who issued change. Dave's first attempt at ordering sweets didn't go so well. The uniformed boys did not speak English, and they were quickly distracted by the Hindi orders being shouted at them. Eventually we were aided by one of the women in the blue blazers, who probably sold us enough sweets for a family of 10. They were packed in a brightly coloured box and shrink wrapped to go. We brought the sweets back to our hotel. And yes we were good. We had dinner first. And then....then we tasted our first sweets in India. If you haven't tried an Indian sweet I encourage you to do so, because my description cannot do it justice. And then I encourage you to hop on a plane and get yourself to Jaipur to try the sweets from LMB. As my teeth took a bite, liquid sugar or honey oozed from every nook and crevise. Though the piece was as small as ping pong ball, it felt as heavy croquette ball. As pistachio crumbs fell on to my lap I had to wonder how on earth so much sweetness can be packed into such a tiny piece of heaven. One small taste was more than enough, and yet in front of us sat a 1 kilo box. Probably 8 different varieties purchased from the store. And two of each of course. Sadly we never managed to finish the box. We tried. We passed our sweets to the driver and his friend while traveling to Jodhpur. (We were meant to take the train but it was 6 hours late. Not wanting to hang around to find out it would be delayed even longer we asked the driver we'd had for the last day and a half to drive us to Jodhpur. But that is a whole other blog post.) And then it was in Jodhpur where I got sick. I lost my stamina for eating due to my stomach and we had to leave the remainder of the sweets at the hotel. Oh how I wish we were heading back through Jaipur just to taste those sweets one more time. Today is our last night in Udaipur. Final night of 2011. This time last year we were walked down from our hike on Louis Tops, we bought ourselves some fish and chips for dinner and were in bed before 10. My legs were so sore, I don't think I could walk the next day. And then we were on our way to Stewart Island with Towny and Laura. What a crazy year it has been. Tomorrow afternoon we fly out of Udaipur and back to Delhi. We spend one night in Delhi and then we are on the train first thing in the morning to head to Amritsar. There we will watch the closing of the Indian/Pakistan border and watch people putting a book to sleep at the Golden Temple. Happy New Year to you all. Lots of love from Udaipur!

Udaipur

2011-12-28T20:39:00.001-08:00

It never ceases to amaze me how fortunate Dave and I are. Here we sit, in Udaipur India. The sun basks on my face. Dave and I are both enjoying a capuccino, the first coffee of our trip. The coffee machine sits on a table inside the restaurant, displayed ceremoniously. Last night Dave asked if they served real coffee and he was immiediately invited to inspect the coffee beans and the inner workings of the prized machine. "Yes yes, I believe you" Dave insisted. I think we jumped out of bed a bit quicker than usual knowing what was waiting for us. We are sitting on the outside roof of the restaurant. It is filled with patrons, there is an open window to the kitchen. Dave and I both are engrossed on our ipads. Beside me lays a book I have just started reading, "The White Tiger" written by Aravind Adiga. The view from our rooftop over looks a very large lake. Directly in front of me are two large structures built on the lake. One is the former palace, now a posh hotel. Behind the hotel sits an even larger temple. Just to clarify, these buildings are sitting in the middle of the lake. There are some boats lazily gliding across the water. To my left another palace sits above all the other buildings. And to my right, way off in the distance I can see yet another fort perched on top of a mountain. I can't wait to get out and explore this city.It was a long day getting here. We left at 8am from Jodhpur, and arrived in Udaipur at 6pm. Much of the road was a tiny, one lane road through hills. Our driver was in no rush and so we were able to relax and enjoy the ride. As it turns out he works in Dubai, and is now in India on his break. He drives for his brother's business as part time work while back home. He seemed to enjoy the ride through the country side as much as we did. We drove through village after village where time has come to a complete stand still. The villages reminded us of Nepal, not necessarily because they looked the same but because village life all over the world seems similar. There is the smell of animal and smoke, dirty children either running around or walking with loads probably heavier than they are on their heads. Groups of old men in traditional dress sit huddled together in the town "centre" probably talking about the "goold old days". The women are always busy doing something, working the fields, pumping water at the well, and of course carrying loads I can't even fathom, on their heads. It wasn't something we expected to see on our drive and so Dave and I sat silently in the back of our hired card, mesmerized by all that we were passing.We had two stops along the way, a temple and a fort. One of the highlights of these two stops was the lunch at the temple. For Rs 25 (less than 50 cents) we were ushered into a clean cafeteria style eating area. In front of us was a silver platter, two bowls and a cup. Everyone sat on long benches. Men walked around with buckets of fresh cooked vegetarian food. One by one they laddled the food onto our plates. It was some of the most delicious food we'd had in India so far. When you had finished one dish, then a man came to laddle more on your plate. We sat near the kitchen door. Probably the most spartan kitchen I have ever seen. There was a man that walked from pot to pot, stirring and adding. What a great experience.Anyway, Udaipur beckons. We are here for a few days and we plan to take things slowly. Our last few days in India are spent jumping from one place to the next, with the Taj Mahal our final destination.

There is always time for chai

2011-12-27T04:08:00.001-08:00

Oh, the effort of trying to write a blog post in India! I swear I have tried several times but have (obviously) had little sucess. The Indian Gods are against me, forcing me into a blog-free world. Some advantages of being blog-free? I have nearly finished my book that I have started 3 times and have dragged through 3 countries trying to finish. I think I savour the slow moments when drinking chai. I might otherwise be concerned with writing my next post. I can lead screen-free existence, which is nice because I sometimes think I spend too much time in front of a screen for school.Anyway, India. Today is the first day I feel like the cobwebs from my brain stomach have been cleared. We both arrived in India with the sniffles and a general sense of being overwhelmed at being in India. We must have spend the first 48 hours just 'floating' around, going with the flow, allowing drivers and hotel reception to direct us where they think we should go. I think only now, about a week into our holiday, are we feeling like our senses are sharpened. We somewhat confidentely stroll down the narrow alleyways feeling clever that we so narrowly miss being hit by any number of vehicles. Not that they are going that fast, because they too are narrowly missed.At the moment we are back in the city of Jodphur, home of the Mehrangarth Fort. Alas, I am able to type but can't post photos. Traditionally the city had a large Brahmin caste population. In the past the Brahmin painted their houses an eggshell blue. Now people paint their houses blue because they think it will repell insects. As a result, a significant portion of Jodphur is blue. The city clusters at the bottom of the aforementioned fort. Imagine the coolest sandcastle that you have built, times it by a million and that is sort of what the fort looks like. We are staying in an old boutique guest house, nearly 400 years old. Apparently the great granfather of the owner was the banker for the Maharaja. This family, Brahmin, was also the caretaker of a nearby temple. We are in the old city of Jodhpur, though really to me the whole city seems old. Slightly more removed from the central clock tower there are fewer hotels. People in the markets are just minding their own business, doing what they have done for hundreds of years.There is so much I can say about India, I could sit here for hours and write what we have done. But then I'd be missing out on my sunset. Impressions of India? It has been easier to travel through than we expected. Everyone is so helpful. Yes you are approached on all sides when you step off a bus or a train. But this is no different to any of the other countries we have visited. For the most part, people seem to appreciate a personal exchange, even if a business transactiopn has not transpired. The streets are filthy, to be on the highways at night is actually you putting your life at risk, and in some places people seem to be living a lifestyle that has endured for hundreds of years. No matter what, there is always time for chai. Anyway, I have a few days in Udaipur. Perhaps I will pick up my Indian reflections there. If not, then you know I have been swept up in my holiday. Happy holidays to you all!

Warming up to Hoi An

2011-10-23T17:56:00.001-07:00

I hope my dialogue on being a tourist doesn't sound too repetitive. It is a conversation Dave and I have been having a lot on this trip, and so this particular topic is always at the forefront of my thoughts when I sit down to write holiday posts. Although we have been to many countries in our time overseas, we have been fortunate enough to live in most of those countries for several years at a time. Of course, when you live somewhere you only naturally get to experience a different, more authentic, side of that place. As a traveller, you are lucky to get a taste of authenticity...particularly when you choose to travel down the well-beaten trail. In these places, the traveler is often separated with what is truly local by the (at times quite large) divide of a tourist economy. The larger the economy, the more trinkets and vendors for tourists, the harder it is to cross that divide and enjoy what travelers had originally enjoyed at the chosen destination. But as we've come to conclude, the well-beaten path is well beaten for a reason. We travel long distances to see certain sights, that is just the way it goes sometimes. And on this trip dealing with this great divide is just something we've had to come and accept. We aren't used to being on the tourist end of things and being a tourist does change your experience, for better or for worse.

When I last left you, we were on our way to Hoi An the following day. On our tour of the shrines in Hue, in a whirlwind of conversation we didn't even realize we had involved ourselves in, our driver convinced us that getting to Hoi An by private car was the only way to travel. We weren't difficult to convince. Both of us had traveled by local buses in Asian countries. And while this certainly makes things more authentic, it certainly doesn't make for a comfortable journey. And you know, if given the option the people on the local bus would certainly choose to ride in their own car. Unfortunately most can't afford such luxuries. So here we are in Vietnam, having traveled a fairly good distance to see the sights, but we would be missing some sights by taking the bus. The only catch was we had already booked bus tickets through our hotel. And of course the driver did not want us to book him through our hotel as we did our Pagoda tour, because the hotel would take some sort of cut. We just had to cancel our bus tickets, and his sister and brother would meet us out on the road in the morning...in secret. It was all very strange but such as life when you attempt to navigate through the wheeling and dealing with tour guide operators. As it turns out on of my favorite sights of the trip was one we saw on the music-filled car ride. All to the tuneful sounds of Abba. Ho Chi Minh would probably be rolling in his grave.

The local bus is mostly a direct route to Hoi An and so it takes the new 7km tunnel through the mountains. This is great for people needing to get to Hoi An quickly. It is a short 3 hour trip, and you avoid the harrowing mountain pass (only harrowing if you are a crazy local bus driver!). As we were going by car we chose to go up the Hai Van mountain pass. This mountain pass is well known because at the top sits some old dilapidated buildings that Americans used as bunkers during the Vietnam war. This was a very strategic place, as it is the border between the North and South of Vietnam. They could prevent any transport of goods along this highway. There really isn't very much here. Just a few buildings you walk around, and a great view of China Beach. But the place had a weird feeling to it, especially when you can see the bullet wholes on the side of the wall. You can sit in some of the buildings, walls broken down enough so that you can just barely peer over them from a sitting position. Not too long ago soldiers would have fought and died in that exact location.

From there we drove along the coast and had a delicious lunch in Da Nang. Our driver insisted it was a good place to eat and left us at the restaurant to fend for ourselves. Obviously the restaurant owners knew how we ended up there because they didn't seem too surprised by our appearance - even though their restaurant seemed to be far from the reaches of any tourist community. They were so unphased by our presence, that it took us a little bit of loud noise making to make our presence be known to them. Dave had to actually walk into what looked to be their home (people here seem to run their businesses out of their home) and gesture to the old woman preparing the very large pile of dead chickens for consumption. After lunch (it was delicious) we were taken to the very strange Marble Mountain. Five small mountains jut straight out from the ground, each are supposed to represent the different elements. According to the Lonely Planet, at one time marble was extracted from the mountain so as to make statues however people realized if they continued at that rate of extraction there would be no more Marble Mountain for people to enjoy. And so now much of the marble that is used for the statues comes from China, where few people care about such frivolous worries for mother nature. It was a weird place to stop. And of course our driver stopped at his friend's place where I think everyone was hoping they'd make a sale from us. I think we disappointed a few not having a need for a large Buddha or a bust of Ho Chi Minh. Marble Mountain was a weird place and if your time is precious in Vietnam I would say give it a miss. But if you are looking for some decent view of the beach, a way to stretch your legs, and see some pretty impressive caves, then Marble Mountain is a good visit that breaks up the ride between Hue and Hoi an.

Now we aren't sure what happened with our driver after leaving Hue, but there was definitely a shift in his personality after leaving Marble Mountain. He was Mister Happy-Go-Lucky when he picked us up from Hue, but it almost like the closer we got to our destination, the more he was thinking about his next customer. Our trip was nearly a done deal, he had moved on. Not that we got too hung up about it. It just sort of made for an anti-climactic ending. Money exchanged, good byes said, our driver and the songs of Abba left our lives as quickly as they had appeared.

After such a weird ending from our journey, we were both glad to be in Hoi An, what Dave kept on referring to as the most romantic destination of Vietnam. This I was looking forward to. A chilled out environment, home to a UNESCO World Heritage site. Hoi An, back then called Champas, boasted the largest harbor in South East Asia in the 1st century. Between the 7th and 10th century the spice trade was controlled by the Cham (the Champas people). The area saw tremendous wealth which was put towards fine architecture. With this small piece of history in our minds, we quickly ventured out to have a wander. Once we hit the old part of town, we quickly wished we hadn't chosen to come here (before all of you Hoi An lovers disown me, keep reading please!).
Hoi An is certainly a destination on the well-beaten path. You always know you are on the well and truly well traveled path when you are amid the tour groups with the matching hats and guides holding up flags so the large group can separate themselves from the other large groups. The relatively small streets weren't designed for 21st century tourism and current modes of transportation. And while some streets are restricted to only pedestrians and "primitive transportation", motorbikes, taxis, and rickshaws are allowed on all the other streets.
This makes for extremely congested streets in a very localized area. With large tour groups come people who are looking to make some money. They are all selling the same things: bracelets, Vietnamese maps, sunglasses or if you are old and wrinkly enough/ young and dirty enough a photo opportunity. Tourists flock to Hoi An for tailor made clothing as well. How would I know this? Perhaps the extremely highly concentrated area of tailors...I'm talking the hundreds... are a little bit of a give away. Haven't noticed? Well the lovely ladies standing outside all of these shops will remind you that they are there waiting to sell you a tailor made suit or dress. Thirsty or hungry? Don't worry, because the lovely ladies standing outside the numerous riverside restaurants will encourage you to come into their restaurants. Dave and I lasted about an hour before we needed to head back to our hotel, head spinning, and rethink our strategy for Hoi An. We had planned on a few days here so we needed a new plan of attack because chilling out just didn't seem like an option.

In the past we have relied on the suggestions of the Lonely Planet for places to stay and things to do. Or courses in South East Asia it is easy enough to use the Lonely Planet as a spring board, and then find something that is more to your liking. But now, as most hotels provide free wi-fi and people travel with laptops and ipads the Lonely Planet book is bit irrelevant. Why would you limit yourself to the knowledge of one book when you have the "intranets" at your finger tips? So on this trip we have used Trip Advisor quite a bit and this was probably the key to helping us warm up to Hoi An.
Our first recommendation from trip advisor was a dinner at Bale Well, a favorite among the locals. It was a bit tricky to find because you had to navigate down a few narrow alleyways, but when we arrived the family welcomed us with open arms. We sat down and had food brought to us almost instantly. The food was special to Hoi An, make your own spring rolls with satay pork and crispy smaller spring rolls and lots of fresh herbs and salad. We weren't sure what to do with all of the plates of food, so as soon as the food was brought to us we had a quick demonstration. When you finish a plate they bring you another one, and they keep doing this until you run out of steam. And so began the winning of our hearts and minds.

Our next Trip Advisor recommendation was a cooking class from the Green Bamboo Cooking School with a lady named Van. I was keen on taking a Vietnamese cooking class but I wasn't impressed with the reviews for all the bigger schools. This school was run by one woman, out of her home. She came and picked us up and after having bought all the items on our shopping list and have had a thorough tour of the market we headed back to her house. What was great about this cooking school was that we did everything. We chopped, pounded, fried, mixed and tasted. And all along the way Van provided us with great conversation. She was able to answer all of our questions about Vietnam that had been building up for the last week. We made 4 dishes.
1. Pomelo and shrimp salad.
2. Young Jack Fruit salad.
3. Beef, lemon grass, chilli and Vietnamese mustard green.
4. Fish, lemon grass, ginger, turmeric, chill.

It was a feast for royalty, and probably the best food we'd eaten on our trip. Van sat down with us, Dave and I cracked open a well deserved beer and we feasted. And feasted, and feasted some more. Not only was it some of the best food we'd eaten, it was probably one of our best days in Vietnam. Our hearts and minds were won over a little bit more.

That night, still too full from our delicious meal we had a few quiet drinks by the riverside. On our way back to the hotel, I suggested we just take a look at the tailor across the street from our hotel. It was one our hotel recommended. Before coming to Vietnam I was keen on getting clothes made. But seeing how many vendors there were, and knowing it would take more effort than I was willing to give on my holiday in bargaining and fittings, I had put that thought out of my head. But with a full belly and a few drinks to take all our cares away we entered into the tailor. An hour later we walked out: Dave had 1 suit, 2 pairs of pants and 4 shirts. I had one dress, 1 skirt, and 2 shirts. And we were to return the following day for a fitting. When we went back yesterday and everything fit so nicely, I had one more dress made and Dave had another pair of pants made. I had wanted a nice evening dress and wasn't all that impressed with their choice of fabrics so we did do a a bit of a wander and ended up at Yaly, one of the larger tailors in town. They had far more choice and I ended up getting one more dress from them as well. Final fittings are today.

In the end Dave and I have come to enjoy our time here in Hoi An. Oddly enough, what we came here to really enjoy- the UNESCO heritage sights, seem to play second fiddle to all the other activities that seem to be the thing "to do" in Hoi An. Tailors, spas and cooking classes. Da Nang, which is only about 40km away, will soon open up an international airport and we both wonder what is in store for this tiny Vietnamese town. I'm glad we came when we did.

Today is our last day in Hoi An. Dave has a bad cold so we are keeping our schedule open and easy. We have a few more fittings to go to, we are meeting some other travelers for drinks tonight and then tomorrow morning we drive to Da Nang for our domestic flight back to Saigon.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Hoi An, Vietnam

Hello from Hue

2011-10-20T02:49:00.001-07:00

After 4 days of unrelenting honking and motorbike engines, one feels a certain void (or just plain silence) when removed from that environment. We traveled from Ho Chi Minh to Hue, central Vietnam, and though the motorbikes are still a large part of traffic, people don't seem to rely on their horns as much. In a weird way I think I was getting used to the noise. It made me feel like I was part of something bigger. I was in a place where things were happening, people had somewhere to be. In fact, they need to be somewhere so urgently they go no matter which way - sidewalks, the other side of the road, alleys no wider than myself, and around what every may be obstructing their path. We wandered around Ho Chi Minh, captivated by the movement of the 8 million people. The 7 million motorbikes would part like the red seas as we crossed the street, you just had to step out on the road and the motorbikes simply went around you. We quickly adopted what I began to refer as 'the piggy back method' where you cross with a few other people, thus creating a larger mass crossing the road.

No one really seemed to take notice that we were there, except for those who would dutifully honk to let us know we were in the way. (Green pedestrian lights? Mere decoration I think.) There is a hierarchy of vehicles in Vietnam, and the bigger your vehicle is, the more right of way you possess, no matter what side of the street you are on. The motorbikes honk for the walkers to move, the small cars honk for the motorbikes to move to the side of the road, and the big trucks will honk for just about anyone. So fascinated we have been by the movement of traffic that often when we ate out our conversation was non-existent. This would be due to the 'motorbike' trance - the zen like state one falls into when staring at the never ending flow of the 7 million motorbikes.

And so were our four days in Ho Chi Minh city. We spent one day meandering around the well organized streets (thank you French colonialism). We took two tours, one to the Cu Chi Tunnels, and another to the Mekong. Rarely do we sign up for large group tours, so I'm not sure what possessed us to do this. There is nothing worse than feeling like you are being herded from one destination to another. One advantage to taking a tour was that our brains were able to switch off completely which is an indulgent treat.
The Cu Chi Tunnels/War Remnants Museum was an interesting day. The Cu Chi tunnels were built between 1945 and 1976, resulting in 200km of dug out tunnels. Once at the tunnel site, the tour starts off with a grainy, old black and white footage of the Cu Chi people illustrating their determination to be rid of the American devil by doing what ever it takes to fight them. And why wouldn't they fight them when "they shoot like devils. They shoot the ducks, the pigs, the pots and the pans!" It was an odd experience to wander around the forests, tunnels under foot, guide demonstrating a sampling of trap doors where American soldiers would disappear from the world (spikes piercing through them) and then machine gun firing off in the distance. Oh, hungry? Enjoy some BBQ corn while you have heavy artillery aggravate your ear drums. Tunnels are available for you to crawl through, of course enlarged for larger Western bodies.

We finished off the day at the War Remnants Museum (War of One Side Museum). The most worthwhile exhibit was probably the photojournalist exhibit. This area show cased some well known photographs, as well as demonstrating the evolution of photography throughout the decades of the Vietnam War. Grain black and white photos, to well composed colored photos, and then film. The whole time I couldn't help but have this odd feeling of deja vous. Was it because I'd traveled to other war-torn South East Asian countries? Or was it because I'd seen enough Vietnam War movies that have replicated well-known sites, I felt like I'd see it all before?

The next day to the Mekong was a far more enjoyable day. We were contemplating trying to do the day independently but in the end (due to laziness?) we opted to stick with the tour. It was a 3 hour bus ride to the Mekong. The distance is only 84km traveling on the state highway, but this is highway that cannot accommodate for the growing number of aforementioned motorbikes, transport trucks, tour buses and cars. It is slow going (thankfully). Once at the river we boarded a boat that took us to the floating village. Unfortunately we didn't arrive until later in the morning and so I think much of the floating market had closed. But there were still a few boats out and about. We were told the floating market is a whole sale market. Restaurant owners and other market vendors come to these markets to buy their wares. Each boat has a long bamboo pole that sticks out on the front, and from this bamboo pole hangs what ever that boat sells. So we saw lots of boats that were hanging pumpkins from their poles.

After the floating market we were taken to a place where we demonstrations of several different food preparation skills - rice paper making, coconut candy making, rice popcorn, rice wine and honey.

These are the part of tours I usually hate. You get taken to a spot you don't have a choice to go, and the sole purpose of its existence is to take money from you. However, the guide was actually full of useful information and no one really pushed us to buy anything. We have eaten so many spring rolls by this point it is kind of interesting to see how the rice paper is made. And of course we finish the day off with being rowed down the river, forced to wear the traditional Vietnamese conical hat.

From Ho Chi Minh we flew up to Hue, the old imperial capital of Vietnam.

Hue is actually the site of many things. Not only is it the old imperial capital of the Nguyen Dynasty, it was also the DMZ (de-militarized zone). After arriving later than we thought thanks to some poor weather, we made our way to the Citadel which had the Forbidden City build inside of it. This is where the Emperor and his concubines lived, entering the grounds was punishable by death. Hue is well known for its other monuments just outside the city. Today we spent the day with a driver and private car exploring them.

Which brings me to another point about being a tourist. Sometimes you end up in a situation that seems to go by so quickly, you've come out the other end with something totally different than what you had initially wanted. There were some temples Dave had wanted to see, however despite showing some interest in wanting to go to these places, not only were we not taken but we agreed to hire a private car and driver all the way to the next destination Hoi An! The car does seem like the better option. We can stop along the way to some spots we would be unable to see if we took a bus. This did mean that we had to back track out of our bus tickets arranged by the hotel, and now we have to meet our driver well away from the hotel (I imagine the hotel will NOT be getting a cut from the tour operation!).

And like I said at the start of my post, at times it is almost like we don't exist.

Case in point with this picture of Dave at a small back alley restaurant we were told to go by our hotel. The restaurant owners got into some sort of tiff with the neighbors next door. The yelling back and forth lasted a good half hour. We tried to sooth the stress of our restauranteurs with the purchasing of more beer but this did not seem to have much of an impact. Se we sat there trying to figure out the meaning behind the shouting and gesticulating, and all of a sudden a truck pulls up and out jumps 4 people in white shirts and a man in a green uniform (police/army?). In 5 seconds our restaurant when from being very open, to very closed. Lights switched off, chairs stacked and items put away. The strange men tried to take their large restaurant sign and put it in their truck. This is when we decided to not stay a minute later, and with unfinished beer at our tables, we left...hoping that what ever the issue was it got resolved. Today we walked by, the sign was back in its place, and the owner was standing outside with a big smile for us as we walked by.

Tomorrow we drive to Hoi An which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We spend 4 days there before heading back to Ho Chi Minh. There we will visit more temples, perhaps get some clothes made, and of course watch the Rugby World Cup Finals.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Hue, Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh city

2011-10-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

So after a dramatic week of "Do I go, do I not go, do I go, do I not go...to Thailand" Dave and I ended up changing both our plans and ended up in Vietnam instead. Dave was initially supposed to go to Phillipines, myself Thailand. Both countries have been dealing with severe flooding the last few weeks. While the Phillipines has mostly dried out it seems, Bangkok was just getting started. All the water flowing from the North, combined with another large monsoon shower this weekend was putting Bangkok in a bad situation. It killed me to cancel my trip because I was so looking forward to seeing my friends and host family. But I also wasn't looking for having to deal with major flooding on my holiday. Thursday, after getting a text from a friend in Bangkok saying people were starting to leave the city, I told Dave I wasn't going and within a few hours we had a trip to Vietnam organized. The silly thing about this whole thing is initially we were planning on going to Vietnam! We had decided not to though because our holidays are cut a bit short because we have to move into the the new school. We thought we'd sort of 'give this holiday up' in terms our official travel plans, and leave ourselves to do what we wanted. Anyway, here we now sit in Ho Chi Minh city, motorcycle horns hooking outside our room.And I just have to say later Dave admitted that he was actually thinking about flying back to New Zealand if I was going to go to Thailand. I can't believe he was actually thinking about going to NZ without me!We left for Ho Chi Minh this morning, arrived early afternoon. We THOROUGHLY ENJOYED the convenience of our ipads on the budget airline. Dave had downloaded some movies, and so we were able to keep ourselves quite entertained. We were picked up and brought to our hotel. We had a good coffee, chatted with the girl and then quickly made our way to a pre-selected bar to watch the rugby, France vs Wales. We have had a bit of a wander around. So far Dave and I really enjoy the city. Funny enough, we feel like we are actually back in South East Asia which is a bit of an odd feeling since we live in South East Asia. English isn't the first language here, though many do speak it...at least here in the city. There are more motorcycles. Oh the sight of 4 people and the week's groceries on a motorcycle, how I've missed you. Things are much cheaper here and shops seem to come in all shapes and forms (people squatting on the sidewalk, food vendors on wheels, people selling things on motorcycle, etc.)Tomorrow we wander around the city by foot and then watch another rugby game. I think we will venture out in the evening. Tonight is an early night in. We are both exhausted and need a good sleep in. After all we are on holiday.Hopefully I can figure out how to upload photos on to this blog from my ipad. I don't seem to have the right app or something. I'm not sure what is going on. Anyway, my bed is calling. A movie must be finished. Signing out in Ho Chi Minh

Life is great

2011-10-08T18:56:00.000-07:00

One of the most common questions I get is, "how have you found adjusting to Singapore?" I usually delve into my pre selected pros and cons for who has asked, and finish by saying we are happy to be here. Which is true. But yesterday I had a day that really just sums up what living here is like.

Breakfast on our balcony

We tend to wake up fairly early on the weekends. Our curtains are thin, so the sun shines in. And well, it isn't cold so I don't have a need to stay curled up in bed! I was up earlier than usual, having gone to bed at decent time on Friday. I went for a glorious half hour run around our neighborhood. Most of my run hugs a park, and so while I've got a road on one side, I have the Singapore jungle on the other side. It was fairly humid, it had rained quite heavily the night before. The running path I use is often busy, but the path is wide enough for everyone to be going at their own pace, running or biking.

Stairs leading down to the entrance of our condo

When I got home I replenished myself with an electrolite drink (I sweat a lot when running), and then went down to the pool for a quick dip. Because it was early there was no one else there, so I did a few laps, hung out at the infinity edge and just enjoyed the sound of the water, the chirping birds and the sunny skies. After my swim, I went back to the apartment, had a bite to eat and decided I wanted to go into town to buy a few things for school. I sent a text to a friend, and within an hour we were in a cab going to Orchard. On this shopping trip I rediscovered how much fun it is to shop with girls. Dave has done a tremendous job over the last few years, tagging along with me while I try on shirts, skirts, shoes, and make up. He patiently waits outside the store, or if the store isn't too crowded he would come in and let me know how an outfit looks. But his heart was never in it, he was just doing it to keep me company. But now Dave can retire his shopping legs because I have more shopping companions than I could ever want. So a few hours were spent shopping or Orchard. We were there before 11am, so it wasn't too busy. We finished off our trip with some sushi, we jumped in a cab, and headed home. I was keen to get home because I had a phone date with a friend from NZ. It was just lovely having a chat with her. She is due with baby number two any day, and I realize once that happens life will be a bit hectic for her for awhile. It wasn't long before we were back in a cab heading back into town, this time to Robertson Quay where we had dinner with some friends from school. Robertson Quay is an area in town, right on the river, full of restaurants. There are 3 Quays, Robertson, Clark and Boat...Robertson is the more chilled out of the 3 I think. We had a lovely dinner, and then headed over to a house party hosted by the teachers who are soon leaving to do some charity work in Cambodia. The evening was called, Cocktails for Cambodia. Each teacher going to Cambodia had a cocktail they made, and then a time slot to pour their drink. So for the rest of us, we just stood around with cups, and had them constantly filled with a variety of multicoloured drinks. Then we shared a cab home with some friends who live in our apartment, and went to bed! Life is not too shabby!

This day couldn't have come at a better time. We are venturing into our third month, which can be a difficult time. We have gotten past the highs of being in a new place, and seeing new and exciting things. We have settled into our new homes and our new jobs. We have gotten used to how things operate. But, as we get used to our new surroundings we start to miss what we left behind.

I certainly feel it. I miss our quaint lifestyle in New Zealand. I can't look at photos from NZ too often or else I get a lump in the back of my throat still. I miss our car, and are small garden, and our house. But yet, I have just described a fabulous day at the start of this blog, so how can I be feeling so sad? It was nice to have had such a nice day. A day that helps affirm our decision to move.

One of our regular eating places, the rooftop of 'Beauty World'

Add to all of this all of the variables at school that may or may not be adding pressure. One large variable for us is a big move to our new campus next week. We teach Monday-Wednesday and then we don't have the students Thursday and Friday because we PACK UP! I am personally very excited about the move. Particularly since the front door to my classroom has been plagued with ants as of recently. So I am more than happy to be moving into a brand new building where my classroom is high up above the ground. But we all are about to have a two week holiday (this element is definitely in the 'pro' category of why living in Singapore is so great). The holiday will give us a chance to breath and hopefully reflect on how things are really pretty good here. Hopefully enabling a climb out of the homesickness part of the graph.

I have tried posting a video of me walking through the apartment but I'm just not having any luck. So I've taken a whole bunch of photos instead. If you'd like to see our place, click HERE.

HERE is a collection of photos that is really just a mishmash of things we have done over the last two months.

Hit the ground running

2011-09-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

*I had written a lengthy post earlier. Unfortunately Blogger was having issues and lost my incredible post! And so here I go again.

When ever I go for a run in a new country, it always feels like a time shift has occurred and I hover between two lives: my old life and my new life. I experience instant recall of sights, sounds of where ever I last ran. Only briefly though, as my brain attempts to switch gears and prepare me for my new running location. The two lives I hovered between on my first run here are of course New Zealand and Singapore. My heart fluttered as I could feel myself back in Hagley Park, trees over head, acorns at my feet, cool breeze and the sound of the 4 avenues on one side of me. Switch. Humid stickiness, truck exhaust, different running apparel, slight inclines and smells that aren't necessarily pleasant to the olfactory senses.

All of this happens in seconds. Probably more like split seconds. It is our month long transition condensed into a moment.

I am now going on my 5th run and I of course don't experience this shifting anymore. Just like when we go into the grocery store I don't immediately think of grocery shopping in New Zealand. Just like I don't immediately think of walking into the doors of my old school as I walk into my new school. It is amazing how quickly people adapt. There are of course a few

areas were we could adapt more, i.e. acclimatizing to the heat. I am starting to notice the ever so slight change of degrees in the morning and evening, as opposed to it all just being HOT. When I come running up my last hill and I feel the breeze and I think, "ahhhh...the cool breeze" as opposed to "bleh, hot air!" I don't think Dave has reached the same level of acclimatization yet. He is the PE teacher and is outside for a good portion of the day. I feel like this maintains his body temperature at higher than normal level and he never actually lowers it until he gets the chance to jump into our swimming pool.

It has been a big month of new things! But as I sit here drinking my coffee, glancing over to the rugby on our new tv set up, listening to the laundry out on the back balcony, with a full stomach of eggs and toast, it really doesn't feel much different than anywhere else. I guess once you've moved countries a few times you can fall into your usual routine fairly quickly.

We have had an incredibly smooth transition. We had sorted out our living accommodation before arriving and so upon arriving we did not have to embark on daily searches for a place to live as many teachers did. The school provides 10 days in a hotel (10 days for a couple, 5 days for a single person) and we decided to stay in the hotel for the full 10 days, despite already

having a place to stay. Our hotel was minutes away from Orchard Road which is the main shopping area in Singapore. It was so handy to have that at our door step. We were able to hop on the MRT and easily get to a variety of places from where we were. Plus, other new teachers were at the hotel and so it was good opportunity to meet other new people. There were nearly 60 new teachers arriving at the school for 2011/2012. And as the principal regularly says, it isn't because 60 teachers left. It is because of role growth.

We viewed these 10 days as our holiday. After all we had just finished school and were about to start up a new year. We wanted a little bit of down time. We would venture out for the day early in the morning, and be back for around 5pm pool time which just happened to coincide with Happy Hour. We packed in a lot over those 10 days. Little India, art galleries, movies, shopping, eating, museums, etc. I think we were inadvertently trying to make up for not being able to do many of things in Christchurch. We also knew once school started we wouldn't have as much time to get around to the various tourist attractions. While in tourist mode we wanted to tick off a few of the tourist boxes.

First impressions of Singapore are good. I am amazed at how easy it is. The biggest advantage to being here is the language. Everyone speaks English. Having lived in countries where people don't speak English this was a bit of a shock at first. The ability to stop and ask for directions is a novelty we have generally not experienced. Also, the city is such a mixed city with people from all over the world, you never really feel like you stand out. Unless of course you are wandering around Little India at night among all the migrant laborers. THERE you stand out. Again, blending in is a novelty we have no necessarily had in other countries. Asia Lite and Asia 101 are two expressions often used to describe living in Singapore. I would agree with those statements. However, there are fundamental differences between how people function in Singapore. Their world framework is still very different from ours. This can get easily forgotten and I think at times expat frustration stems from forgetting that we are in fact living in a foreign country.

So now we are all moved in. Work is well underway. Our house still has evidence of us just moved in with various boxes placed sporadically around the apartment. Life is very different from what we were living 4 months ago. We take a bus to school. It takes around 15-20 minutes. Every once in awhile if I have a lot of stuff we grab a taxi. Taxis are a fairly cheap way of getting around, though if you go at peak times you get dinged a few more dollars. We arrive at school at 7:30, school starts at 8:45. My day is quite different because my students go to specialist teachers for PE, Language, Music and Drama. We finish school at 3:15. I try to leave by 5pm. Next term I will be involved with an extra curricular activity which will occur once a week.

We haven't sorted out our eating yet. We usually have lunch at the school canteen. It has a pretty good salad bar and I take that opportunity to stock up on fresh veggies. Slowly we have been doing more cooking at home. Often if we are out we grab food from a hawker's stall which costs us anywhere from $5-$10 for the two of us. As much as I enjoy eating at the hawker's stall I am getting a bit tired of chicken rice and noodles. If I could eat my delicious thai food every day (see photo below) I wouldn't mind. However, my thai lady isn't always open so I can't always eat my delicious thai food. Slowly we are sorting it out.

With all the fresh asian ingredient at our finger tips I'd love to practice making my delicious thai food. We do have have a wet market nearby by (wet markets are what they call fresh markets), but unfortunately it is only open in the mornings. I believe it is open on Saturday mornings but then that means I need to be up early Saturday morning. :-)

It has been a big change but I can probably hear through my words we are happy to be where we are. We miss New Zealand terribly. It has been an odd mix of emotions with being happy to be free of the shaking, but feel sad that our friends are still going through it. There are so many fantastic people we left behind, and the lifestyle we had was one that probably can't be replicated in too many countries. But with that said, I am so excited about having the chance to reconnect with friends in Thailand and Japan. And I am really really looking forward to our visit back to Canada this summer. At the end of the day you have to make decisions that are right for you.

I'm back...

2011-07-25T16:48:00.000-07:00

...or at least that is how these first few days in Singapore have felt. Since we've arrived at the hotel, I haven't been able to shake a feeling of familiarity. While the sights and sounds are new there is an underlying sentiment of having already been here, which is weird because we've never been to Singapore before.

But we have traveled to Southeast Asia many times (I lived in Thailand for a year) and we do have a few years of living in Japan under our travel belts. There is a certain buzz going on in Asia. A buzz of things happening, a buzz of development, a buzz of new starts, a buzz of economics, a buzz of what's current. Here, walking around Singapore, I guess I feel like we are back in the buzz.

Christchurch July 2011

2011-07-20T22:03:00.001-07:00

Christchurch July 2011, a set on Flickr.

Momentary calm

2011-07-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

For the first time in while I'm sitting in quietness. Aside from the odd car driving by, a distant lawnmower and birds chirping, it is quiet. It is the best you are going to get in the burbs. But with the last few days we've had I am thankful for this time.A week a half ago I was a puddle of emotions as my school was literally torturing me with prolonged sentimental moments (all of which I loved by the way). Then things got kicked into high gear once school stopped and wehad

a goal of being out of the house for Monday. With a slight reprieve in packing on Saturday - that day was reserved a much needed chilled out day at a friend's house near the beach - we have been on our toes trying to get our house emptied. That process seemed to go as followed: just when we think we are finished, we seemed to have another carload full of stuff to take somewhere! But we did it. Our house is empty, aside from our boxes that need to be shipped. As of today it is all cleaned, windows are done and we even managed to sell our car. Tick, tick and tick. There are only a final few things we need to do but other than that we are good to go.I

said to my friend Nikki this morning, it feels more real that we are leaving. Especially now thatour house is empty and our stuff is all in boxes. But I really can't imagine myself not being here in Christchurch. I can't imagine not being involved in our usual Christchurch routine. I think this is one of those situations where my brain has fully processed everything and has decided that it is ready to move on. Getting ourselves work at an international school (with the idea we'd be moving home shortly after that hopefully) was our plan before we even stepped foot in Christchurch. I am happy we have followed through with that. However, I don't think

my heart has fully accepted it yet. How do I explain this. Lots has happened since we've lived here. Dave and I have both experienced foundational shifts in life, in terms of our education, careers, relationships, independence. We also have significant experiences attached to this place.We've had death, birth, marriage, natural disasters...and in a way I feel like by physically moving awaywe are somehow moving away from these experiences, we are somehow letting go as we embark on our next chapter.

I am looking forward to the next few days of just chilling out with friends. I have a feeling I will be back in my puddle of emotions, but I guess such as life. Dave and I have done this before. It is always hard to say good bye, but I know we will always keep in touch. Just like we did before.

Mobile Osakaya: Our favourite restaurante that used to be in the city centre. Th

ey have gotten around this by going mobile. Yum! Glad to see them back.

An old style pub used to be in this lot. It was taken down awhile ago, but has been replaced with a temporary pub. Priorities in place!

A site all too common in Christchurch. I'm sure something amazing will go in their place.

Good Bye, Farewell from Avonhead School

2011-07-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

I have been getting so many cards from children at school, its awesome! They have put so much effort into these cards, I've started to take photos of them.
This video was taken at on of our final assemblies. Apparently the children have been practicing this song for awhile to sing for my at assembly. (All the classes except mine because I didn't know about it).

I'm on a train that just won't stop

2011-07-05T02:03:00.000-07:00

We have been packing and sorting for has felt like weeks. But it is only today that things have started to feel very real. So far all the things we've sold or gotten rid of haven't had a huge impact on us. Our slow cooker is gone, the clock I bought when we lost our phone went today and so has the plastic storage shelf we had in our bathroom. But today I had to empty out the drawers of our dressers (referred to as 'low boys' and 'tall boys' on Trademe) as they were being picked up tonight. And now our room, with clothes all over the place and a big empty space where the dresser should be, looks as though someone is either coming or going. Is the room being set up or being taken down? It's funny how objects that are so meaningless in our everyday lives become so meaningful in light of our current transition. We bought these dressers from a store in town. I can't even remember what the store was called. I'm SURE it did not survive the earthquake as it is in a building that is similar to all the other old buildings that have crumbled. I hope the weird lady who worked there (sold us our bed as well) is ok. I think the weird lady was partially the reason we went back there to buy other furniture. The dressers weren't even that nice! Not nice in that they weren't any special family heirloom or made of solid wood. Nice in that they were new, did the job, and their colouring matched our bedroom floor. And now they are special enough to be mentioned in a blog post.
Other events today has made our departure feel very real. The Junior school today put on a farewell assembly for me. Well, it was far more than a farewell assembly. It was more like a farewell event. The smell of pancakes wafted through the air as early as 7 in the morning due to the fact that 360 pancakes needed to be prepared for the special breakfast being held for me. Parents and kids greeted me as I roamed around the school chatting with people (I tried desperately to suppress the tears that were about to be unleashed...sadly I failed) I felt like I was in a dream, not really wanting to believe all the playground shouting, "Miss Brown I'll miss you!" could be directed at me. Had 3 and a half years really gone by already?
Following the pancake breakfast was the actual assembly. I would try to explain it all but a written description would not do it justice. I still can't believe how much thought had gone into the creating such a beautiful moment.
However, one part I will endeavor to explain is how they started the assembly. The entire junior school and guests waited for myself, Mrs. M and Room 7 outside. It was bitterly cold out, most of us were covered in maple syrup and pancake bits, but we formed a front line so there were about 5 of us standing holding hands. The rest of my class huddled directly behind me in a group. We stood outside the hall, and with the thumbs up started to walk in. As soon as we started walking I could hear chanting and I immediately knew what was being done. Two teachers of our school were performing a karanga , which as the link explains is an exchange that occurs between two people as a group moves onto a formal meeting place.

It is normal for both kaikaranga (women who carry out the karanga) to address and greet each other and the people they are representing, to address and pay tribute to the dead of each other’s acquaintance (especially those who have recently died) and to refer to the reason the groups have been together.

Usually you see this done as a group walks onto a marae.

This is a little video of the formal protocol for entering a marae and it gives you some idea as to what goes on. The calling and answering by the two women is what happened for me today. I heard the call, I got my goosebumps, choked back my tears and entered the hall. I was so incredibly proud of my class (very high off of the maple syrup) who composed themselves so well. I know it couldn't have been easy for them. That will be one of the most special moments I will have had in New Zealand. I have to give an enormous thank you to those who planned it, and to those who performed it. You cannot know how much it meant to me.

It is 10:10pm, my eyes are puffy and I'm so tired. I need to go to bed. But I knew I had to write something so in a few months I could look back at this post and hope to remember how special I was made to feel today.

Kia ora New Zealand.

What not to bring on an airplane in your carry on

2011-06-23T01:03:00.001-07:00

You'd think I'd know the answer to this given all the flights I've been on. But the following story would suggest otherwise.
Dave and I flew up to the North Island two weekends ago to see our friend Chris perform in Whagarei's production Miss Saigon. As we went through the Christchurch security gate, the security guy asked if they could scan my purse again. I of course said sure, and they ran it through again. I had cleaned out my purse that morning so I was fairly confident of all its contents. After the second scan an ancient old security guard asks me if he could look through my purse. Again, I say sure. After a few moments he said, "I'm sorry Miss. I just can't seem to find what was coming up on the scan." I then think maybe it is my inhaler, tucked away in a mesh bag. I said, "Oh, I know what it might be. Here". I take out the mesh bag, unzip and immediately see my foolish mistake.
See this mesh bag is one I use for hiking. I keep it close by as my emergency bag, something that can be easily accessed. It has my inhalers in it as well as a knife. I forgot about the knife when I put the mesh bag in my purse. So when I unzip the mesh bag and see the knife I know exactly what the ancient security guard was looking for. I pull out the knife and said, "Is this what you were looking for?" And he looks at me like I am crazy. I hand him over the knife, and he unfolds it. It is a decent sized knife. The knife is slightly rusty but still very sharp. I just shake my head and say, "take it, take it. I know I'm so silly." I don't even try and argue about keeping it. He apologizes and says I can't take it on the plane. Of course I can't take it on the plane!!!
Dave and I walk away chuckling at the thought of my trying to smuggle at knife on the airplane. Then I stop in my tracks and think to myself, "wait a minute." I pull out my mesh bag and open it up. Knife number two was in the mesh bag. This was a knife my sister had given me. But because I was the one that pulled out knife number one, the security guard didn't see the other knife. Oops!
We didn't have any checked luggage so I had to leave that other knife up in Northland. It will be mailed back to me sometime soon. Lesson learned.
By the way, 4 weeks left.

June 13th Earthquake, New Zealand

2011-06-13T23:28:00.001-07:00

June 13th Earthquake, New Zealand, a set on Flickr.

Otago Wineries 2011

2011-06-13T23:27:00.001-07:00

Otago Wineries 2011, a set on Flickr.

This time last year

2011-06-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

This time last year...

I had an interview with a principal from the Canadian International School in Singapore.

Dave was in Canada for his brother's birthday.

Dave's brother and his wife were not expecting parents.

I had long hair.

My nephew was not a walking little boy.

I had finished my second half marathon.

I was still a provisionally registered teacher.

I had never been in a helicopter.

I had never been in a major earthquake (there were a few practice rounds in Japan.)

I was preparing for the arrival of my parents.
I still had one Grandma.

I was enduring my first NZ winter in an old Christchurch home.

I had never been to the North Island.
I had never been to Stewart Island.

We had not planted our eggplants.

I had never made Moussaka.

Our friends in Japan had not experienced one of the largest earthquakes.

One of our favourite restaurants in Japan was still open.

I'm all growed up

2011-05-10T01:33:00.001-07:00

I got my teaching certificate today. This means I'm no longer classified as a 'beginner' teacher. I am a fully registered teacher.
For those of you not in the know, in New Zealand you are a provisionally registered for two years before getting your full registration. As a provisionally registered teacher you are entitled to a mentor and a certain amount of release time outside of the classroom. And well, as a fully registered teacher you are on your own! (Just kidding, of course you are still well supported.)

Holidays over, back to school

2011-05-07T22:13:00.000-07:00

Well, packs are put away. House tidied up, and once again we've got piles of school work littered around the house. School holidays are officially over and we are in full swing of Term 2 with parent interviews next week. Dave and I had lots we wanted to do over the holidays. We had several hikes up our sleeves, hikes that had been evading us due to bad weather, poor timing or high financial cost. We were also keen to get a handle on what is going to be the great move back to Asia in July. That is right, Dave and I are making our way back to Asia with jobs at the Canadian International School in Singapore. We are extremely excited about this change for several reasons. Most importantly, this move will mean more frequent visits back to Canada as flights home are included in our contracts. Having lived in New Zealand for 3 and half years we have accumulated a lot of stuff and so this holiday I wanted to start going through some of it and getting rid/selling what we don't need now. We nearly have all of our paperwork sorted, should be sent off this week. We also already have a condo all sorted. A beautiful three bedroom condo...so start planning your visits!!!!
Anyway, I digress. So we did sort out some of our items. We are a few items less thanks to Trademe, New Zealand's version of Ebay. But amid our sorting and organizing we fit in two hikes. Both were in Aspiring National Park. One was up to Liverpool Biv, the other was in the Wilkin Valley.
I'm such a geek. I had to try out this new gadget I learned about the other day...

HAH...It worked. I'm so clever. Well, for your enjoyment. Here is the helicopter ride out the Wilkin Valley.

Helicopter out of the Wilkin Valley (2) from Jennifer on Vimeo.

I love technology!
It was great getting these two hikes under our belts, particularly the Wilkin Hike. This is one hike Dave has been wanting to do since our early New Zealand days. We had driven past the trail head many times, and every time Dave does a quick jerk, points down the valley and says ecstatically, " I want to get in THERE!". I have to remind him to keep his eyes on the road if he's driving. So now we've been! There you go Dave!
For the most part it was a quiet trip. Apart from the 13 teenagers we had to share the first hut with, we had quiet evenings to ourselves in the others. Apart from it being like at work, the kids at the Young Hut were pretty good. It was quite funny though. As we were approaching the hut we were going through all the reasons why there might not be anyone at the hut, i.e. end of hiking season, middle of the week, etc. As we approached the hut we heard the squeaky voice of a teenage boy's voice. At first we thought it would be a few boys with their dad. But no. The piled up over the hill and quickly filled up the quiet space of the hut with their clumsy teenage bodies. We were guided into the larger room where the girls were sleeping. We took over a double bunk, and were trying to quickly get dressed into our dry clothes. I finished quickly, leaving Dave to himself. But before we knew it, the room we were in was flooded with teenage girls. Poor Dave, in his birthday suit hiding under his sleeping bag. He said he was imagining the headlines. "Foreign High School teacher exposes himself in hut." So he cancelled his original plan, and left the room to the gaggle of girls getting dressed themselves.
We didn't see anyone else until our final night when we shared the Top Forks Hut with a hunter. I was hoping sharing the hut with a hunter would bring us a delicious meal of fresh venison. But no such luck.
On our Wilkin hike, we did not see a cloud for four days. Many times as we looked behind us down the valley we had walked through, we reflected on how this was such a classic New Zealand view. Yellow grassy valleys, winding rivers, beautiful mountains, beach forests, etc. We had many conversations about how much we'd miss New Zealand and all the wonderful hiking there is to be had here. This will most certainly be our last extended hike in New Zealand. If you would like to see my photos, you can see them HERE at my Flickr site. However, we still have a few over night hikes up our sleeves before we call it quits.

Only 10 weeks to go...

Hagley Park, Christchurch

2011-04-24T03:29:00.001-07:00

Hagley Park, Christchurch, a set on Flickr.

Halgey Park, Christchurch Easter weekend

2011-04-24T02:09:00.000-07:00

We went for a walk around one of our favourite areas of Christchurch today, Hagley Park. I took along Dave's camera and played around with it.
The park was so busy with people which is always great to see. Lots of families out enjoying the sunny and warm weather. Lots of people feeling a bit more comfortable to venture closer to town. As you can see by the middle photo, there is plenty that has not yet returned to normal.

Easter 2011

2011-04-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

Somebody is spoiled around here. Under that tin foil is a huge plate of bacon.
Oh, and...

3 months to go.

Recent life

2011-04-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

We went on the most amazing hike through the Matukituki Valley at the start of our holidays. Unfortunately I left my purse in Ashburton, with camera inside, so I couldn't take any photos of our trip. Fortunately, Dave had his camera so he took his usual great shots. AND my purse was retrieved at the end of the trip. You can check out his photos at his Flickr site HERE.
Veggie soup made with some veggies from our garden. Very delicious.
Our carrot crop.
A very long bean from our garden. I only put it on my computer so you'd get an idea of just how long it was.
Dave and I cook a lot of thai food. This is one of my favourites!!! It is called Pad Kupow Moo, with a fried egg. Basically, it is stir fried pork with beans, LOTS of thai basil, fish sauce and garlic. Oh and chilli. I lived off of this dish in Thailand.

Devil Skin Saddle, Lewis Pass

2011-04-03T23:42:00.001-07:00

Devil Skin Saddle, Lewis Pass, a set on Flickr.

Rumbling in Christchurch

2011-03-09T01:04:00.000-08:00

Morning ritual in Northland. Checking the news.
The note I left Dave before we had made contact after the earthquake. I had grabbed our most valuable belongings and went and stayed with a friend. Dave arrived home later, saw the note and headed over to our friend's house.
Tom the tomato.

A thank you to friends and family

2011-02-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

I don't normally post things like this. However, it does seem rather appropriate. Dave and I would like to thank all our friends and family who have reached out to us over the last few days. It is amazing to have so much support...even if you aren't close by. Though we are both fine (even more fine now that we are far away and able to have a warm shower) I find myself more and more emotionally drained as the days go by. I try to push the "what ifs" out of my mind but they sneak in every once in awhile. Watching the news all the day long, I'm sure, does not help. We will find out tomorrow the situation regarding work. Our school has been deemed safe.
We were out for dinner and a guy from the Salvation Army came by our table. We told him we were from Christchurch, we had a small chat and he gave us this short piece of writing by Joy Cowley. This is it.

The Bridge

There are times in life when we are called to be bridges. Not a great monument spanning a distance and carrying loads of heavy traffic, but a simple bridge to help one person from here to there over some difficulty such as pain, grief, fear, loneliness, a bridge which opens the way for ongoing journey.
When I become a bridge for another, I bring upon myself a blessing, for I escape from the small prison of self and exist for a wider world, breaking out to be a larger being who can enter another's pain and rejoice in another's triumph.
I know of only one greater blessing in this life, and that is to allow someone else to be a bridge for me.

Joy Cowley

We don't know when we will return to Christchurch. It all depends on work.
Love to everyone. We miss you all very much.
xxooJenn

Garden update

2011-02-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

Dave turning the soil for the next lot of plants. We aren't sure if this is what you are supposed to do, but it seems to do the trick.
Our first carrots for dinner when a friend came over. We each had one.
Our spring onions that aren't so springy anymore. Enough green onion to make stir fry for a small village.

I think I know what I'm doing now

2011-02-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

A handful of strawberries...
Flowering Thyme...
Evidence of carrots.

I've survived my first week back at school relatively unscathed. I only had one incident where a half naked child thought he could sneak by me to get into the pool. Bare bums shine bright in the afternoon sun and I gently ushered him back to the change rooms to either find his bottoms or wear his underwear. In fact, my class was so good we flew through all the work I had planned for. I almost thought I was going to run out of things to do on Monday, but we managed. It is exhausting being back at work, and after a good run on Friday I zonked out just past 10pm. Funny how I couldn't sleep all week because I had so many things running through my head, but
by the time Friday came around I knew I had made it and could relax.

It is a strange situation being a primary school teacher. You get thrown into a classroom with anywhere from 20-26 children (more the older you teach) and you are expected to all get along - no matter what. I tend to have a "well, we are in this thing together. we better make it work," mentality and we we work things through together. However, this aside I'm enjoying getting to know all my little cherubs and all their idiosyncrasies.

Oh, this is Theo the tiger, our classroom toy. Each day our class leader gets to take home Theo along with his story writing book. They take Theo home, have some sort of exciting adventure (i.e. taking Theo to soccer practice), write about it, and then share it with the class the next day. Anyway, it is now Sunday ( I had started this post on Saturday but got swept up in Saturday stuff)...so I must be off to do my Sunday duties which includes preparing for week number 2.

Final weekend

2011-01-28T13:01:00.000-08:00

It's a rainy day here in Christchurch (well, I guess you can see that with my handy little weather gadget on the right hand side panel). I've had a bit of a sleep in which is slightly concerning as I will have to be getting up early come Monday. I was up late last night enhancing my digital prowesse. As a result, I created a new Twitter account. You can follow my "tweets" at junipa80. Though I can't see myself doing much "tweeting" in the future. I created a new blog to write from called Sensei2.0 . I created an igoogle account that allows me to put all of my most used websites onto one page. So rather than flipping through tabs across my web browser, I utilize one page that links me up to everything I want to use. Like this...
I also (blush) created another me in Second Life. My name is jasminesensei and I am currently hanging out on Orientation Island because I have absolutely no idea how to use it. It's not the greatest photo because I couldn't figure out how to get Jasmine to smile for the camera.

I like to think I am fairly savy when it comes to ICT stuff. I blog, Facebook, use Flickr, use Delicious etc. the list could go on. I reside on the border of being a "digital native" and "digital immigrant" but admittedly am hesitant when it comes to newer forms of technology like Twitter. (As one comedian put it, "can't people just shut up for 5 minutes?"). But then someone comes along like David Warlick and lays down a challenge for educators to get their buts into action in order to better educate 21st century children with 21st century thinking/classrooms. I won't go much more into this. This is a discussion I want to have in my new blog, Sensei2.0. I hope to use that blog as a place to reflect on my teaching practices, and to REALLY explore my journey towards becoming a 21st century educator.

For now, I will remain in the land of the living with this blog. I will not describe how Jasmine keeps running into things on Orientation Island. Nor will I delve into the trials and tribulations of attempting to sit down, fly, walk, run, and converse with others. (I know, it is a all a bit strange). My Second Life will remain that, my second life.
We had one more small adventure before allowing reality to settle in. We did a trip all the way to Te Anau, and then to Milford Sound. It was hard to get the motivation to get back into the car for such a long road trip. I think because we had already done such a big road trip, part of me wasn't looking forward to sitting in the car for a long period of time. However, road trips in New Zealand are always easy to handle because the scenery is so beautiful

View Larger Map

I say 'all the way' because it is a long drive getting to both these places. I've been telling people at work that Dave and I alone have probably boosted sales in petrol with all the traveling we did this summer. We decided to go for several reasons. One being Dave had scoured the weather reports and determined it was going to be a beautiful few days over on the west coast and down south. Being as this area gets rain 200 days out of the year, we thought we'd seize the day and go for it. We should have known better than to believe in a long weather forecast in New Zealand. It was sunny until we drove past Queenstown. We could see the clouds socked in through the mountains (this is sounding familiar). It was nearing the end of our pay check so we had planned on doing this trip with trying to spend the least amount of money as possible. As a result we had our tent in the back of car. As we were heading into our 7th hour of driving, and the rain was pounding on our windshield so hard we couldn't see very far down the road the tent was becoming the least favourable situation. Fortunately we have a good friend living in Gore. Gore was an hour out of our way, but seeing a good friend combined with a dry place to sleep proved to be persuasion enough for going a little out of our way.

The following day we ventured back into our car and made our way to Milford Sound. Before you go to Milford you drive through the small town of Te Anau, the gateway to Milford. This is the last place to buy petrol and food until you make the 4 hour return trip back to Te Anau. It is a small town, typical of a place that is last stop before entering a national park. Parking spots are usually big for tour buses, public toilets are larger than most restaurants, and shops host signs in several languages. After making the required stop we started making the trek to Milford. Time as on our side as we had booked one of the last boat rides in the afternoon.

Chasm Roack from Jennifer on Vimeo.

Milford was a positively magical place. The clouds never really left, but they cleared enough to add some mysticism to the mountains. Mountains shot up from the ocean straight up into the clouds. The ocean was so calm (a welcome change from the last time we were in a boat coming from Stewart Island). The boat ride provided everything you would expect on a nature cruise: cruising under waterfalls, getting close to seals (twice), explanations of special geological features, a lighthouse and because the water was so calm we ventured out into the open ocean. It was beautiful, but we we slightly disappointed we didn't get the weather we were hoping for. Thankfully it cleared up slightly for a night in the tent, no downpours to make us want to sleep in the car. We were supposed to go hiking the next day but the clouds were still hugging the mountains, and being the fair weather hikers we are, we decided to make the long journey home. And so here we are on our last weekend of summer. It has been a fantastic summer. I don't think I could identify a highlight if I tried. We saw many things, grew a fantastic garden that fed us plenty, I read lots of books, got back into my running and enjoyed many mornings of sleeping in. Oh, and the weather was fantastic. And after having an amazing conference day on Friday, I feel pumped for the new year. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to enjoy these experiences.

Precious

2011-01-24T20:16:00.001-08:00

"Miss Brown!"
No hello!, how are you?, how was your summer?
I was leaving the school after doing some prep work for the first week, and one of my students from last year saw me leaving the classroom (she was there heading off to our school pool).

"Hello, how are you? Did you have a good summer?" said Miss Brown

"Yesterday" (note there is no response from my previous question) "Yesterday we went to the Buskers' festival and we saw these two girls do a fire show. And they were CANADIAN!"

"Oh," replies Miss Brown. "I saw them the other night as well. They are French Canadian. You should have sang your French jingle bells."

(I taught my class French jingle bells for our Christmas concert.)

Ok...ready for the response?

"I DID SING THEM JINGLE BELLS IN FRENCH!!!"

"Oh really? And what did they say?"

"They JOINED IN! And they said I had great pronunciation!"

And this ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why I enjoy teaching primary so much.

:-)

Last days of summer

2011-01-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

Burning a home made candle one of my students from last year gave me for Christmas.
Summer pose. (Glasses of wine were for dinner guests).
Spot the veggies. All of this was from our garden.
Tomatoes.
Apple walnut muffins with a crumble topping.
Carrots are not ready yet.
8 hour drive from Milford Sound. Sunset before entering Christchurch.

Birthdays, vegetable gardens and beaches

2011-01-16T20:17:00.000-08:00

My favourite beach. It is about 45 minutes away from us, but well worth it. We went here for the afternoon on Dave's birthday and actually stayed in the water for a good long time (rather than running in and running out). When we drove into the bay, Dave said "wow, it is packed!". This just shows how much we have gotten used to not having many people around. "Packed" now means a smattering of cars (maybe 25...seemed like there were more cars parked than there were people at the beach). Five years ago in Japan, "packed" would have meant standing room only.
Dave's birthday breakfast. Egg in a whole and bacon.

Dave is past the age of tequila shots. A glass of 20 year port is what he chose to drink for his birthday.

Our garden is doing well. For more garden photos, check out my Garden Fun set HERE.

More West Coast Adventures

2011-01-15T12:36:00.000-08:00

After a very very bumpy ride across the Foveaux Strait (many breakfasts resurfaced, I thought I had lost Dave to sea as he chose to stand outside on the back), we arrived in Southland's bustling city Invercargil. Most of us had had a great sleep the night before in nice clean sheets at the South Sea Hotel. The pub downstairs turns into a kind of dance club (with an odd mix of locals in the gum boots and tourists in their Tevas) and so the hotel has bowls of earplugs for weary travelers. Dave and Chris both woke with a slight fog in their heads, this due to the two bottles of wine they drank. However, who knew standing on the back of a hairy ferry ride (with waves crashing over you) would be such a good hangover cure. Anyway...Invercargill...
We were refreshed and looking for a new adventure. We had 3 days before we had to be back in Christchurch to put Chris and Laura on a plane. Dave checked the weather, and gave the West Coast thumbs up for good weather. After giving ourselves a much needed caffeine boost at the Tuatara Backpackers, we piled into our Subaru and headed to the West Coast.
Dave knew exactly where he wanted to go. There is a hike that has alluded us in that in the past we have come so close to hiking it, but then can't for what ever reason. So early January we were back at the same place we found ourselves over Christmas where Dave decided I sounded like a goose and was too sick to hike. We set up our tents, some more easily than others (Ahem, Chris and Laura). The sandflies were atrocious and so we all piled into the larger of the two tents and reminisced of our Stewart Island trip over beers, olives, dips and bread.

We woke up early to a mist filled valley and a clear view of what we going to attempt. If you look at the photo above, you'll Mt. Brewster with the snow. We didn't climb that. We climbed the mountain just in front of Mt. Brewster, and the hut would be situated right in front of that mammoth glacier.

The hike up to Brewster Hut was amazing. We did not see a cloud for two days. The views were mind blowing. Even on top of Mt. Armstrong, wind was nearly non existent. We couldn't believe it. We stayed at Brewster Hut for one night. It is a new hut, built in 2007. The facilities were unlike any other hut we'd stayed in, with the exception of the Angeles Hut that was also fairly recent. Brewster Hut had the coolest toilet. It sat over a cliff. You wouldn't want to have made your way to the toilet in the middle of the night or else you might just topple over.

We made it to Brewster Hut for lunch, then Dave, Chris and myself lightened our loads and ventured up Mt. Armstrong where we were astounded by the gorgeous views. We must have sat up at the summit for almost an hour. None of us actually wanted to go back down to the hut because it felt so peaceful up there. But it would have been a chilly night at 2100m. All good things must come to an end and so we slowly ventured back down to the hut where we relaxed on the veranda, soaking in the crystal clear views of Mt. Brewster and Mt. Aspiring.

We allowed ourselves a good sleep in the next morning. My goal was to not get up until the sun was hitting the hut. Goal accomplished - though it was hard because my sleeping bag was so hot by about 7:30 I struggled to stay in bed. But in bed I stayed until the hut was basked in sunlight. Dave granted us each two cups of coffee as this would be our last hiking trip before Chris and Laura went back to Northland.

Mt. Armstrong Summit from Jennifer on Vimeo.

For more pictures of our West Coast adventures, please click HERE.

Congratulations Dave!

2011-01-14T15:30:00.000-08:00

Dave is now an "official" (as opposed to provisional) teacher with the New Zealand Teachers Council.

Fishhooks, mountain boots and sunshine

2011-01-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

"Girls, we have a predicament!"

This is what interrupted my peaceful afternoon reading session. We had been on the go for several days on the North West circuit of Stewart Island. Stewart Island is New Zealand's 3rd largest island, an hour away by ferry from the South Island. Finally we had arrived at a hut early enough to enjoy it. We'd all had a refreshing dip in the gorgeous waters of Bungaree Beach. The water resembled something out of a postcard from the Caribbean with its beautiful turquoise colour however upon first entering the water your senses told you otherwise. While Laura and I enjoyed a quiet Stewart Island siesta, the boys had ventured off to go fishing with hand lines. Being the jokers that they are, I assumed the "predicament" was they had caught several fish and didn't know how they'd cook them up (our tramping gear provided us with limited cooking facilities).

"Jennifer, I NEED your help!"

Big sigh from me and I clamber down the ladder from the top bunk.

I meander outside not looking forward to my first fish gutting experience when I see Dave and Chris huddled together next to the outdoor sink with the first aid kit.

"Chris has a fish hook stuck in his thumb."

I am then retold the story of how Chris got the hook in his thumb, the two of them then having to scale some rocks to get back to the hut, and then having a very long walk across the beach back to the hut. Chris, handling all of this much better than I ever would have, is walking around taking deep breaths trying to get ready for the inevitable yanking out of the hook. Apparently Dave was already familiar with one method of dealing with fish hooks and that is to push it through. You do this because there is a barb at the end of the hook and pushing it through means the hook doesn't get caught on anything. Poor Chris is turning two shades of white at the thought of having the fishhook pushed through the rest of his thumb and is cursing at our choice of not bringing any strong alcohol with us. I am dreading what ever job I am assigned (holding his arm down?)

On pg 163 in A Comprehensive Guide to Wilderness & Travel Medicine New 3rd Edition Dave reads aloud for all those involved,
"Fishhooks have a barb just behind the tip and are curved so that the more force applied to the hook, the deeper it penetrates. The barb does not allow the hook to be backed out. The classic method of advancing the barb through the skin and cutting the hook so that the remaining shank can be backed out is effective, (moaning from Chris), but there is an easier and less painful technique."

Now, I can't exactly remember what Chris had said but I do remember him rejoicing with selective words with regards to the "less painful technique".

Dave reads on.

Removing a Fishhook (further reading from the wilderness guide)
Pass a length of string, fishing line, suture material or dental floss through and around the bend of the hook. Grasp the ends of the string and, while applying gentle downward pressure on the shank to disengage the barb, yank on the string (Fig. 61). After removing the hook, clean the entry point with an antiseptic towelette or soap and water.

As Dave is reading this, things start getting into motion. And before we know it, he's got a fishing line around the bend of the hook and is telling me, "Ok Jennifer, On 3 you are going to push on the shank." The only problem is, Dave is the only one in this equation who knows what he's doing.

"What part is the shank?"

"Woa woa woa!" (Chris removes himself from Dave's all too eager grasp of the fishing line.) "I need to get myself ready. Who is doing what?"

And so this little dance of who-does-what continues several times. Dave is the only one out of the three of us who really gets what is going on. Chris is getting more and more distraught as time goes by, particularly as Dave is trying to compare Fig. 61 to Chris's thumb - which look nothing alike. I still don't know where I'm pushing, and now I'm informed I might have to hold Chris's arm down as well. Then from the top corner window of the hut,

"Chris, just shut up and do what Dave tells you to!" The harsh voice is from Chris's girlfriend who is well and truly tucked away in her sleeping bag, unable to deal with the circumstances unfolding outside.

Now, I can't remember when this was suggested, or who suggested it (I believe it was Dave though. He was enjoying this all a little too much). Anyway, someone had suggested we take a video of the fishhook being pulled out. Chris was so NOT impressed with this idea. But hindsight is a great thing, and now I wish we had a recording of this fateful moment.

It is at the point where I think it would be best for Chris to take more ownership over this whole ordeal and I suggest that HE be the one to push the shank and Dave pull. We all agree to this arrangement. Dave gets himself ready, fish line in hand. Chris has his arm on the bench ready to push down on the shank.

Dave says, "On 3. 1....2...."

Chris cries, "WOA WOA WOA. Don't pull on 2 man. We will count 1,2,3 and THEN I will push and you pull."

1...2...3...

Deep moaning follows. Chris is instructed to go down to the ocean and hold his thumb in the water for a few minutes. We all breath a sigh of relief. The only thing you can see on Chris's thumb is a small hole where the fish hook has been pulled through. No big gaping wound from a barb torn through skin. Well done team. Dave packs up his first aid kit, and leaves the bloodied fish hook on the bench. We will deal with this later.

This is just one of many adventures we had on our trip to Stewart Island. To see my photos of our trip, please click HERE.

Stretching my legs

2010-12-28T21:42:00.001-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasminemali/sets/72157625570536839/

Ode to an old friend

2010-12-26T21:19:00.000-08:00

I bought this pack in 1999. I used it on my independent trip to Europe (with my lovely friend Treezah). It was with me when I boarded a plane to Thailand, Japan and Nepal. And it has served me on some trips in New Zealand. I have just updated to a new pack. One that has a few more bells and whistles, smaller shoulder straps (my old one used to dig in my shoulders) and will carry the weight slightly differently.

I feel quite sad retiring this pack. It has been an old faithful for over 10 years. I'm not sure what to do with it now. Probably will end up on Trademe (New Zealand version of Ebay).

Goodbye my dear friend. Thank you for everything.

First attempt at Christmas

2010-12-26T12:17:00.000-08:00

I meant to write a pre-Christmas letter. But that didn't happen (obviously). Being a teacher, I don't think I'll ever be able to get out a pre-Christmas anything...at least not while in New Zealand while the end of the school year leads up to Christmas. There is just simply no time! Our school year ended with few hitches. Our Christmas assembly was successful. Students' speech, "this year Miss Brown taught us how to sing Jingle Bells in French" (big sigh from the audience). Classrooms were scrubbed, cleaned and packed up for another year. At home anything remotely related to school has been moved out of sight. A bottle of wine was opened to commemorate the holidays.

Once school had finished, we hung around Christchurch for a few days for several reasons: a) to spend time with a friend who was going back to Canada b) to pack for our first big hiking trip c)hope that what ever sickness I had come down with on my last week of school would go away.
It was nice to potter around the house. We have a flourishing garden now, so we devote much of our time to it. Last year we were quite late getting things into the garden because we moved into the house in January. At the moment we are on our second crop of lettuces, which is quite nice. And the zucchini, like most zucchini plants, has given us enough zucchini eat with most meals. We went over to a friend's house the other day, and being good guests we brought over some of the fruit of our labour. After all, the friend we were visiting was the one who had helped us get our garden set up. As soon as we arrived, we realized the error in our ways. They had 6 huge zucchini plants in their garden. Needless to say we went home with a few of their green zucchinis.

Anyway, garden tended to, gear packed up...we left Christchurch on the 23rd of January in the early evening after having dropped our friend off at the airport. We had a 5 hour drive ahead of us. But we didn't mind so much. It has been staying light out until about 10pm lately, so we knew we had plenty of daylight driving hours. Our destination was Wanaka, Mt. Aspiring National Park. Two years ago, we hiked the Rees-Dart Track, which is basically on the other side of a range Dave had wanted to hike this year.

One big problem with hiking in New Zealand is the fickle fickle weather. Long range forecasts simple don't exist (well not in our minds at least) because the weather can change so quickly. This makes planning a bit tricky. With the exception of one day being rainy, the long range forecast had said the area we were going into would have pretty good weather. So this is one reason why we chose to go here. As we are driving in Wanaka, you could see the clouds and rain brewing over the peaks of the mountains. Not always a good sight. By the time we were on the dirt road that would lead us to the trail head, it was pitch black outside, howling, rainy overall pretty miserable. The only thing we could see was a little bit of road ahead of us, the light reflecting off the rain, and the occasional cow on the side of the road (we were driving through a large station). Eventually we got to a part on the road that said, "Caution. River crossing. Be careful when it rains, high water levels." I suggested before we go crossing any rivers in the dark, and in the rain, we stay put and continue driving in the morning. Thankfully we didn't have to set up a tent in the miserable weather. We put the back seat down, rolled out our air mattresses and sleeping bags, and tucked ourselves in for the night. It took me awhile to fall asleep. By this point I was coughing so much I thought a lung might pop out of me. Also, we had no idea where we parked our car, other than it was by a river and some trees. Being somewhat of an anxious person in these situations I was worried about falling branches and swelling rivers.

We woke up (car still in tack, no falling branches or swelling rivers causing us harm) to rain and clouds. The view down into the valley we were supposed to be walking into did not look welcoming. Knowing it was only a two hour walk into the first hut, we slept a bit more, occasionally opening our eyes to see what the weather situation was like. Finally there was a break in the weather and so we decided to venture through the rivers to the trail head.

The valley didn't look anymore promising once we got to the trail head. We decided to have a leisurely breakfast...and THEN think about our walk. With a cup of coffee in our bellies, and a nice bowl of oatmeal we decided the valley looked decent enough to enter. Plus we were told by others that the weather was meant to clear up. So we got a dressed up for rainy conditions and headed on our way.It was an easy walk in. Mostly flat. The worst part about it was the rain that decided to pour down after I had decided it was too hot to keep my rain pants on. Walking through ankle deep mud/cow poo didn't make things any better. So imagine our surprise when we arrive at the hut (exactly two hours later) and I notice a big sign on the wall that says, "NEW ZEALAND ALPINE CLUB". I pointed it out to Dave, to which he responded with a huge groan.

Let me explain. Most of the tracks in New Zealand are dotted with huts along the way. I believe this is mostly due to their extreme weather changes. It is easy to get stuck in the back country of New Zealand when bad weather has come in. And when there are river crossings involved, you most definitely want to stay put. Most of the huts are maintained by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and range in prices. Dave had bought us back country passes, so we didn't have to worry about paying anything. However, this hut we had just arrived at, though maintained by DOC, was owned by the New Zealand Alpine Club. Our back country passes did not work for these huts, which meant we'd have to pay $25 per person to stay the night. We were not happy by this news. (It is kind of amusing that this detail was missed, as it clearly says on the map that the hut is a NZAC hut, not a DOC hut. But Dave is not yet ready to laugh at this little mistake). Since we were there, happily getting dried off, we decided to stay for lunch and decided afterward if we carry on to the next hut (another 3 hours) or turn around. My lungs weren't doing any better, and to make matters worse I was starting to feel a bit of tendinitis sensation in my achilles tendon. Not liking the idea of paying $50 for the night, we decided since it was only two hours back to the car park...we would go back, and drive to another place close by.

It was a slog on the way back. I was, "sucking wind" (Dave's words) and my feet were sore. I flopped into the car, happy to be sitting down. We cruised on through Wanaka, stopping for a delicious burger (after all, we didn't pay for the hut fees) and drove on to a free campsite over looking Mt. Brewster, a mountain we had wanted to climb for awhile now. By the time we got to the campsite, I was spent. I was so exhausted I didn't even care about the sandflies. We set the tent up, and I was in bed by 8pm, nestled into my sleeping bad reading a good book. Dave had set our tent up so that we could see the peak of the mountain from our little viewing window. It was a lovely place to end up for Christmas eve. Dave enjoyed a beer with the sandflies outside, while I enjoyed lying down in our cozy tent. This picture above is what we woke up to. What a view eh? That is Mt. Brewster, and there is a hut situated right at the peak. Now imagine that view with the sound of a goose honking away. Except this is no goose. This is me still coughing. We sat enjoying our Christmas coffee admiring the peak ( I was imagining how cold it would be with those clouds up there)...and it was then and there Dave decided that we should just head home. My coughing was not getting any better. The hike up Mt. Brewster, though short, would be challenging, and I was in no condition to get myself up there. It was a disappointing moment, since we had come so far, and the mountain was right in front of us. For a moment I cursed being a primary school teacher and being in the line of fire of all sorts of germs and bugs. We packed up our tent, jumped in the car and made the long drive back home.

On our way back, we decided to make a small detour and take a look at Lake Ohau. Lake Ohau is a holiday destination for a couple of my students. They are always telling me how lovely Lake Ohau is, "Wouldn't you just love to go to Lake Ohau Miss Brown?" The lake was indeed quite lovely. A consolation prize for such a crummy trip...but sitting there with the clean wind in my hair eating lots of summery fruit, all things considering, there are worse things in life than your Christmas plans not going the way you had intended.

My domesticated self

2010-12-04T21:12:00.000-08:00

Banana Muffins
Zucchini plant
Our 2010 garden!
Baby dress knitted for a friend
Baby dress

Traveling up the East Cape

2010-10-08T20:08:00.000-07:00

After a windy couple of days in Wellington, we heading up along the East Coast. The highway to Napier was nothing remarkable. There are several different wine regions to stop at, but we knew we were going to be wine tasting in Hawke's Bay and so weren't that interested. It took us about 5 hours to drive from Wellington to Napier. By the time we arrived in Napier, the sun was shining, the air was warm...it almost felt like shorts weather!
Napier had devastating earthquake in the 1930's, which basically leveled the city (measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, Christchurch was 7.1). When the city rebuilt, they rebuilt it in the style of art deco. The city puts a lot of effort into maintaining its buildings, and so there is a bit of glitz and glamour to the place (note I said a bit). Walking around the city was like walking around in a comic book so much so even all the shop signs were written in an art deco font. We stayed at the Criterion Hotel, which has since been converted into a backpackers. Not has this backpackers retained its art deco charm both on the outside and on the inside, it was also close to the walking path along the beach so I could sneak in a run!
As I mentioned before, we sampled the wine in the Hawke's Bay area, but I think one of the highlights of Napier was our dinner out at a fish and chip shop (we ate a lot of fish and chips up north). The shop was in the city centre, but not mentioned anywhere in the guide books. The entrance caught our eye as we walked by, something about intrigued us. Dave wandered back to have a a peak at the menu. A few older ladies (locals) were standing outside and declared this restaurant to serve "beautiful" fish (no mention about the chips). That was enough so inside we stepped.
Now many say that when you go to NZ it is like going back in time 20 years. Well stepping into this restaurant was like going back to the 1930s. I'm pretty sure that is the era the employees came from. The decor inside was fantastic. It was dark, a lot of red carpet. The tables and chairs looked like they hadn't changed since it first opened up. There was another family in the restaurant enjoying a huge meal of "beautiful" fish and chips. I don't know to explain it, but one got a sense that eating at this restaurant was a big deal for them, rather than just going for the more casual 'take away'. Dave was sure the waiter had seen us come in, but after sitting silently (the restaurant seemed to invite silence) for 5 minutes or so, Dave went over to the kitchen door to make his presence known. Out comes this old man, moving so slowly I felt like jumping up and saying to not worry, I could fill out the order form myself. I ordered some "beautiful" fish and chips and Dave ordered a $16 porterhouse steak with chips. We had to repeat the order about 5 times for the man to understand us. We were both starving, as it had taken us awhile to decide what to do for dinner. And so we were pleasantly surprised when the man came back out with an appetizer: a stack of white bread and 3 balls of butter. We munched on our bread and butter in silence, the other family left. We noticed a poster up on one of the walls from the Art Deco Trust claiming this building/business to be authentic, hahahaha...no kidding.
The fish was indeed delicious, though I'm not sure I would have called it beautiful. Dave's steak was a $16 steak. He was just about to dive into the coleslaw but I made eye contact that said "I wouldn't do that if I were you...". The salad looked like it had come from the 1930s as well. But we didn't choose to go there for the fine cuisine. We chose to go there for the ambiance. Just as we were finishing another (local) couple came in. Just as we were leaving I overheard them ordering food, the way people order food when you are somewhere special...savouring the moment of telling the waiter what you'd like to have. I overheard one of them order, to start off with, the shrimp cocktail. Perfect I thought.

Click HERE for pictures of Napier city.
Click HERE for pictures of our epic wine touring day.

A return to blogging

2010-10-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

Hello world!
Blogger has gotten fancy during my absence! Hope you like the new blog layout. I of course had to play with all the new settings before getting into the nitty gritty of things. I'm almost a tad overwhelmed at having to blog something. It has been embarrassingly too long. I'm not even going to bother listing all that has occurred in the last 6 months or so. You can check that out for yourself by perusing through my Flickr photos. Or better yet, send me an email or skype and we can uptdate 'in person.'

So let's just dive in and pick up where I left off...

It is that wonderful time of year again: SCHOOL HOLIDAYS! For the first time in a year I was able to have my own holiday with Dave. Not that the other holidays haven't counted...

Summer 2010: Dave's parents visit. I go to Australia.

Term 1 holiday: Go to Australia to look after sister and new baby.

Term 2 holiday: My parents visit.

Term 3 holiday: MY time.

Dave and I had hoped to get back into the mountains and do some hiking but a week before school holidays a storm the size of Australia ravaged New Zealand leaving a fresh layer of snow on the mountains. This was of course good news for Dave as he was able to get in a few more days of skiing. Not so good for our plans of hiking. So instead we made loose plans for a trip around the North Island of New Zealand. This would be my first trip up to the North Island, Dave's second. On one of the holidays when I was in Australia, Dave went up to visit a friend in Northland. We decided to not go around that region as it it would add a considerable amount of driving. As you can see below on the map, we drove around the middle part of the North Island. Driving up along the East Coast, and then back down through the middle. There is so much to say about our trip. I'm going to write blog posts as I get my photos up (all 400 of them). So stay tuned as I update my blogger over the next few days.

Before leaving for our trip, we were fortunate enough to have a friend from Australia come over for a short visit. Bonny was part of our Yamagata crew, so it was great to reconnect, talk and laugh over our times in Japan, and enjoy the fantastic first weekend of holidays. It was a quiet weekend with Bonny as Dave and I caught up on some much needed sleep and got all our trip preparations underway. Bonny was with us Saturday and Sunday, and then she came with us for the drive up to Picton where we caught the Interislander Ferry from Picton to Wellington. People tend to bemoan the ferry cost and then grab a much cheaper flight. However, we weren't privy to cheap flights due to the fact that it was school holidays. Despite the cost, I would suggest for everyone to take the ferry at least once, especially during nice weather. The scenery was amazing. Leaving Picton, the ferry weaves through the Queen Charlotte Sound. It is fairly protected in the Sound and so we were able to sit outside and enjoy the view before heading out into the Cook Straight. I was surprised at the size of the swells in the Straight (categorized as moderate going to Wellington). The view was pretty much the best part of the ferry. The journey was 3 hours long. It had a cinema, a bar, a few cafes and a variety of places to sit. I would say the interior of the ferry didn't really have the glitz and glamour brochures would suggest (the bar being outfitted with fake dark wood, cheesy stained glass windows, and pillars decorated with marble wall paper) however it was comfortable enough.We managed to sneak onto the 1pm ferry, leaving Bonny in Picton. And we arrived in Wellington at around 4pm.

We stayed in Wellington for two nights. We were able to stay with our friend Steve, a fellow Canadian who went to Teacher's College with Dave. Steve's flat sits on Mt. Victoria overlooking Evan's Bay, a beautiful location. On Tuesday Steve left us to explore the city by ourselves. Wellington is an interesting place. It's population is nearly the same as Christchurch, however it looks and feels like a big city. It's got tall buildings, a bustling city center, more restaurants and cafes than you can shake a stick at. It is known as the hub of the NZ fashion scene and it is NZ's capital. We wandered through Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum, checked out the government's iconic government building the 'Beehive', and scraped up just enough energy to check out the World Press Photo Exhibition. In the evening we enjoyed drinks at the Macs Brewery and then had dinner at a Japanese yakitori bar. Ah, city life.

I loved Wellington and thought it certainly was a city I could see myself in. But it is a bit too windy...
Click here to see my photo set of Wellington. 'Wellington and More'

Happy Birthday Dave!!!

2010-01-15T20:52:00.000-08:00

A breakfast fit for a king. On the menu: sausages, bacon, and banana pancakes. Yummy!

Growth!

2010-01-15T20:22:00.000-08:00

We love our plants so much. Just about every morning (if it is nice) we take our mugs of coffee with us outside and inspect what is taking place in our garden. For awhile it didn't look like much was happening, but then all of a sudden little green patches started popping up where I planted the seeds! Hurrah, we're officially gardeners! Very cool.

Introducing our New Zealand veggie garden

2010-01-09T22:12:00.000-08:00

Dave is so clever. He found a stack of bricks behind our shed and used them as a border around our garden. A good thing to because I was wondering how we were going to plant anything in our two mounds (see prior post).
So this is what we've got growing:
On the left from back to front:
1. two rows of silverbeet (a type of chard)

2. two rows of mixed salad items

3. two rows of rocket (arugula)

4. 4 heads of lettuce

5. Four shallots

6. 1 red capsicum

7. 1 yello chilli pepper

On the right (mainly herbs)

1. Thai basil

2. Regular basil (4 here and 2 more by the fence)

3. Thyme

4. Rosemary

5. Two more shallots

6. Two rows of coriander (seeds)

I've planted a mix of seedlings and seeds (seeds thanks to my friend Aisling). We are growing them a la organic style however we have used an organic fertilizer for the tomato plant growing in a bucket (will take pictures of it when it is nice outside). I'm doing a bit of an experiment and have used the fertilizer on some of the veggies, we'll see how it works out. I guess now we just have to wait and see what happens. Keep your fingers crossed!

By the way, for any of you long time readers of this blog, do you remember why I started this blog in the first place? One of the reasons was to follow the growth of my garden in Japan! Remember how high my tomato plants got?!

Digging

2010-01-09T15:10:00.000-08:00

A big pile of compost and soil. Smelled warm.

Mint and two basil plants. We thought we'd experiment with this corner of the garden.

If only I could post pictures of my aches and pains. It was all worth it in the end! And now we have a garden that looks like two dead buried bodies!

first dinner

2010-01-08T01:40:00.000-08:00

Our newest aquisition, the dining room table.

Our first dinner at our new place. Pizza and wine!
I look so tired and aweful in this picture, but needed to post it for memories' sake.

2 years

2010-01-08T00:29:00.000-08:00

Homes grow on you, even if it is for a short time.

Today Dave and I officially moved out of our Brockworth flat. The goodbye would have been slightly more dramatic had I not forgotten my set of keys at our new house (now referred to as our current house) realizing we'd have to go back tomorrow to return the keys. (When I came back to our current house I realized my Brockworth set of keys were actually in one of the compartments in our new car. I could have had the dramatic goodbye I was looking for.)

Dave and I have spent most of this last week cleaning, throwing out and moving. Now that we are grown up with real career type jobs we've branched out on our own and are renting a house. The move was necessary. The last 3 months of living in Brockworth I refused to tidy because I felt like all was doing was rearranging piles. We had outgrown our teeny tiny two room flat. Not to mention the roommate factor. Though we were fortunate in having some great room mates, it just wasn't the type of environment we wanted to deal with any longer. As our landlord put it, we work with kids all day, we don't want to have to deal with it when we come home (this isn't meant for all of our room mates, you know who you are if you are reading this).

I don't think Dave and I realized how attached we had become to our Brockworth dwelling. We both hesitated before closing the door one last time. The two years we spent in those two rooms were significant years for us both. I can still remember the first day looking at the place. All I could think of was how it wasn't our gorgeous apartment in Japan, with the wooden floors and the view of the mountains. I didn't want to move. But Dave insisted it was the best option and so we went for it. The first two months were a huge wake up call to us both. Budgeting, scrimping and saving seemed to be all could ever talk about. Those two rooms housed not only the two of us, but all of the extreme emotions that went along with those two years. Having to deal with a new country, homesickness, school work, getting jobs, resigning from jobs, getting more jobs, saying goodbye to friends, reuniting with family and perhaps the most difficult one for me - finding out my grandmother had died.

As we drove away from the house, driving along one of the four avenues that hugs the park, we decided having the park right beside us was the saving grace of that flat. With no money and no car for the majority of our time, we spent a lot of time meandering, running and playing rugby in that park. In our first year we had friends who lived directly across from us on the other side of the park, with a foot path that was nearly from our doorstep to theirs. What a backyard to have at our doorstep. If ever you find yourself in Christchurch, be sure to take a stroll through Hagley Park. But make sure you give yourself a few hours because it is absolutely huge.

So now we find ourselves in a quaint little old house, quite close to Dave's school. It isn't so close to mine, but not much further than our last place with the car. You can watch the video for yourself, have the virtual tour.

New home for 2010 from Jennifer on Vimeo.

We've got the basics for now, but will have to wait until we are back to work before we can get the more "frivolous" items, i.e. desk, shelves, dresser. The current project that will be keeping us outside for the next little while is our garden. If you watch the video you'll notice at the end there is a square patch of weeds and dirt. We are going to try and convert that piece of land into a small veggie garden. With the help of a few friends, we've had a few "gardening 101 tutorials". We've got ourselves some seeds, a list of things that we can plant for this time of year and huge pile of soil/compost that is arriving early tomorrow morning. As we invest more into this garden I wonder if we will be able to grow enough to make it worthwhile. At the very least it will make our backyard look nicer.

Anyway, it has been a huge week and I've got a big day of digging ahead of me tomorrow. I shall say farewell for now. This is our third night in our (new) place and it is still feeling a bit strange.

What makes home home?

2009-09-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

I forgot to bring the cord that uploads pictures onto the computer (does it have a name?) and for the first time ever I wish I had bought the camera model that was wi-fi enabling the uploading of photos cord free.
So I'm currently in the Comox Valley, home to a population much larger than what existed back when I was a kid. So much has stayed the same but yet so much has changed. I'm constantly amazed by how many new housing developments there are. Especially some areas in Comox because it was just all forest when I was a kid. Now everything is so open. I wonder if there will come a day when the island is developed all the way from Victoria to Comox, or maybe even Campbell River.
It is always a strange feeling coming home. All the axiety built up about seeing people you haven't seen in ages. The queries of recent or old gossip. There are new additions to families, some are without. But then it only takes a few minutes to readjust and for things to feel like they used to be. At times it can feel like you haven't even left.
Its Tuesday already and it is a bit overwhelming to think how quickly my time here is going to go. Looking back, I kind of think I should have taken another week off of work but what can you do. These are my holidays so this is the time I can come home. I don't really have any gradiose plans other than to enjoy the sights, sounds and people around me. I am trying to soak in what can only be described as the majestic beauty around me. I went on a run down to Goose Spit yesterday - which I have never done before. I'm not sure why. At one time I used to run all around town but for some reason the hill over to Goose Spit always seemed too large. When running up and down the hill yesterday though it just didn't seem that big. With that said, my legs were screaming at me, "what are you doing to us!!!" as I haven't run a hill in ages (Christchurch being rather flat). But what a nostalgic run. The memories came flooding back. I wish I could upload photos so it could save me the explanation. I think I take pictures of all the same things when I'm at home. The mountains, the ocean, the wild life, the chill atmosphere all make this place one of the most amazing places on earth (in my humble opinion). But then NZ has mountains, ocean, wild life and one could argue an even more chill atmosphere than here. So what is so different? Does it really come down to the fact that I was born here? Seems very simplistic but I suppose it makes sense.
Well, it is nearly 8am. I was meant to wake up early and go to the gym with my Mum but I think I overslept. I keep forgeting this is meant to be my holiday. Back in NZ I'd probably be sleeping in all the time. I think I'm going to go and enjoy my Mum's big, clean, well stocked kitchen and make waffles. Oh, the joys of being home.

homeward bound

2009-09-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

It is 1:05pm and I'm just passing the time before I am picked up by my good friend Nikki and driven to the airport. By the time it is 2:15pm Friday (BC, Canada) I will be at the Vancouver International Airport. Tried explaining time changes to my students but it was a bit too difficult for their 5/6 year old brains to comprehend. At this point in time I'm a bit shocked that the time is actually here. I can remember it being 3 weeks ago and thinking to myself, "Only 3 weeks left..." My suitcase is all packed - though I'm still unsure if I took the proper clothes. Spring here (though the temperature has recently plummeted and it is just miserable outside! ) Autumn there...hmmmm...what is a girl to do.

I spent last weekend souvenir shopping for my family. Souvenir shops are such interesting places. And now that I think I can safely say I'm not a "tourist" it was interesting to see what iconic features of NZ are exploited. Or for some gifts, how many iconic features of NZ can be exploited in one item. For example, a chocolate bar that had a bungy jumping sheep on the packaging. If the sheep was wearing an All Blacks jersey, it would be a perfect gift.

Last week I had my students write what I would do when I was in Canada. Many of them said, "ride a bear". If I don't come home with a photo of me and a bear they will be sorely disappointed.

Anyway, I should go and make sure I'm all set and ready to go. Next time I write will probably be from Canada.

spring is here

2009-09-05T22:26:00.001-07:00

Its Spring here in New Zealand and this means LAMBS!!!!! I missed them last year, and was bound and determined to not miss them this year. I put out my feelers with the people I knew (bringing up sheep in regular conversation here in NZ is not that difficult) and sure enough somebody knew somebody who had lambs at their place. As we drove out to the little community of Prebbleton just outside of Christchurch, I thought we'd be going to a far. But no. This family had their lambs in the back of their yard - correction, they had them behind a fence on some company's property. The lambs had gotten into the flower bed and were no longer welcome to linger there. I was a bit embarrassed, showing up to a complete strangers' house to feed their lambs. But it was well worth it! Just look how cute they are!

we are past the dark times of no internet

2009-08-28T12:44:00.000-07:00

We're back online! Thank goodness! Our modem chose to die on us the day after our landlords left the country (traveling through Canada). And here we were in Christchurch, stranded in a world where we had no access to any social networking sites. It was enough to drive you mad! Thankfully we were able to check our emails at our respective schools (not that I received a lot) but the school networks are like fort knox and pretty much any social networking site is blocked. It really makes one wonder how we are meant to teach to the needs of "21st centery learners" (a newish catch phrase in the education circles" when we can't even access half of the tools these 21st century learners are used to.

There are countless videos like this...unfortunately it seems like many people in the school system refuse to accept this new reality of doing things. It crazy talking to some of the teachers at my school and how lots of them only learned how to send an email a couple of years ago!!!

Anyway, this is a discussion I really didn't mean to get into on this post. If all goes well with working at an international school though, I doubt this debate will even be an issue. We watched a recruiting video for an international school in Hong Kong and every single student was equipped with their own laptop! And they had a special onsite technician to help with maintenance. It is world of education different to that of the public school system.

Speaking of school, all is going well in both of our worlds. I keep on meaning to upload a post titled "precious moments" that lists all of the funny things our kids say. Because they really do come up with some wonders. Here are a few that have come up over the last few months.

This one is from Dave's school, which is pretty amazing because from the sounds of things his students rarely say anything that can be qualified as "cute".

So there were a few students outside Dave's room swearing up a storm. He saunters outside and, being an English teacher, suggests the English language has lots of other words to choose from. But then notes if they must swear, do it quietly because "those evil words hurt my little ears." Then one of the students asks, "Mr. Jordan, are you a Christian like Mr. Parsons?" Another student replies, "No, he's Canadian."

My students...

This was the day after Michael Jackson died. We had some lunch monitors in for our rainy lunch day, and we were talking about Michael Jackson. I said I wasn't sure if my kids knew who Michael Jackson was. So one of the monitors asked my student, "Do you know who Michael Jackson is?" And my student replied, "No, I don't know that programme."

Every week we read a different 'big book'. A few weeks ago we read a book called "The Giant's Ice-Cream." It is about, you guessed it, a giant and his ice cream. I asked the class if this story could be real and one of my students said, "Yes because giants are real."

We are doing a big unit on extinction/endangered animals. My class was having a discussion about extinction and I asked "Can extinct animals come back?". They all quickly agreed that no, they couldn't. But then one kid had a lightbulb turn on in his head and said, "YES THEY CAN. BECAUSE JESUS DID IT!!!"

Other than nightly chuckles over our students funny comments, we haven't been up to much these days. We are heading into week 7 of the term (I cannot believe we are actually over half way there!). We are still sort of car shopping, but this has been put on hold because some very kind friends of ours lent us theirs while they were back visiting in Canada for a few weeks. It will be three weeks of heaven! I can't wait to go for yoga today and not have to leave an hour before it starts because that is what the bus schedule determines!!!!! Yippee!!! And we can even make day trips to visit our friends in various regions of Canterbury!! Oh the freeeeeeeeeedom!

Holidays: never as long as you'd like them to be

2009-07-17T20:49:00.000-07:00

I write this entry on the remainder of my holiday time, a measly two days. No, scratch that. A day and a half. YIKES! In less than 48 hours I will be among the littlies, dowsing myself with hand sanitizer every few minutes. Not that this technique was much use to me last week as I was struck down with the flu on my first week of holiday. What was worse was that I felt fine on Saturday and was anticipating a really wonderful, well deserved two week break. I had great plans to get back into running more seriously, do a big spring cleaning of our flat, get organized for Term 3...and then I get the flu. And what a flu it was! I woke up Sunday morning with all my muscles feeling like they were being wrenched from my body. Oh the agony! And it is so difficult to get comfortable when your muscles are aching. I was like that for a few days with a high fever, I believe I eventually left the flat for a brief period in the morning but ended up crashing for the rest of the day. Took me a good 10 days to recover and I'm still coughing as if there were no tomorrow. I have a theory of where I picked up this bug, and though I like to blame my students I don't think it came from them. Every Saturday I do yoga at the University Rec Centre and I use their gym mats. Yucky gray things that are used during all the aerobic classes, with who knows what kind of germs on them. I'm sure I picked it up there. My students would never give me the flu!
So the first week of my break is hardly worth describing. I slept and watched NZ television - which can be a painful thing in and of itself as there are no shows on from about 10am to 3pm. It is all infomercials! Near the end I could almost recite the Zumba infomercial by heart. Days of our Lives does come on soon after lunch and I tried to watch it, purely for amusement as I once was a big fan, but now I'm not sure how I could tolerate it. It is TERRIBLE! Near the end of that first week I did have to drag myself out of bed to attend a Search Associates workshop and interview. Dave and I are currently looking into our prospects for next year, and working at an international school is looking like a real possibility. Search Associates is an agency that helps teachers find jobs with international schools. They do this with online databases and job fairs, of which we will be attending next January in Sydney. So we are slowly embarking on this next adventure, of which there is a lot of prep work. At the moment we need to put together a joint resume package because we will be looking for jobs at the same school. It is a bit funny to think of us as a package deal, but there it is. Fortunately Dave's brother is in the publishing business and has offered to help us put together a professional looking resume. A new project for us to work on over the next few weeks.
The highlight of our holiday was having some friends come down and visit from the North Island. Chris, who is a Canadian teaching in a small city called Whangarei (pronounced 'faungare'), went to school with Dave last year. His partner moved up there with him and is a nurse up there. They came down to Christchurch for the second week of holidays and we had a few adventures with them. For one, we hit up just about every kind of ethnic food restaurant Christchurch has to offer. It is always nice to treat yourself a little bit and so we showed off our culinary choices to our friends who have been living in a place that probably classifies fish and chips as foreign food (just kidding, only slightly though). It was great to get reconnected and have some chill time in the city. I was, at this point, still recovering from the flu and so while Dave, Chris and Alysia had beers into the late evening I was usually tucked in bed, and fell fast asleep.
Our major adventure took us to the West Coast of NZ, probably the only place that had sunny weather last week. We rented a car, hopped on highway 73 and drove through Arthur's Pass on our way to Hokatika, a small west coast town. Our morning of organizing was so smooth, and we were right on schedule until we got to Porters Pass and were forced to pull over due to icy roads. Our last rental car came equipped with chains so we didn't think it would be a problem. After unloading the trunk however, and looking everywhere, no chains were to be found. Some guys in bright orange vests alluded to us borrowing some chains to cross. We assumed the road crew had spare chains they were lending cars as they drove over the pass. So we pulled over to where all the other low-powered cars were resting expecting to get some chains fairly quickly. Well, the guy in the orange vest disappeared and from what we could tell it didn't look like there were many cars (if any at all) who were returning borrowed chains. So we had to bide our time and wait for the sun to melt the roads. Thankfully it was an incredibly sunny day and we didn't have to wait for long.
After three quarters of an hour we were well on our way, enjoying the wintry mountain pass. It isn't long before the scenery changes however, and once we drove through the mountains we found ourselves driving through rich, dense jungle looking forests. We didn't stop long in Hokatika, just long enough to have a look at the beach and grab a coffee. Our real destination was Fox Glacier, where we'd spend the night before heading out on a tramp the next day. Fox Glacier is unique due to its proximity to the coast at this lattitude and also its advance. The glacier will move anywhere from 1.5 to 5 metres per day, apparently ten times faster than the Swiss Alps glaciers. Click here to see a google map of the glacier. It is a small town near the glacier, mostly built up for the tourists. This was our second time at the glacier, we had camped near the town in the summer time, right near the view point of the glacier. We stayed at the cutest little hostel called The Ivory Towers. We stayed there purely because of the New Zealand Lonely Planet's description, saying "this place is more lemon than ivory, and doesn't exactly tower." It does go on to say it is clean and friendly, which was good enough for us. We cooked ourselves a nice meal, drank some boxed wine (a blend of South Africa's and New Zealand's finest wines) and went to bed fairly early.
We were on the trail at about 8am. I was a bit anxious about the start. We wanted to take the short cut that would shave 45 minutes off the trip, but this meant crossing a river. I dislike crossing rivers, but because it hadn't rained in ages the river was nearly all dried up. The tramp was stunning. A perfect mixture of lookouts, walking along the river, LOTS of bridge crossings, a little incline and stunning forests. It was one of the most well maintain trails I've been on in NZ, so I found I could actually enjoy the views a bit more. Way back in the day this walk was a bit more treacherous because of all the river crossings. There are some emergency shelters for people to stay at near all of the larger river crossings because I guess people would get stuck if the river was too dangerous to cross. It is a long tramp, and even the flat parts would get extremely wet if it were to rain. But the skies stayed dry for us. It was cold...much of the ground was frozen solid. But that was about it. We arrived at the hut in the late afternoon, just in time to have a dip in the hot springs before it got dark.
Sitting in those hot pools as the sun set was a glorious moment. The birds were chirping, snowy mountains stood behind us, the skies cleared created the most stunning light. Moments like these are precious and it was exactly what I needed. Even if we enjoyed the soak for a short time, I felt like I had reclaimed my holiday.
We had a pleasant time in the Welcome Flat hut. It was a bit busier than we had expected, as a large tour group stayed the night. Once the boys got the wood stove working, the hut was toasty warm, and there were even a few teachers in the hut we had conversation with. Dave and others had a night soak but seeing as I was still dealing with a cough, I decided to stay beside the increasingly hotter wood stove looking at hiking magazines (courtesy of the hut). I went to bed when I had to start rotating sides once a side felt like it was burning.
The morning was leisurely. We didn't leave until quite late, but we made good time back to the car. We were in the car by around 4:30pm and took off to Greymouth to stay the night. Greymouth is the largest "city" on the West Coast, very close to the Pancake Rocks which is where we were headed the next day. We stayed at yet another cute hostel, Neptunes Backpackers, which seemed to do all it could to maintain is nautical theme. Complete with a stuffed animal fish on our bed. Don't get too hung up on the "largest city" comment. Home of the 'Great Wall of Greymouth' (flood wall), Greymouth was once a prominent gold mining town, which probably explains the size. Also, Greymouth has a lot of coal mines (as does all the west coast) and so the hostel offered free bubble baths with all the hot hot hot water you could ask for! We didn't stay to see the sites of Graymouth but headed out on way up, along the West Coast to go visit Pancake Rocks, of which we all had seen except for Chris's partner. We continued along in Paparoa National Park, stopping for photos of the breathtaking scenery. We decided to take a different route home, rather than the usual Arthur's Pass route. We drove towards Westport and turned off to drive along the Buller Gorge, and over Lewis Pass. New Zealand really is a stunning country.
And that is our trip in Term 2. It only took me a week to get this all written and photos posted on the internet. To see more pictures, please click HERE. If you have a few extra moments to spare, check out Dave's photos as well. He took some really good ones, as usual.

I also have to say a big congratulations to my sister and Brendan for getting engaged! Congratulations you guys!!!!!!

NZ Winter, swine flu and final 3 weeks of Term 2...

2009-06-13T20:22:00.000-07:00

My head is slowly emerging from the fog, though Dave still claims there is a dark cloud looming over my shoulders. I think he says that just to get a smile out of me. What can I say, it has been a tough few weeks. New Zealand Winter has struck with full force. How to describe it? Well, first off it is quite similar to winters on Vancouver Island. No snow in the city, cold - but a fairly damp cold - so it chills you to the bone. It tends to rain a lot, though I wouldn't say as much as it does on the island (the other, Canadian one). But we have had our fair share of rain, more than I remember from last year. And the days tend to have a gray stillness about them. This morning was beautiful, sunshine and blue skies. I thought maybe I'd get out for a run but the gray skies have taken over so I find myself nursing a cup of hot great tea and huddled in blankets instead. I have truly lucked out with the heat in my classroom. For some reason the heat has been getting turned off mid-day and by 2pm the junior classrooms are positively freezing. But I control my own heat, we do get the afternoon sunshine through the windows so the classroom stays quite warm. No need to teach in my jacket and mits, as other teachers do.
I've also been feeling quite under the weather since I've stopped running. I recall falling ill soon after the franctic months of dance recitals and piano concerts were over...so I wonder if this is what is happening with me? Could be colds I am catching from my students. Because of the cold weather they are spending more and more time in the classroom. Lots of germs in an enclosed space....YUCK! I wonder if has anything to do with my whole grieving process. The week grandma died I felt horrible and really couldn't be bothered to reach out to the world. I just made sure I got myself to school and then relied on the cheeriness of my students to brightnen my day. Since that week things have improved a little but I find it still hard. It is so hard to believe she is gone when I'm living in a place that has no memories of her. Life sort of just picked up where it left off, before she passed away. But then the other day I was in the post office and saw a postcard I wanted I thought she would like, and it was like I was hearing the bad news all over again. The other day I found a letter she had sent me and I first instinct was to write her back...after all I believe it was my turn. And then again, I'm back to feeling awful. I just try to take one day at a time.
In other news, I am 3 weeks away from my first official school holiday - with no college assignments!!! These last few weeks of work have been hard. The first five were great and almost too effortless. These last five weeks have been tough and exhausting. I don't find the teaching that tiresome, it is all the little things that come up during the week that you've got to stay on top of. And because I'm working in a smaller space than other teachers I find things just pile up all too easy. On the positive side, I have lots of days off over the next few weeks. Last week I had an extra release day which was spent on planning and photocopying (mostly photocopying and cutting) for the next term. And next week I have another extra release day with my syndicate team and then the week after that we've got a 'teacher only' day which is a professional day. And who knows, with the way things are going with swine flu, I just might have more time off than I expected! With a few confirmed cases in Auckland, there is talk (only inklings of rumours) that some schools may close down in order to contain the problem.
On the positive side of things, everything is going well with my classroom. I've had a few observations from other teachers and things seem to be going well. The students respond well to me (meaning if I write their names under the sad face they faces droop heavy with so much guilt that they've disappointed me, it isn't long before I can erase their names). I've had a few rocky start with some parents, but I'm starting to form some great relationships with others. I guess I'll see where I stand with them when I have my first round of parent teacher interviews next term.

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June 23, 2009
I don't know why I just don't post things when I write them. Things just snowball and then before I know it I've got much more to report on.
On the weekend I stretched my limits a bit and took an outdoor first aid course. I was a little anxious over it at first, but it all went well. We stayed in the mountains not far from Christchurch, at a gorgeous education centre. The first night was a little chilly but after we got the wood stove going the place was fairly toasty for the remainder of the weekend. The sky was a crips blue, not a cloud to be seen for a whole two days. And everything had a slight twinkle to it because of the frost. Made for outdoor scenarios a bit on the frosty side but it added to the drama of it all I think.
I am now in my final two weeks. Oh, holidays at last. I can almost taste them.

Dear Grandma

2009-05-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

I write this to you at end of my first five weeks of teaching. The school has been a flurry of activity this week as students, staff and community alike celebrate its 50th Jubilee. Displays have been mounted all over the school exhibiting what the school was like from the 60s and onwards. On Friday, ex students and staff from several decades ago came to visit and take tours led by senior students. The build up to the Jubilee included plenty of discussion and reflection about how things have changed over the years. While I remained on the sidelines of this Jubilee excitement, being a new teacher, I found myself reflecting on not only my own practice of teaching but as well some of the memories and stories you shared with me about you starting your own teaching career.

I recall you telling me about your first year of teaching, in a one-room school house. You taught all grades, spanning from elementary to High School using nothing but your final year of High School notes. Your children attended school according to the farming that was taking place in the community and some of your teaching duties included boiling water in the morning and cleaning floors and chalkboards. Though your love of teaching and children is obvious through your words, I wonder what career path you would have chosen had you grown up in this time period. I remember us walking down 5th street one afternoon and you remarked, “Jennifer, back then there wasn’t a lot to choose from for a woman.” I of course don’t have to boil any water, and chalkboards have long since been replaced by fancy whiteboards, projectors and laptops. How different the world is now. Last year when I told you about my first teaching placement and I complained about being in a class room with children who had never ending runny noses and filthy hands that seemed to be always reaching for your own, you said some things just never change.

Grandma, over these last few years I may have been far from home but I always felt like you were close by. When I was in Golden BC you told me how you had driven through Rogers Pass before the highway was built. When I was in Thailand, you asked if they still did the elephant show on Sunday mornings in Chiang Mai. When I was in Japan you wanted to know about the cherry blossoms because your own mother and father traveled there by ship to watch them bloom. When I came to New Zealand you wanted to know if it was still the quaint country you remember it as. We were forced to communicate by letters as you never did succeed in tuning into the digital world, no matter how hard we tried. I believe I was with you when you wrote you first email to Uncle Al though. Do you remember? We sat down to write him an email from the Caribbean and when the email was ready to be sent you provided me with his postal address.

You’ve been a cherished friend I’ve always valued. And without realizing it you have been a role model whose life I aspired to mirror. When you were married, society deemed it inappropriate for you to continue teaching but you did it anyway. You fought school boards on the censorship of books. You challenged what was considered socially normal and stood up for what you knew to be just and right. You are an admiral person whose shoes I’d gladly fill. Your own stories of travel and adventure have greatly influenced many the choices I have made; you inspired me to see and experience the unknown, to commit myself to standing up for what I believe in, and to push my own boundaries.

This weekend I am pushing my own personal boundaries. I am competing in my first half marathon race and as I run, I will think of us both and how far we have both come.

Missing you lots,
Love Jennifer
Written for my Grandmother after she had passed away.
Read by Father George at Dorothy Brown's funeral, May 30th, 2009.

A way over do post

2009-05-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

I have about 3 started posts saved somewhere on my blog, waiting to be finished. And well here I am starting yet another post. Here's hoping I manage to get through this one. The thing is that the more posts are left unfinished, the more I have to write about in my next one...snowballing into what can only be described as a small on-line novella (you might want to get a cup of tea or go for a bathroom break before you continue reading).
Hmmmm....where to start? How about the weather - a safe, gateway topic that will lead me into the bigger and more important things I have to say. As friends and family in Canada embrace the warmth and sunshine of Spring, Dave and I brace ourselves for another bone-chilling NZ Winter. This time round, the weather for me has taken on a new meaning for several reasons. I find myself outdoors a lot more these days, in preparation for a half marathon I am training for. I am therefore acutely aware of any changes in the weather as I watch the weather like a hawk when the news is on. Not that bad weather changes much. I go out rain, wind, or shine...I suppose I just like to know what I should expect. Also, I notice the rainy more as these are the days my new students are stuck inside all day long, not such a good thing for anyone involved. But Winter isn't upon us yet and I must say we've had a wonderful Autumn. With all of my running, I have noticed the air getting crisper, the new sounds of crackling of leaves under my feet and the sound of dropping nuts from the trees that always take me by surprise no matter how often I hear them. And lately people are layering more and more as the days get increasingly colder. But today was a fine day of sunshine and wind. Perfect for laundry. It gets a bit tricky with 7 people in the house doing all of their laundry on a rainy weekend, with few places for the laundry to dry! I didn't even have to wear a jacket for Dave's rugby game today - and that is pretty amazing.
In addition to changing seasons (see, gateway topic indeed!) there have been lots of other changes that have taken place over these last few months. I successfully completed my Graduate Diploma in Teaching and Learning. I officially finished mid-April. Words can't describe how happy I was to be finished. The course finished with little, if no, final hoopla. After an amazing final placement I had a 40 minute debriefing session with one of my lecturers and that was that! As a person who appreciates closure I can't say I was all that thrilled with how things ended. But then again, had there been something planned it probably would have been less than organized. There were a few farewell dinners and drinks for those who were leaving but it was otherwise a fairly quiet ending to an extremely hectic year. I didn't have much downtown before I was in MY OWN classroom observing class routines and preparing for Term 2. Looking back, I don't recall much of that week. I was so exhausted from finishing school and so overwhelmed facing my new job. I was sort of ushered from meeting to meeting, from task to task, and people asked how I was doing I believe I could only reply by saying "I'm Okay but I'm tired". But I managed. It was the final week of Term 1 and it was good to be at the school with the teacher who had the class for that one Term. Most importantly I was able to meet my future students and get to know them a little bit hoping this would help their transition into the new Term with 'Miss Brown'. It was the Easter weekend after that week and let me tell you, I sure enjoyed that first Saturday of sleeping in! And the joy of having NO assignments looming over my head. It was blissful. I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Note I put the 'almost' in italics. It didn't take long before I was enjoying such pleasures as reading, watching movies, or taking long walks (without worrying what the time is so that I can get back to do school work)...and trust me when I say it didn't take me long to adjust back to a life where school assignments don't exist.
This was also Dave's first term break, and a well deserved one at that. Though he has been enjoying the teaching I think it is safe to say he is feeling a bit overwhelmed by the work load. And who wouldn't having to mark all of that work! But aside from the marking things are going fairly well. He has been appointed the debating club and so every once in awhile he has a late night with them. He has also joined up with the Outdoor Education club and has gone on several of their day hikes. He is enjoying the culture of his school and refers to his students as "normal" students. He has got a great classroom to teach in, located in a brand new wing of the school. We often laugh at how different our teaching worlds are. Enter any primary classroom and you've got a million items either dangling off of the ceiling or popping off the walls. I had to almost wade through the last classroom I was in. A few times I felt like the art was out to get me as I stood slightly strangled in the web of painted fish, caterpillars or cows. Dave's classroom is much more calm and reflective. A place that says 'good work is done here'. I think Dave almost had an epileptic fit when he first came into my classroom! Hahahaha...and mine isn't even that bad.
Over our holidays we didn't do much. Being nearly flat broke we weren't able to get up to anything exiting. Though Dave was making money we were waiting for another series of salary assessment to finalize, and so he was making the absolute minimum amount a teacher can make. Which isn't much, let me tell you! (His assessment has since come through and he is much happier with his wage.) We had a 5 day hike planned for the first week but the weather completely turned (Easter weekend, the weekend we chose to stay in Christchurch was absolutely gorgeous all over the country. Blue skies and warm weather...go figure). And because we were relying on the bus we didn't want to get ourselves all the way out somewhere only to be rained on horribly. Needless to say sticking around for that one week was difficult and trying. Dave and I both needed to get out of the city and get some much needed space between ourselves and everything relating to school. And it was so frustrating to have had the nice weather on the long weekend and then have it rain all week. Murphy's law I suppose. I was able to make some use of my time and go into my classroom and get it organized. It was important I make it my own space and so spent lots of time rearranging desks and other random pieces of furniture in the classroom. I also had a ton of photocopying, cutting, and laminating that needed to be done. I didn't want my classroom feeling new to me on my first day of school and so I spent lots of time just sitting at my desk going through files of stuff the previous teacher had left for me.
By the second week of our holiday we were itching to get out of the city so we organized an over night trip in Arthur's Pass. It wasn't much but it helped immensely with our mental states. We did the Goat Pass tramp, the same trail that is used for some of the Coast to Cost race. (If you click on that link, the board walk the runners are on is where we were.) A bus dropped us off at the trail head and off we went. Despite our spirits being high as we ventured up along the river we would be following for a good portion of the hike, the high slowly diminished as we realized how often we had to cross a fairly fast river and how much more difficult the route finding was. I have no idea how those runners manage to do it. It was exhausting purely because we didn't know where we were going 3/4 of the time. We didn't get to the Goat Pass hut until well past dark (I really thought we'd be sleeping under the stars that night), soaked and cold from an extremely long day. The next day was by far the better day. The trail clearly marked with minimal river crossing to deal with. We finished the second day in good time and were able to hitch-hike back to Arthur's Pass village in order to meet the bus that would be taking us back to Christchurch. And who should we get picked up by? A teacher from Christchurch. It was an omen. An omen reminding us what lay ahead soon enough.
The final week of our holiday was spent mostly preparing for school. I also used this time to really focus on my training for the SBS Half Marathon. I managed to keep up with it during my placement but not as well as I should have. So I used my holiday time to focus and have some really good runs. I wish I had written more about it so I could look back and see what I have said about the training. I can remember fretting over my first big run of 60 minutes and now I'm running 100 minutes for my long weekend runs! I wouldn't say this is one of the most challenging things I've done, though it is up there. Especially as I come to the end of my training and I've got increasing body aches and pains that have developed. It has been one of the most difficult things to stick with. There have been days, especially after work, where the last thing I want to do is go out running. Or like last Sunday, when it was hovering just above 0 degrees, and it was raining with a cold Southerly wind. The last thing I wanted to do was go running, but up I got out of bed at 7am and went for my run. I notice Dave getting up earlier and earlier on Sundays as my runs get longer and longer, I think out of guilt. I mean, I'm gone for a long time and all I'm doing is running. I think he feels guilty sleeping in for so long while I'm outside working my butt off. But all the hard work paid off when I ran my first ever race a few weeks ago. I ran the New Balance Tai Tapu 15km race (#160). I was pretty nervous the night before, it being my first race ever. I got a ride with some other students from University, thinking they were all beginner runners. When I asked one girls if she'd ever done something like this she responded, "Yeah a few times." I then asked if she had ever run a marathon and she responded with "Yes, 9 or 10 times". And I thought, "Oh dear". Anyway, it was such a nice day. Not a cloud in the sky for the race and not a breath of wind. I had a blast on my first race and beat the time I was aiming for so I was pretty happy with myself. I treated myself to a nice long afternoon nap that day, a well deserved nap I believe.
Speaking of firsts, my first day of school was a fairly momentous occasion as well. I was so nervous the day before, not to mention that morning when I first woke up. I tried convincing Dave to come with me to school, (despite the fact that it is way out of his way), but he of course didn't and pretty much shoved me out the door on my way. One saving grace of this most-nerve racking day was I had already "worked" (school placement) at this school. I knew the staff, I knew the routines, I knew the layout, half the battle right there. I had so much support which made the whole thing so much easier to handle. Dave was right, after about 40 minutes I would forget that it was my first day and everything would just come naturally. As the day progressed I realized how similar it was to my other placement and it all just came flooding back to me. The parents were really supportive of me, and some stuck around to help me with a few teary-eyed children. I can't believe that it has been 3 weeks already (going into week 4)! Last week was a bit trying. I believe the honeymoon phase is over, sadly. I'm fairly lucky being a beginning teacher in New Zealand as I'm only required to be in the classroom 80% of the time. This means I have one whole day to do planning or my own professional development. It is great! So my release day is on a Tuesday. I get the kids all ready for the week on Monday, make myself a huge list of things to do and then on Tuesday lock myself in a tiny room and work away. It was sort of funny going through the huge ordeal of having my "first" day of school and then having my release day right after. I also have a mentor teacher who I meet with once a week to discuss anything that needs discussing, i.e. administering tests, paper work, dealing with parents, etc. My mentor teacher is the teacher I had as my associate when I was on placement last year...hahahaha...and she pretty much had this all planned out from the beginning. The teacher who is in the classroom on my release day is the same teacher who was with the class for Term 1 and so it has all worked out very swimmingly. She knows the class and I can always consult with her on anything that comes up with the students. (Note, my release teacher is my mentor's cousin...small world this New Zealand). Now that I'm more on-track with my blog I'll have to be sure to write some funny things my students say, because they do come up with some interesting ones.
All in all, things are going well. Dave and I are so happy to put University behind us and embark on our new profession. As for long term plans, we aren't sure how much longer we are going to stay in New Zealand. Financially it just isn't feasible and I am starting to miss home like crazy. These last few months have been incredibly hard as both of my grandmothers have taken turns for the worst, with one being diagnosed with cancer. All of this news came up when I was on my last placement and boy did my associate take good care of me! Some days I showed up and just was in no condition to teach and she had no problem taking over for me. Bad news from home is so hard to process because you aren't consumed by the situation. I felt (feel) very distanced and detached from what was (and has been) going on. There is also a certain feeling of helplessness as there isn't much I can really do, other than make weekly telephone calls. This is the hard price of being so far away, and I think this experience has highlighted just how far I am. Luckily I'm being flown home by my wonderful Dad in September for a visit during my two week holiday between Term 3 and Term 4. Dave and I hope to land jobs at higher paying international schools either in Singapore or Hong Kong next year, make some money and then make the trek back to Canada.
WHEW. I think I've covered nearly everything. (Have a wee stretch). So much for my New Years resolution of keeping this blog more up to date!

In addition to this post I have added 3 new photo sets to my Flickr site:
Goat Pass Tramp
New Zealand: Endings and Beginnings
Christchurch Busker's Festival

Agreed whole-heartedly

2009-02-28T12:47:00.001-08:00

Change in weather!

2009-02-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

I made such a big point of the bad weather in my last post, I felt as though I should let you know that today - finally - we have a gorgeous day. At least the early morning is nice...not a cloud in the sky. I got up early with Dave so that I could make him a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs before he left for a hiking trip with the Outdoor Club from his school. Aren't I nice?? I feel so productive, I should get up this early every weekend - (hahahahaha).
It has been rather quiet since I last wrote. I've had some disheartening news about home and am anxiously waiting to hear what the verdict is. There is nothing like bad news from home to make you feel even further away than you actually are. Even though I suppose at my current residence I couldn't possibly be any farther away from home...but it feels farther nonetheless.
Today I plan to work on my presentation, go for a run, daily house chores and then hopefully make some cookies with a friend. Sound like a good Sunday plan?
Here are a few snapshots of our February...really, we didn't do anything that exciting.

The ultimate Crusader, greeting all the fans as they approach the AMI/Jade stadium. Isn't he just grande?

This is why we need a car. Look at his grumpy face. I have to deal with this every time we go grocery shopping. Well, actually, he looks like he is smiling a wee bit. But that is beside the point.
Art in the park or very very small people have found a lovely place to set up camp.

Now that Dave is working we can treat ourselves, without feeling guilty, to a few bites out now and then. This is our latest culinary treat - Wisconsin Burger. Now I would say that it wasn't as good as the burgers we had in Dunedin or Queenstown, but it was still pretty good. I think we would certainly go back.

Blog changes and updates...

2009-02-19T14:24:00.000-08:00

Hi there!
This has been the most terrible week as far as the weather is concerned. The days haven't been that cool, but the sky refuses to do anything else but remain a horrible murky gray colour. I think we had one afternoon of brief sunshine, but that was about it. And today, it is all about the rain. At least it isn't monsoon rain - where the rain drops feel like the equivalent of a bucket full of water. And I get to wear my cute pink gum boots with hearts on them. There, always a silver lining on the cloud (no matter what dismal colour it may be).
So you may or may not have noticed that I have added a few gadgets (widgets for those techies out there) on my blog. I may have gotten a little carried away, but it is all in the name of sharing my life with you so that I (we) can feel better connected. Some of the new features I've added:

Shelfari: An online book shelf, so you can see what I have read, what I want to read and what I am currently reading. What I am currently reading is on display on the blog. There is even a wish list on the site - might come in handy for future Christmas/birthday presents!!! ;-)

Social Bookmark /'Delicious' : I've also joined a social bookmarking site. One of the more popular ones called Delicious. This is a site that allows me to save URL (web) links, and (this is the social bit) you can see what I have saved and access them if you are interested. There is a widget on the right hand side that allows you to see the most recent URLs I have added (I know, so clever!). So far there is just a bunch of education stuff on there, but for any of you teachers out there I've got some really cool interactive sites you might be interested in. The the links will be labelled so you can search what you are looking for rather than scanning all the sites. So check it out!

Weather: So now you can see what the weather is like here in Christchurch via the WeatherBug widget. We are going into Winter, please don't rub your Spring and Summer in. It is too much to handle.

Labels: Labels will enable you to search through my blog via key words. They are sort of like an on-line table of contents. Once I have some genuine free time (continue reading to find out what I mean) I will try and update my older posts so that your search can be more thorough.

Videos!: Yes, now it will be easier to access my videos from Vimeo. The Vimeo widge will display my most recent videos which you can see with the click of a button!

And then there are few other things like the clock, but that doesn't really do much except just tell you the time here in Christchurch. What do you think of all the changes? Oh, and I also added a little explanation about the name of the blog (located under my profile). A few people, post- Yamagata, have questioned this choice of name. And also, I realize that some might come to this site looking for information about Yamagata but find random posts on New Zealand instead. Hopefully this little note should clarify things a bit.

And why have I been making all of these changes?? Because I have been left to my own devices! No weekend job and little class time have left me a lot of time on my hands. Though technically, I shouldn't have a lot of time on my hands because I should be working on my inquiry. I'm at the point where I'm suppose to be working on my presentation but for some reason am just finding myself a bit stuck, hence the blogging and newly added Tetris application on my Facebook account.

This week I did go to the school where I will be doing my final 5 week placement. Yes, I have a job and yes and still have to go through with my last placement. But it should be good, I feel as though I could have forgotten how to teach it has been so long!! I will be with the equivalent of a Grade 3/4 class, and they are just so sweet! It is your run-of-the-mill school, located in a nice area of town. Minimal behavior issues, so I feel like I will really get an opportunity to do some real teaching. My new associate is great and so I anticipate a good 5 weeks working alongside her. Dave is doing well with his new job. His first few weeks have gone by with few major hiccups or disasters. I think for him the schedule is taking a bit of getting used to. Taking the bus to and from school is time consuming, and so he is out of the house by 7 and back at 6. Hopefully this should be remedied over the next couple of months though. He likes his school and finds his staff to be super supportive and other than being tired from the long day he comes home feeling pretty happy about things.

I have started running again, shin splints are hopefully on the mend (knock on wood). I'm still debating this half-marathon thing. Should I do it??? Can I do it? I'm mostly concerned with the time commitment. The days while on placement will be long for me as well, and I'm wondering if I can muster up the energy for a long run at the end of it. And then I will start teaching, which will require a whole lot more energy...so I'm just not sure. Did I tell you? I started taking some yoga classes up at the University Rec. Centre. And I'm LOVING it. Yoga is something I have wanted to do for a long time now, but just never found the right moment to try. I'm sad that I won't be able to continue once I'm back on teaching. But now that I know more what it is about I will certainly look into classes in the future. Once I have money. :-)

Well, my presentation is beckoning me. Well actually, my stomach is beckoning me to go and have some lunch. And then I will get to my presentation...after a game of Tetris. Tee Hee.

I hope you enjoy the changes. Please let me know what you think! And for goodness sake, leave me a note every once in a while! ;-)
Oh, one more thing. If you haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, GO NOW. It is awesome.
Much love to you all.

A favour to ask...please help me out!

2009-02-16T13:08:00.000-08:00

Hello! A quick note before I run off to college.
As many of you know I am currently in the middle of an inquiry school assignment. What this entails is choosing a topic of interest, preferably one I am quite passionate about, and inquiring about this topic - following what tangent it takes me on, reflecting on the the obstacles, celebrating the highlights - and working on a 'big' question that should lead me towards a 'so what' stage. This 'so what' stage is where I make my findings and understandings somehow applicable to every day life. In my context, it probably is making my understandings applicable and practical for new teachers. At least this how I understand the whole process so far.
Anyway...I have started another blog to sort of catalog all of the interesting resources I have found. I thought it would be useful for others out there interested in the same topic to have easy access to blogs and websites in one place rather than hunting around for them. Since my blog is new I haven't had many visitors yet...and so....(this is where the favour comes in) I was wondering if you could please visit my blog site and answer a few polls I have installed. They will literally take 2 seconds as all you have to do is click the box that is most appropriate for you. At least then when I do my presentation next week I can show how the polls work, how they show information, etc.
This favour applies to all of you out there...friends, family, and strangers.
Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it! Please go to my new blog by clicking on the following URL link : http://purposefulpets.wordpress.com/
Merci, Gracias, Danke Shoen, Arigato, Khap Khun Ka and Thanks....

Happy Waitangi Day & Happy 1 Year Anniversary!

2009-02-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

It was a year ago yesterday that Dave and I unfolded a Christchurch city map, looked at the distance to the University of Canterbury and decided that walking there would be a doable endeavor. Doable? Yes, most certainly. Pleasurable? No. The walk through town is nice enough. Fifteen minutes of park makes you want to take things a bit more casually (which we did). Stop and smell the roses, take a few pictures (which we did) and enjoy watching the tourists 'punting' down the Avon river. But it isn't park all the way. Soon enough you find yourself on Riccarton Road, the street we live just off of. Convenient for shops being so close by, but not exactly the nicest of places to walk. It is extremely busy with traffic so it is a solid half hour of cars rushing past. I believe it was particularly hot that day, so you've got heat and exhaust to contend with, all compounded by the hot concrete. YUCK! We hadn't realized the severity of the NZ sun at this point and so I believe our faces were scorched by the time the whole ordeal was over. So we made this trek, one year ago (plus one day), hoping to arrive to a University buzzing full of students and back-to-school energy, teeming full of information...but no. You could hear the crickets it was so quiet on campus. Why?? Because it was Waitangi Day, a national holiday in NZ. Not a soul was in sight, our long walk was in vain. Though we did manage to get much more acquainted with Christchurch because of it. Needless to say, we took the bus back to town. ;-)
Waitangi Day is probably New Zealand's most significant public holiday.

It commemorates the Treaty of Waitangi signed February 6th 1840. The treaty made NZ part of the British Empire, grante Maori people rights to their land and gave Maori the rights of British citizens. If you click on the Waitangi link there will be lots of information to read up on regarding the Treaty of Waitangi and all of its controversies (of which there are many). None of the controversies are new if you are familiar with indigenous rights in other countries. When the signing took place, the translated Maori document was not exactly the same as the English version, and so there have been obvious discrepencies over who is obliged to what. There are no big NZ celebrations throughout the country. It is rather a subdued occasion. We celebrated Waitangi Day by cleaning the apartment (well, my contribution) and then heading off to a friend's BBQ. The BBQ was hosted by a friend of ours who works at the English school we have been doing some part time work at. It was nice to see the students again, some of whom have graduated or will be graduating soon and will thus be taking off to other new adventures.
Last weekend saw the end of the Christchurch Buskers Festival. I felt sad with it coming to and end. It was so nice walking around the city and having such a good buzz everywhere. Cheap and convenient entertainment, we could just walk down to the square and be guaranteed a good show. We tried getting out in order to support the Canadian talent. One such group was called The Russian Bar Trio. The show involves 3 people, two guys and a girl. The guys hold a bar with a width of 10 cm, and the girl jumps and does tricks on this bar while the guys hold it!!! The bar is made from javelin poles and so it has lots of give to it, basically working like a trampoline so she effectively goes higher and higher with each jump. Amazing!!! We saw their show twice, once in the square and then again down at New Brighton (where the first picture of this post was taken). I will have to post more pictures of their show in the not-so-distant future.
Dave survived his first week of school. There was no teaching involved, but enough meetings to make your head swirl. He did meet some of his Year 9s at the end of the week (equivalent to Grade 8 and a half) and it sounded like things went all right. Meanwhile, I plug away at college. Though next week I will be in at my future school sitting in on parent-teaching meetings. So exciting....and nerve-racking at the same time!
Looking back, I wonder where the year went. It certainly wasn't our most exciting year (as is apparent from my severe lack of posts!) but it was a year for growth and learning. We came here with the intent of completing a post-graduate diploma at the University of Canterbury, which Dave has done successfully, and of which I have only 3 months left. We even said we'd get jobs for a year after school, which we both have done. A big pat on the back for reaching our goals...now all we have to do is pay of our enormous debt!!! I can't wait to get paid again! Most of all I can't wait to get into the swing of things with this career (yikes, such a big adult word!). I think Dave and I will both go far with this career path we both have made. We couldn't have done it without all of your support along the way though!!!!
Well, Happy Waitangi Day everyone! Take care and all my love!

First week back, not so bad.

2009-01-29T00:24:00.000-08:00

So I whined and complained a little too much in my last post. It is expected! As Dave eagerly prepares for the start of his year, I remain held in the clutches of Teacher's College!! But life at college isn't all that bad. At the moment we are in the process of 'inquiry'...according to Wikepedia (hehehehehe) inquiry is

Inquiry education (sometimes known as the inquiry method) is a student-centered method of education focused on asking questions. Students are encouraged to ask questions which are meaningful to them, and which do not necessarily have easy answers; teachers are encouraged to avoid giving answers when this is possible, and in any case to avoid giving direct answers in favor of asking more questions.

Sounds fancy, doesn't it? On one hand it is a blessing in disguise. We have all of February to do our own 'inquiry' into any topic we like. Can you say...FREE TIME??? This is what I thought when I received our schedule that showed only 4 or 5 classes for the entire month. While the hours are certainly flexible, it is by no means a free for all. We are meant to REFLECT REFLECT REFLECT and demonstrate adequate number of hours spent on the task. Perhaps I'm not giving the assignment enough credit, but at the moment I seriously question whether this is anything else but a research project in disguise. Another reason to stay on top of things is I'm being video taped throughout the entire process!!! Yes, video taped. Your dear Jennifer is a star. Well, only within the realm of teacher's college. And really, only within the realm of 3rd year Bachelor of Ed. students. The video is being made because they do not get to experience 'inquiry' in their studies. This video is meant to help them understand what the inquiry process entails. Myself and another student were chosen to be involved in this undertaking...each week we will be video taped on where we are at. So we shall see! My inquiry is loosely around pets in the classroom, but more specifically the benefits of a relationship between children and animals.

What else is new? Nothing much. Getting back into the routine of school has been a chore, and has required much focus, patience and dedication. I have had to cool it on my running. As some of you may know, I have been PLAYING with the idea of running the half marathon here in Christchurch in June. But alas, I have fickle shins and I'm currently down with a bit of shin splints. Not the first time this has happened to me, so we'll see how things go.

Anyway, it is almost a quarter after ten...wayyyy past my bedtime. This was just a short note to you all, proving to you that I can keep my New Years resolution and stay in better contact with school going on. Nighty night!

Tomorrow, back to school.

2009-01-24T20:17:00.000-08:00

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And it is with great sadness I pack up my school bag in preparation for my return back to Teacher's College tomorrow. A day hasn't gone by these last two weeks when I haven't reminded Dave of the imminent gloom that will soon be upon me. Now certainly, there are things FAR worse than teacher's college out there in the world, I appreciate that. But this doesn't mean I have to feel happy about the circumstances. And it is really hard to explain to you why teacher's college is less than desirable. I could make a really long list for you, but then that would mean I'd really be starting things (my next semester) on negative footing. Let's just say that the dear people (not all but most) running things up at the college suffer from a bad case of disorganization, slight hypocrisy, sometimes a lack of professionalism. I think I can speak for most when I say that at this stage of the game it feels as though we are just jumping through hoops to get to the end. I've spent the last two weeks helping to set up a classroom and thinking about an up and coming parents night. I would rather get on with my real-world job than fill out one more 'reflection' oriented worksheet at college. BUT...these things must be done, so off I go tomorrow morning. At the very least it will be good to catch up with fellow classmates.
Three weeks ago summer felt like it was starting to drag by but now I am left wondering where those three weeks went. I started work at an English school for children, unfortunately due to poor attendance I was given the boot. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the school Dave and I usually do work for called me up and offered me some work for my last available work week. Loans are coming to an end, life is getting to be a bit sparse - again. Dave has one more piece of paper to pay for that will complete his paperwork to stay and work as a teacher in Christchurch. Once that has all been paid for, we will start on my paper work. Oh what fun! So although I was not so disappointed at the potential for having one last week with very little to do, I was happy to have one more week of work, and therefore more able to contribute to the completion of this very long process of us giving NZ a lot of money.
We experienced some happy times and some sad times over the course of January. On a happy note Dave turned another year older (well, I suppose this could be some sad times depending on whose perspective this is), we had solid-ish work, it was great weather, a good friend of ours from college returned from his trip to Canada (promptly moving off to Gore, waaaaaaay down South for his teaching job) and we just got the great news that another one of our Canadian friends is on his way to Wellington for a newly landed teaching position. We now have a solid splattering of friends working all over the country, just waiting to be visited. Now we just have to decide who we will visit on what term break!On a sad note, Mike and Leigh (aka Team America) left us to return to their Motherland. Our last night together was an epic one. Bowling followed up by some video gaming (tokens, came with the bowling), fish and chips, a beer overlooking Lyttleton Harbour at the infamous Wonderbar, a screening of 'Conan the Barbarian', and much gin, vodka and old school hip-hop music videos. Our good-byes were abrupt, as they tend to be when dictated by the timing of public transportation. I tried my hardest at convincing them they should stay. I even threatened kidnapping, but apparently I'm not that believable. It was probably one of the saddest moment I've had here so far, to say good bye the last members of our 'group'. They've been leaving us, slowly, one by one for the last two months. Admittedly, I didn't spend as much time with many of them as Dave, most of them being in the Secondary Programme. And with my crazy schedule of work and the slave driving primary programme, I didn't get to attend as many of the group functions as I would have liked. But you get use to familiar faces to a point where you just assume they'll always be around, they are just part of life. Visiting 'the guys' house' is just something you do at the end of the week (heck, sometimes everyday). You'd think somewhere along the line I'd get use to this lifestyle, the ebbing and flowing of friends. But for me, it just doesn't seem to get any easier.
I suppose life goes on, life hasn't come to a halt with friends gone. We have even been able to rekindle some old friendships now that we aren't busy with weekly good bye parties. Yesterday I had a GREAT day with a friend who is Canadian, we met in Yamagata, and now she is here with her Kiwi guy who was also in Yamagata. Anyway, she came over and we had a cinnamon bun....uhm...baking thing. I have had the urge to bake, why I chose cinnamon buns I'm not too sure. Anyway, we made them yesterday and I baked them today. And boy did they taste good!!!! I got the recipe from a site called 'All Recipes'...here is the recipe site should you want to dabble in the cinnamon bun-making experience yourself.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ooey-Gooey-Cinnamon-Buns/Detail.aspx
They took us all day to make. Now granted, we did have a few hours for break in town, doing some shopping, seeing the sites. Right now Christchurch has its annual 'World Buskers Festival' going on and so there is lots to see. We went to this one show the other night, the act was called Fuse Circus, and they did things I didn't think were possible. Throughout the entire show this is what could be heard amongst the audience...
"Noooooo. They couldn't possibly..."
"That's impossible!"
"Are they really doing to try that?"
"They'll kill themselves!"
"It's IMPOSSIBLE!"
"WOW....they did it."
Impressive? Yes. And we've got all next week's worth of entertainment to look forward to.
Well, it is nearly 10pm and that means my bed time is fast approaching. And I need all the energy I can get for my first day back at college...
My love to all of your. I miss you dearly...and I promise to keep this thing more updated from now on. xxoo

Back to work :-(

2009-01-04T00:32:00.000-08:00

Once tomorrow starts I feel as though January is going to fly by at lightening speed and then before I know school starts. This is the time to gear up for what is to come. Dave will be planning for his year in the mornings and then teaching English in the afternoon. I will be teaching a summer programme for children in the morning and then planning for my upcoming year in the afternoons. Evenings will be reserved for relaxing and reading. Since we've been home we haven't been up to much. Just sort of enjoying the nice weather and taking things slow. Have to enjoy this time off as much as possible because next year will be busy. The weather has been so nice, except for the big storm we had yesterday. Roads were flooded and we had so much hail the ground was white!!! Today was back to normal, blue beautiful skies. So strange.
I think Dave and I are bit sad that we are back to being car-less. Having that rental car for 4 days was such bliss. We even managed to go grocery shopping before returning the car and what heaven that was. We just drove up, put the groceries in the back and then drove home. It was so easy!! I don't necessarily miss driving on kiwi roads. Narrow, two lane paths of insanity. Some of the roads were so curvy I even felt a bit car sick, and I was the one doing the driving!
Here is one such example of the insanity...

One lane bridge with railway tracks. from Jennifer on Vimeo.

For the most part the one way bridges were fine. Except for one where this jerk drove on the bridge when I was clearly there before him. He had no intentions of slowing down so I had to quickly put the car into reverse and get off that bridge. Some of the bridges were so long they had passing spaces where you could pull over to let others go by. But in this case it was just a plan old one lane bridge.

And yes...I did notice my previous blog. My first day of the New Year is ahead of my blog setting it seems.

First day of 2009

2008-12-31T23:30:00.000-08:00

First day of 2009. Wish I could say we did something memorable. But no. We slept in, had breakfast, took a nap, puttered. Have I mentioned how much I love holidays? Tomorrow I plan on getting back into my running. I am sort of contemplating doing the half marathon in June, which would mean I'd have to start training for that. I'll get started on that tomorrow, I promise.
What I did do today was post the first installment of our vacation photos. I don't know why but it took me ages! Must be out of practice or something.
As I mentioned in the previous post our first stop was in the lovely town of Dunedin. I've included a lot of what we did in the description of the photos, so I won't write about it too much here. We only spent one night and the morning meandering around the city. At first, it was a tough call between doing a tour through the Cadbury Chocolate factory and the Speights brewery tour. Due to it being a Saturday night, the Cadbury factory was closed, and so it was the beer tour that we did for our evening's entertainment. At the very end of the tour they piled our group into a small movie theatre and showed us the "Southern Man" music video. What is a Southern Man? Well, I'm sure you'll get the message once you watch this Youtube compilation of New Zealand commercials.

We had a quiet evening until 4 in the morning when the smoke alarms went off. We had to drag ourselves outside twice, once when the alarm first rang and then when the firemen showed up. The following day, Dave and I walked around the small little city and then with our traveling friends we drove to Baldwin Street, the STEEPEST STREET IN THE WORLD.
Dave and I both loved the feel of Dunedin. It is largely a student oriented city, much more so than Christchurch. Our immediate impressions is that it lacked pretentiousness and seediness, qualities that can be sometimes all too apparent here in Christchurch. Eating out seemed a bit more affordable and with all the competition for student money, the quality of service and product was high. But then again, this opinion has been formed after spending less than 24 hours in the city.
After taking our fair share of pictures of the steepest street, we packed up in the car and headed North to Queenstown...stay tuned for more pictures. Click HERE to check out my set of Dunedin photos. I did write descriptions for a lot of the photos, so if you want to know what is going on be sure to read the captions.

PS. Dave has posted his photos of our hike. To view them, click HERE or click on the link located on the right hand side that says "Dave's Flickr" and you should be able to find what you are looking for.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-30T17:08:00.000-08:00

Blue skies, nearly stifling heat, a gentle breeze, rustling of leaves, birds chirping...my kind of December. I try to imagine being back at home, all bundled up for snow, but this is truly a difficult task. And one I am not willing to try that hard at given how GLORIOUS the weather here is. Sorry, no more rubbing it it.
Dave and I have returned safely from our Southern Island adventures. We had an absolutely wonderful time, everything went off without a hitch. The weather cooperated with us for the most part and the few days that it did rain, we welcomed the overcast weather as a reprieve from the intense sun. There is not much of an ozone here so when out in the sun it really does feel like you are under a magnifying glass burning to a crisp. This is how our vacation unfolded.
Dec. 19th - Plans for Mt. Cook failed due to extremely bad weather conditions. We canceled the Mt. Cook hike and headed to Dunedin.
Dec. 20th - Took a leisurely drive to Dunedin. Spent one night and one day exploring the quaint university town. Great food, and great architecture. We loved it.
Dec. 21st - Drive to Queenstown, check in at the very interesting Bungi Backpackers hostel.
Dec. 22nd - 26th - Board a van that would take us to the start of the Rees Dart track (spelled this wrong in my previous posts). Hike for a few days in Mt. Aspiring National Park. Amazing weather!!!! We arrived back in Queenstown on the 26th where we met up with our friends who we drove down with.
Dec. 27th - Pick up rental car. Take the scenic route to Wanaka and then continue driving to Fox Glacier. Camp by the river with a view of Mt. Cook and the Fox Glacier peeking through the clouds.
Dec. 28th - Drive to Hokatika. Camp on the beach.
Dec. 29th - Return to Christchurch a day early.
Dec. 30th (last day of having the rental car) - Get some groceries (so luxurious doing this with a car) and then drive to Kaikoura. Spent about 20 minutes there and then drive back (didn't realized how far it actually was).
Today we have just finished cleaning and putting away all of our gear. Takes almost as much time packing it away as it does packing it up for a trip! But it is all worth it. Dave and I feel refreshed and rejuvenated for the year to come. January will go by quickly, and before we know it we will both be back in the grind of school and work. We will work on having our pictures posted as soon as possible. We both took lots so I'm sure we'll be fighting over who can upload what first.
No plans for New Years yet. I am sure there will be some sort of free concert in a park some where around here. If there is something going on we will probably head there with some friends.
I hope the holidays have treated you all well. Dave and I thought a lot about all those who we were missing over the holidays. I can't believe another year has gone by. How does it happen so quickly? I am eager to get this next year started. Not that last year was a bad year. Not at all. We made some great friends, had some good times and of course had some tough times. Dave and I both look forward to getting back into the work force, making some big dents in our loans and having a bit more pocket money to see some more of New Zealand. So, if anyone would like to come for a visit...now is the time!
Lots of love to you all. And may peace be with you in the New Year. xxoo

Look what came in the mail today!

2008-12-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

The weather was too horrible for Mt. Cook today. So we've changed our plans. We are going to stay in Christchurch for one more night and then we are going to head down to Dunedin tomorrow, spend the night there and then head into Queenstown. What is in Dunedin? Well...the Cadbury factory for one. And also the University of Dunedin, which is the other school we were accepted to. I think there are some big rocks that are suppose to be famous just outside of Dunedin as well. We shall see.
Anyway, it is a good thing we didn't go because look what came in the mail!!! Dave's diploma! So now it really is official.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-18T11:53:00.000-08:00

Some of our other adventures have started off with rainy days. New Zealand weather, as fickle as a young teenage girl, has turned for the worst. Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous, a real summer day. Today is overcast, cold (possibly southeasterly coming in) and drizzly/rainy. Worse though, the weather forecast looks horrible for Mt. Cook so we might have to do some re-arranging of our travel plans. Mt. Cook seems to be an unlucky mountain these days, with two separate couples getting into trouble on New Zealand's most famous mountain. Though we wouldn't actually be "climbing" the mountain, it is still wise to not take any unnecessary chances. Tonight we drive to Lake Tekapo and stay there the the night. Then we are suppose to have an early morning start to Mt. Cook because Muller Hut - the hut everyone wants to stay at for the view - doesn't take reservations. Saturday we climb up to Muller Hut, Sunday we climb down and drive to Queenstown where we spend one night before heading off on the Rees-Dart Track (I believe that is how you spell it). We will hike for 5 days and return into Queenstown on the 26th. We will meet back up with our friends Mike and Leigh for a Christmas dinner (Leigh's family will have just arrived) and then Dave and I take off on the 27th with our rented car and we will spend 4 days making our way back up to Christchurch, camping and doing some day hikes - weather permitting.
So I must go and get packing. We should have done our packing last night but instead we went to our English school's Christmas party, where the wine was plentiful. I wish you all the happiest of holidays! Much love to you from this wee corner in the world...
xxoo Jennifer (and Dave)

It's official. I shall be employed in April.

2008-12-14T23:11:00.000-08:00

I didn't want to be pre-mature in the information I divulged in my last post but now that all the i's are dotted, t's are crossed and my signature is set in stone, I can tell with confidence that I have been hired at a Primary School here in New Zealand. My first start date is April 27th, 2009 (term 2), and I'll be working at a school here in Christchurch. I'm so excited! The school was kind enough to hire on another teacher for the first term, and then that teacher will teach during my release time for the rest of the year. Here in New Zealand they have a great system for new teachers where first year teachers only teach 80% of their classroom hours (basically 4 out of the 5 days). That other day is reserved for paper work, planning, or anything else a first year teacher might have to do. Also, first year teachers are provided with tutors who act like advisors. The tutor teachers observe the class, help with planning and basically are just there for support. This system is in place in both the Primary and Secondary schools, so this is how Dave will be working as well. As the principal handed over the paper work to me last week, the reality hit me and I felt quite nervous. But it was hard to feel so nervous when the staff all seemed so happy to see me there as part of their team.
My lovely classroom will be filled with 16 precious Year 1 students (6 years old). I even saw their names on a list last week - which made everything that much more real.
Now all I have to do is finish school....

To see some of my latest New Zealand adventures, click here.

Summer Holidays

2008-11-30T00:08:00.000-08:00

What this picture represents is over....until January 26th when I have to go back to school.

And just in case you are wondering, this folder is the final product of a school placement (so far I've produced two of these things, with one more to go). In it contains all of my planning, observation notes, resources, paper work, schedules...basically everything that goes on in my life over a 5 week period. I hand this in to my lecturer, they scan it to see that it is in some sort of order and then we discuss and reflect on my experiences.

On a happier note, here a few pictures of Spring in Christchurch.
Christchurch is also known as the "Garden City"...can you see why?

We found a good Asian grocery store down town and was able to buy some of my favourite Japanese snacks, hence the happy face. Didn't notice the sign over head until after the picture was taken...or did you notice the sign Dave??

I haven't written for so long on this thing I'm not sure if I remember how. My apologies for keeping you all in the dark of my activities but time has not been my friend for the last few months. Besides, how many posts of me doing the same thing would you be interested in reading? Probably not many. I think the last time I wrote was Block 2, I've since completed Block 3 and 4. I'll just list some of the highlights of the last few months.
-Second placement went well. Successfully completed and was offered a long term relief position for next year.
-Finished school for the year. Partied for 3 days (made up for all those nights I couldn't go out) and then promptly started working full time at an English school in the city. ( I still have 3 months of school to finish)
-Dave is an official teacher. First job he applied for he got. He is an official English teacher and even has his own classroom.
-Quit selling coffee machines. Now I am working at English school for the summer.
-Halloween Party: Not generally celebrated here but we had a party anyway. I was a sexy teacher and Dave was a student. Our best couple costume by far.
-New Zealand election: Out with Labour and in with National.
-Good Bye parties: Many of our friends in the secondary programme are heading home because they've finished their studies. Once again we find ourselves having to say good bye to some good good friends. Some are sticking around having landed jobs in NZ. We've got friends all over the place, we will be crashing with them when we travel around NZ next year.
-Christmas: Not sure what we are going to do. Hopefully we'll be in the mountains doing something un-Christmassy. We can't get our heads wrapped around a Summer Christmas.
- Job offer number 2: The school I did my first placement with have offered me a job starting term 2. I will call them on Monday to say I accept their offer.
Those are the main things that have taken place over these last few months. Of course there are lots and lots of details I'm leaving out. But I wouldn't even know where to begin if I were to tell you everything.
Dave and I are both thoroughly enjoying working and having nothing much to do in the evenings. Last week I was working on my resume, next will be my passport which needs to be renewed. But other than that, I have no school work for the holidays. I almost expected our instructors to hand over a few assignments on our last day of class, but no. We left school free of last minute tasks. Life is good again.Every morning Dave and I walk through the park on our way to work, stop and get a coffee at Cathedral Square and then part ways as we work at different English schools. Life is a bit slower these days, we can actually enjoy our time rather than rushing through it. Anyway, it is getting late and though I am on holidays I still need to get up early. I hope this message finds you all happy and healthy. I miss you all so much.

Flickr Photos --> There aren't many (I'm embarrassed to admit) but there are a few nonetheless.

New Zealand Photos 1

New Zealand Photos 2

deuxieme semestre

2008-07-26T16:51:00.000-07:00

The weather has just turned bad. And so I've very happily nestled myself in our flat that is somewhat heated with a square wooden panel which is making grand attempts at warding off the chill. It does the best it can do, but by no means are we are kept warm by it. A big blanket and a hot cup of Milo helps protect me against the damp chill only slightly more effectively. Ugh, New Zealand in the winter time. I must say I now avoid (or at least try to) photos from home on Facebook. They make me miss summer too much - girls in bikinis, warm summer air, beach activities, flowers...
Last week we started our second semester of the Graduate Diploma of Teaching and Learning Primary Programme ( I think I have that title correct). I didn't exactly start it off on the best of footing. Pale, a little worn out from working two jobs, and a bad cough made me wish I had had more time off. I've quickly realized however that time off is a luxury that occurs rarely in graduate programs such as this. And the time off occurs on strange in-between days like today. First week back, no assignments, all of the classes so far have been "introduction" lessons...and there you have it. A day off. And when time off does happen to take place, snuggling in bed and reading a good book in between naps is about as much as I can handle. As Dave left in the wee hours of the morning for the ski hill, I crawled back into bed making remarks that I felt lazy doing so. His response, "Jennifer, when have you ever been lazy since you started school? Go back to bed and do nothing." And that is exactly what I did. And that is exactly what I continue doing.
My first week back at school wasn't a very conventional one. We started off by spending a night at a Marae. The Marae we stayed is called Nga Hau E Wha Marae - supposedly the largest urban Marae in New Zealand. This is what the Christchurch central library says about the Marae...

"What is a National Marae

A Marae is a place of learning, celebration, ceremony and meeting. It is traditionally the focal and social point of Māori community. The political and economic climate of the 1950s led to a mass movement of Māori from rural areas into the cities - many Māori were forced to leave behind not only their Marae, their Turangawaewae, but also their Whānau and culture. Urban Marae were established in cities as multi-tribal meeting places that would enable Māori to maintain links with their culture and identity. Urban Marae also offered the opportunity to generate cultural understanding among non-Māori.

The concept of a National Marae takes this idea further Ngāi Tuahuriri who hold Manawhenua in the Ōtautahi region, extended their Turangawaewae to include not only all the tribes of New Zealand but all the people of New Zealand regardless of tribal affiliation, religion, geographic reference or ethnicity. Nga Hau e Wha National Marae is the only Marae in New Zealand to be founded on this model."

Our stay over night was a course in and of itself, but was done in a way that sort of situates the experience alongside our Maori language course and also our Social Studies course. Staying over night at a Marae is a common thing to do with primary school children, and so while we learned a great deal more about Maori culture on this trip, we also learned some of the logistics we'd have to consider when planning a visit to a Marae with our classroom.

Unfortunately I was feeling too dreadful to bring out my camera, but if you Google search the name of the Marae you'll come up with lots of great pictures. Though it is an urban Marae is set just outside the city, it was surprisingly peaceful and quiet, and on our first day there, while waiting for groups to finish up their dish duties it was nice just sitting outside on the benches and relax with tranquility all around. The sun just happened to be out that afternoon, and I can remember sitting quietly on the bench, absorbing the sunshine, much like a lazy cat sprawled out on the driveway. I could have sat there all day with my eyes closed taking it all in, but soon enough it was time for more activities.

My favourite activities were the hands-on crafts activities, and also learning the "magazine toss" game. My group started off by making poi out of yarn, plastic bags and tissue. According to the internet, the word poi means ball on a string. There are lots of ways to make them, here is one site that shows you a slightly different way than what we did. In the end, you need two for your dancing.
Here is a video of some poi dancing in action.

We also did a bit of weaving. I weaved a fish that didn't really look like a fish, and then we ended off the session with doing a bit of "magazine tossing".

The "magazine toss" isn't really suppose to be called a magazine toss, but this is what we called it because this is what we did. The tightly taped magazines were a substitute for sticks, which would have then turned this activity into a stick tossing activity. I should be using the actual word for this traditional dance, but I can't remember what it is (because we quickly took to calling it the "magazine toss" activity) and because it is my lazy day I'm going to bother looking it up. Oh, my maori teachers would be shaking their heads if they knew.

I've added the clip of the young Japanese students because that is just about the level we were at. We didn't have enough time to master it or get to fancy...and besides. I thought these students were just so precious. Hey, they were far better than any of us!!!

It was a late night, as many of us were unable to fall asleep with all the chatting going on. I felt like I was some camp trip with all of the giggling, or if not camp then a very big sleep over. One of the instructors finally asked the people still awake to be mindful of those who were trying to get some rest. And then in the morning I missed the best part of the whole trip. One of the instructors woke everyone up by singing. I guess people woke up feeling a bit disorientated - who wouldn't with beautiful singing wafting through the air, and opening your eyes to crazy Maori patterns painted high above on the ceilings, and certainly with one of the ancestor statues looming over your head. I didn't hear the singing because I had my earplugs in, but a girl has to get some sleep some how! Many were jealous of my clever planning.

Anyway, that was my exciting trip to the Marae. The following two days were intense classes on the Treaty Of Waitingi. Under this treaty, Maori were meant to be given land rights and be treated as British citizens, however the English version drafted by the Crown and the Maori version translated by people living in New Zealand, were quite different, resulting in different interpretations. Recently, claims have been made against the treaty and the Waiting tribunal was formed to manage all of the breaches the Maori claim the Crown to have made. A bit of New Zealand history 101 if you will. The course was quite interesting, and certainly gives us Canadian students plenty of food for thought as much of what is taking place here is quite similar to what is taking place with our First Nations in Canada.

So that is what I have been up to recently. Next week we settle back into a real week of classes. And then we'll have about a month of school before starting up placement number 2. I'm quite anxious about this next placement, my first one set up such a high standard...I'll probably be with the older students. It will be quite different from snot, tears and wet pants with the 5 year olds. At least I hope so!

yams

2008-07-16T03:26:00.000-07:00

The other night we had a very Kiwi dinner - Kiwi lamb, yams (see image), and kiwi wine. Brocoli....not sure. It turned out to be a wonderful wonderful dinner. At least not bad for my first attempt at roasting lamb. Good thing I didn't follow the instructions on the package. 25 minutes for rare?? The thing would have still been 'baaaa-ing' had I taken it out after 25 minutes!
So these are Kiwi yams. Took me the longest time to figure out what they are. I think they look like huge grubs, not appealing at all when piled high in the supermarkets. But boiled, mashed, roasted, etc...they are delicious. Tastes like a mixture of potato and sweet potato. They could be the only thing we can afford to eat if food prices keep increasing here. Local NZ yams...

A Claim to Fame

2008-07-12T00:30:00.000-07:00

You'll have to watch right to the end to see what I mean. ;-)

Has time gone by that quickly?

2008-07-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

When I saw my previous post's date, I went into shock. I clearly remember writing that post, or at least posting a couple of pictures demonstrating proof that I was indeed in a classroom. But then what happened after that? Had more than a month really gone by that quickly? Oh now I remember (slight sarcasm). Assignments, and lots of them, were what happened to me. Posting those pictures took place in the few brief moments when I had some spare time on my hands. Brief moments before I spiraled down into a mad women, focused only on the finish line. But in this case, as one of my fellow classmates pointed out, not the REAL finish line, only a temporary finish line followed by a 2 week break. Then it is back to the grind. However, the University seems to have a far different definition of break than I do. If we had the same definition, I wouldn't have been loaded down with so much school work over the holidays. I guess this is what happens when you cram a 3 year program into 15 months. It has been busy, get my drift?

If you haven't been able to tell, things have been a bit hectic for awhile. All of our assignments were due within the same time frame, and so there wasn't much time to catch your breath before having to work on the next one to get it handed in. And I was one of the ones who was a bit more on top of their work-some, no names mentioned- must have pulled all nighters for 3 weeks in a row. Such antics are left for the younger crowd, there is absolutely no way I could do that now. It was tough because there were just no moments in the day to relax. Especially at the end when we had so many assignments to prepare in small groups, it was quite challenging coordinating times to meet because everyone was in a different group! The two weeks before we were finished I was starting to feel pretty tired. I hadn't had time to go to the gym in ages, I was up late (for me) and getting up really early. By the final week though, I had so much adrenalin pumping through me because of sheer joy seeing the end coming up, I was nearly bouncing off the walls. Then Saturday morning came and I was, as they say, nackered. It has taken a few days to unwind. At first I found it difficult to sit still because I felt like I should be rushing off to get something done. But I have forced myself to take a few days off before diving back into it. In the end, all was handed in. I even got some marks back, great marks that show all my hard work paid off.

The last month hasn't been totally without its pleasures. I managed so squeeze in an afternoon at my old school to hang out with good old Room 1. It was good timing too. The class had mushroomed to a whoping 29 students (the class is going to be split after the term break) and my associate was very sick. So I showed up and took over for the afternoon. I brought along my guitar for a bit of practicing because I would have a practical guitar test as one of my assessments for music class. I decided to teach the kids, This Old Man. I wasn't sure if they knew it or not so I brought along some photographs they could use as cues for the chorus. I brought along a picture of an old man, and a dog with a bone. When I pulled out the picture of the old man, I asked everyone Who can you see in the picture? And one student replied, Oh, it is one of your friends from teacher's college! Now with children, as many of you probably know, you have to choose your reactions very wisely, but sometimes it is just so hard! Especially when there is another adult snickering to themselves across the classroom. So I gulped down my chuckles and said the usual, well, THAT is an interesting response.

The Haka from Jennifer on Vimeo.
Also, mid-June Dave, myself, and the regular gang of North Americans went to see the All Blacks play England. Thankfully, the weather was good. Cold, but good. (Ever since I'd been to a game with wind, sleet, hail, I'm a bit skeptical about buying tickets so far in advance without knowing what the weather will be like!). The All Blacks are considered Gods in this country.
And so all the hype you would expect for such high-profile players took place. The news must have been discussing this game for weeks, there was a large fireworks show before the game, professional singers, a marching band - big stuff for a wee country. The game itself was ok. England got slaughtered to a point where I was almost feeling bad for them by the end of the game. Perhaps the highlight was being on television. Well, I was only on television for a few seconds before my wonderful boyfriend decided it was his time for fame and leaped in front of me so that the world could see him. A link I will gladly add for all of you to see...actually it quite amusing the following day, Dave received quite a few messages on Facebook from friends all over the world who had been watching the game and saw us (or rather Dave) on television.

New Zealand National Anthem from Jennifer on Vimeo.
So now it is break time. This time around, mine and Dave's break were not synchronised so we don't have much free to time to do anything exciting. Plus, I picked up some work at an English School downtown. It has been a bit strange to step back into the role of English teacher. My first day was one big trip down memory lane. But it has been good. I've enjoyed it. A job I don't mind doing in the least. Dave has had a couple of ski days, I've had a few tidy the apartment days. Today I must get on to some holiday homework :-( Have I said anything about the New Zealand weather yet? Well, we are well into Winter and it is just about as miserable as a winter on the West Coast in Canada. Though, we do have a few more sunny days and it isn't nearly as wet as the the island, but bitterly damp and cold. It is almost like being back in Japan with the condensation and mold on the windows and having to turn on various heat gadgets just to keep the chill off. Yesterday I cleaned off all the mold that was growing on our windowsills and it was positively disgusting. Yuck! It will be Dave's turn next time.

In general life in New Zealand is going well. Cost of living is increasing at such a pace that Dave and I are both seriously reconsidering our plans to stay and teach. Petrol is now $2.18/litre...thank goodness we didn't get a car! And the NZ dollar is so low that to work here and save money just doesn't seem like a viable option. So who knows where we will be this time next year. Anyone got any suggestions?

Anyway, I should go and work on my science assignment. A 1500 word evaluation on a 40 minute lesson we taught last week. Groan.

Much love to you all. Sorry for being absent for so long. Keep in touch and let me know how you are doing! Lots of love. xoxoxo