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Today we got up at 4.30 to go to the stardome. We were going to learn about the matariki constellation which has been hidden for the month of May and has now come back into view. This marks maori new year, but I’m not sure of the exact dates.

After arriving at the stardome we had to walk up One Tree Hill in the dark and a guide lady showed us lots of interesting stuff at the top with a laser pen. Sadly there was too much cloud and pollution to see matariki.

Here are the girls pretending to be aliens.

Auckland and Skytower

Startled people on our tour.

Then we came back down again and had breakfast before being treated to a show about matariki in the planetarium. It was great, but very tempting to fall asleep inn the reclining chairs.

read more about Matariki here and more about the Maori festival here

Afterwards we went back up One Tree Hill in the daylight.

Dave has a work colleague who lives nearby to we went to theirs for morning tea. After that back home. The grown ups had a nap – don’t know what the children did, then I took them swimming at the local fun pool while Dave found a spider at home.

 

Girls in bed and asleep by 6.30!

It’s Jane by the way, did you guess?

here’s a gumboot/welly in some leaves.  the seasons are a bit weird here.  it’s like a gradual autumn and there even a few trees and bushes which are in flower.  that’s totally confusing.

work for me was good and we popped out to the Thai restaurant next to my office for lunch.  i’ve probably mentioned it before.  it’s called Joy Bong which sounds like something completely different but it’s jolly good and we’ll miss it when we move to our new office building later in the year

jane had the ladies group at our house this morning which is expanding in size and popularity which is good.  our house is obviously not too cold for them.  and the children enjoyed the various houses and busesi brought back from the church office for them last night which is good.

then jane went to school and all was well again so that’s good.  the kids have an end of term french breakfast sometime next week, and will also be watching french DVDs so i think next week might be a bit of a wind down in time for the end of Term 2 break. 

email or skype her if you want to know the full skinny

 

the girls had swimming this evening and esther didn’t seem as exhausted as usual.  in fact she was quite pleased as there’s a new person in her class who was much slower than her !  It’s not about not being slow, it’s about not being slowest it seems.

we’re all aiming to be in bed by 9pm in the evening as we’re getting up at 4.30am to head in to town to see the new year dawning.  we’ll tell you about that tomorrow !  (nice to end on a cliff hanger – unless you a short bungee jumper on a long rope or something)

the great thing about the weather ‘high’ that’s passing over new zealand at the moment is that the weather is warm.  The bad thing about it is the cold.  warm in the afternoon, but a bit chillsome in the morning.  that said, we’re starting to get used to it now do i’ll not hark on so much about it.

‘hark hark hark’ you say.  you’d be right.

here’s a dummy i found in the posh street of ponsonby road.  it’s only the second dummy i’ve found in new zealand i think and i spent quite a while crawling around the floor in my best trousers trying to get a decent photo.  the pressure is on now i’m considering doing an exhibition of my dummy photos.

and i was on kitchen duty at work today which is not the most efficient use of people’s time as far as i can see, but did give me a nice diversion from the various projects which are currently causing my brain to ache.

this evening i had a band practice which simply went to prove how much better everyone else is than me.  it’s a privilege to play with them but i feel rather weakist linky.

but you all want to know how jane’s getting on don’t you ?  well, the answer is great as far as i can tell.  she’s now met all her classes and has identified some of the likely troublesome kids and seems to be adopted strategies to deal with them.  early days, but she seems in a good mood so she’s either over tired or quietly pleased.  i suspect a mixture of both.

i took my guitar and amp to the practice and additionally brought 3 plastic houses, 2 yellow buses and a box full of people home.  it was an errand.  see ya

chilly this morning – our first frosty morning.  perfect ‘first day at school’ weather for jane.

 

all went well, and after a day of teaching and learning she’s now setting up her laptop and trying to work out how to use the new software to prepare her lessons.  everything seems to be done on computers in the school which is exciting (although her over head transparency sheets from her UK school resources might need a refresh to avoid a modern day technology faux pas equivalent to demanding kids write on slates with quill pens.

i’d say her first day was a success and she’ll even admit to ‘kind of’ looking forward to going back tomorrow.

meanwhile at work simon (looking rather smart in the sunlight above) baked a carrot cake as his forgeit for being the worse at guess the date and weight of a colleagues baby.  sweet punishment for the rest of us (though i’ve had a stomach ache this evening)

 

and i met up with Neil, an english friend from Swindon-ish to talk about life insurance.  exciting stuff.

this is some rubbish on the street near my office.  it’s part of a study guide on photography depth of field and served as an untidy reminder that i should get on with my Open College of Arts course which i’ve just resurrected.  d’oh !

well, the big news today is that jane starts at her school tomorrow morning.  she got a phone call this morning saying the teacher who is going on maternity leave has left early and could she start on wednesday

so that’s all exciting and gulp-y.  those of a praying nature may wish to post one off at around 8.30am NZ time (9.30pm Tuesday evening for your brits)

meanwhile at work i had to defrag my desk which is a misnomer if ever there was one.  i attempted to organise my files, paperwork and stationary by colour but apparently we weren’t defragging we were clearing out stuff in anticipation of our office move in November. 

in fact we get some new desks in the next few weeks as demonstration models for what the furniture will look like in the new building.  and then we’ll be like a zoo where anyone can come by and stare at us.  which will be fun.

new zealand is meant to be full of sheep but we haven’t seen many

 

but it was good to see this one wrapped in an all black scarf lying in the road by some cigarette ends

 

remember kids, smoking is bad for you.

jane went to a bootcamp thing today with her lady running chums and had such a good time she’s going back some other week.  not entirely sure i understand what it’s about, so you should skype / email her and ask

meanwhile i had lunch with buzz in a local food court.  we put the world to right, ate curry and drank fresh lemon juice.  here’s buzz taking a picture of me taking a picture of him.

and esther was called to the staff room with a couple of chums after school, but not for a bad reason:  they’d made some fab cookery book and all the teachers wanted to see it !  And Kezia had a friend to play after school.

today’s pictures look a little anaemic don’t they ?

 

there was a baptism at church this morning which was good.  there was much talk during the service of the warm water pool outside the side window (covered as usual by its giant curtain)

at the end of the service the curtain was drawn back and the pool was revealed.  quite a challenge to do a total immersion in a teeny pool, but it was done !

after church we went in to Auckland to the auckland museum.  the girls went there in easter last year when we did our rekey trip whilst i was having my interview at Telecom.

they took me to a section called Weird and Wonderful which was as described on the tin.  loads of stuffed and dead things and various alive things too.  like this native smiley frog

he obviously found the whole set up amusing.  which is quite lucky seeing as he lives there.

or perhaps he was just enjoying the faces of people looking at the beetles in the tray below him

in fact there were beetles everywhere including this line of cockroaches which you’d find at the beach alongside the katipo dangerous spiders.  for some reason their backs look yellow on the photos but in reality they are red.  just so you know.

there is loads of different stuff in there including this huge puffa fish (stuffed)

 

and there’s a load of fab maori art too.  so we’ll definitely be back, especially since it’s less than 30 minutes door to door and has free parking.

we also got this game today which is like a board game ‘geographic locations of places in new zealand’ sort of thing.  and is jolly good.

esther lost her game of flippa ball 2-3 but seeing as they got beaten hugely by the same team last season they were all very pleased.

i’ve been rebuilding jane’s computer over the last 24 hours and i think it’s now done.  hoorah

the girls had their orchestra thing this morning and jane went for a run.  then it was back here for a curly wurly (british booty brought by ian last week – thanks guys !)

then this afternoon we went bowling to test a place where esther is thinking of having her birthday party in a month’s time.

it was all a bit retro and not the modern places we used to frequent in Reading/Bracknell/Maidenhead.  

The shoes looked like they had seen much better days

but according to jane this place was much more modern than the other place she’d been to in NZ.

 

the girls enjoyed it, so it passed the test for esther’s party

it was a bit of a trip down memory lane actually. 

i seem to remember these machine in Nottingham in the 1980s

which is just a handy way of showing you the final scores.  didn’t i do well

 

after that we went geocaching round takapuna lake, which is an old volcano cone

 

even though it’s only a few 10s of metres from the sea, it’s filled with fresh water

there were quite a few canoes about, and some birds like the pukeko above and something else below

it was also really rainy in a showery kind of way.  they really have extremely wet rain here which is very productive, and very dampening

here’s a shop call crafty knitwits.

then this evening we went round to some people’s house from church for ‘dinners at 8’ where we met 3 other couples who we didn’t really know and talked about life.  and rather too many medical things for my liking, but i managed not to pass out.

it’s raining quite hard now, so i best finish off in case the lights trip …  see yas.

the day started rather noisily at work as my south african colleague sasha arrived with a rather loud toot thanks to this horrendous plastic trumpet thing.  i was on the phone at the time so wasn’t very impressed.  the second time he blew it i was also on the phone (to someone else)

anyway i’m going to support new zealand in the football universe cup as they seem pleased to have even made it to the competition so good for them. all the matches are in the middle of the night here which is great as you can just jump straight to the result without having to watch all that running about nonsense.

 

anyway, we went for a japanese style lunch in a japanese restaurant which was very fancy for me. 

 

during the day jane went out running with her chums and generally sounded like she had a good day and the girls had their swimming lessons which also went well.  though esther especially was exhausted when she got back as her 1 hour intense lesson is quite hard work

then this evening we went to our church worship group/sound people’s social.  most people were younger than jane and i, but they were kind and spoke to us so it was jolly nice after all.

my photo taking hasn’t quite adjusted to the fact it’s winter yet hence the dreadful pictures of food.

and i’ve entered a picture in a competition which you can vote for here 

busy day at work

girls had violin lessons and jane did some shopping i think.

then this evening i’ve tried to mend jane’s computer with little success.  but progress is being made.

highlight of the day was telling one of my colleagues that another colleague ‘had a lurgy’.  she said “what does that mean”  and i said “he’s got a lurgy, you know he’s sick, he’s got a malady”

She looked at me quizzically and said ‘”what ?  He’s got a song in his head ?”

how we chuckled.

otherwise just a normal day.  that wasn’t a very exciting up date was it ?