pasifika

 

here’s some dancers (see comments at the bottom of the post)

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usual saturday earlyness with both girls at their weekend sports by 8am.  here’s kezia’s swimming pool location.  it’s a heated pool and at this time of year still has its sides off.  she’s only got 2 more saturdays doing this then her training moves to tuesday after school at the millennium institute which is closer and better for jane in the gym

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knowing there wouldn’t be many more chances i headed over to the local shops for a walk round and i was not disappointed

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here are just a few of the excellent signs i saw

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this was written in classic ‘eats shoots and leaves’ style

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and on the butchers window was a poster for a missing cat.  a dark thought crossed my mind …

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enough of that.  

jane took esther to her tennis.  esther won the doubles (yay) and had a close game on her single match.  each week she gets better and she absolutely loves it

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we regrouped back at the house and after a bit of guinea cuddling we went in to town to go to the pasifika festival which is a celebration of all the pacific island cultures in new zealand

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we thought it might be a bit more touristy, but it was actually a celebration for each of the pacific island communities to get together and have a great time

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it was free to get in and once inside the place was split in to 10 villages of 10 different islands, all with something different going on.

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kezia enjoyed these men so much she wanted to take some photos (oh dear).  i asked jane if she liked the oiled men, but thought them too slick.

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we shared a water melon ice cream thing

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kez and i just ate the vanilla ice cream and fruit due to our lentern restriction

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it was so busy though.  quite amazingly so.  and hot.  we were there for 3 hours or so and just managed to walk round the entire site and watch a few bits on the way.  you could easily have been there 10-5 and not seen anything

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and there were some great characters to watch

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about that video at the top – about half way through we realised that the gender of at least some of the dancers wasn’t as clear as we initially thought …