Sunday, April 27, 2014

Coromandel, LCF, and the Giant Rope Swing



Coromandel campground - a Bird Park
The most exciting things that happened this week were:
1-COROMANDEL
2-LCF
3-GIANT ROPE SWING


Our campground
 We drove for 5.5 hours to reach the Coromandel region of New Zealand.  Hiking, sea-kayaking, beaching.  

hiking



Sage

Danny has suddenly become as tall as Noah



Another exciting thing for me this week was becoming involved with the Liahona Children's Foundation. I am considering becoming a volunteer coordinator for the South Pacific Region and also considering going along to Papua New Guinea next month to conduct height/weight screenings for kids.  Does anybody have any experience with this organization?  Or know anything about it?  




And the third most exciting thing that happened this week was having Harry, Jason, and Eleanor Gaastra show up at our house and volunteer to put up a giant rope swing in our back yard!

These pictures can't show just how HIGH the rope is!  Jason is a professional arborist, and his father an amateur arborist.  They brought all their gear and climbed up, up, up! First they tied a rope horizontally from one tree across to another, and then attached another rope to hang down from middle of the horizontal rope as the swing.  The Gaastras worked for hours, straight through a few rain showers.

It was an all-day event that will not be forgotten by adults or kids!

Here is Jason half-way up one of the trees:
Old ropes from a ship - a gift from our landlord, who encourages kids to fully enjoy the yard.  


First this...


Then this!
As I publish this post, it is 10PM on a Sunday night, and the rain and wind are pounding our house from all sides.  I hear a gust of wind come down our driveway, shove a wall of rain into the front side of the house, and then the wind suddenly twists and the rain is hitting the hall windows on the right, and then the noise moves back to the kitchen, and then suddenly pounding on the skylight in the piano studio on the left….  

We have many pictures of the beautiful, green NZ countryside - fewer pictures of the rain that keeps it so watered.  Our house doesn't have any insulation and so when the wind blows, I feel the fresh air move inside; and when it rains, it's as loud as being in a car or a tent.  It makes me feel cozy inside.  

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Kindy! (Don't worry- it's NOT Montessori)


Easter Egg Hunt at Gaastra's

Easter Egg Hunt at the Gaastra's

 Our family broke a long-standing tradition and did NOT decorate easter eggs….  None of the stores sell the handy Easter Egg dye, for one thing. I ran into an acquaintance at the grocery store who suggested coloring chocolate eggs with icing.  When I said that I meant dyeing REAL eggs, she helpfully mentioned that she had some black dye at home, and that black dye might actually show up on brown eggs, but wouldn't that be somewhat macabre?  (I wish I could write her delightful accent into this story…I almost laughed out loud).  It's true….they only sell BROWN eggs here.

All the people at our house on Saturday night - farewell party for Jess Dedrickson.  She finished her year as au pair and going home to Mapleton, UT.

Easter is the only time of the year when we buy sugary cold cereal!  

Joycie first day of Kindy

Turning 3 means that Joycie can start Kindy (Kindergarten).  Like Germany, New Zealand pays for every child to to have up to 20 hours of kindergarten and "relief care" per week.   Joycie is going to be attending a delightful Kindy that is adjacent to Mercy and Sage's primary school.  She'll go for about 2 hours a day, 4 days per week.  She is very excited!!!  

Kindergarten teachers here are trained to be non-directional, meaning that they don't "direct" the children, but rather, they act as role models for children and provide them opportunities to "enlarge" their play and their vocabularies.  I observed for an hour on Tuesday, and saw the 5 teachers each standing in their designated section of the Kindy, asking kids gentle questions about their play and helping kids accomplish tasks and projects that the kids had initiated. 

For example, there is a big section of the Kindy, with all sorts of craft supplies in bins that are easily-accesible to little 3- and 4- year olds.  But these kids will never make crafts all in a line, all using the same basic cutting or painting strategy, and they will never produce the mostly-identical art projects that used to line the walls of our last elementary school.  I saw 2 or 3 kids working in this section of the Kindy, each creating an entirely unique piece of art, with teacher, every once in a while, asking them questions like, "What do you think would be the best way to dry the paint?" or "I see you've used brown around the edges, did you know that is called a "border"?" or "I see you are interested in using these fabric scraps.  What ideas do you have?"

Me: "is this similar to the Montessori approach?"  
Teacher (aghast):    Oh no, we would never want to be so structured!

No worksheets.  No alphabet.  No story time.  No calendar or counting.  Just very stimulating indoor and outdoor areas and about 6-1 teacher-to-student ratio.  
Birthday cake for Joycie and Mike, celebrating their tradition of going to parks together.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

42, the most dangerous age

4 Problems of the Week


1.  Not enough time at the Te Papa museum in Wellington.  What a great place!  And free!  We drove to Wellington to give Noah his 2nd (and final) ACT experience and so that we could stick together as a family to listen to General Conference.


2. unexplained bumps on Joycie and Sage. 



3.  Two healthy-looking chickens die of unknown causes.  (I never imagined that I would spend a day nursing a sick chook in the kitchen....)





5.  Final Problem:  Being 42 years-old.  And, to make it worse, as of tomorrow, I will be MARRIED to a 42-year-old.  Two of us in the house at once!

Do you know how the universe sometimes conspires to teach you a message?

Just last week, I happen to read in "The Maytrees" by Annie Dillard that "42 is the most dangerous age." (A main character is congratulating himself for holding out until age 44 before leaving his wife and child.)

And then, just hours later, I stumble across this graph online, with age 42 RIGHT at the bottom…

(Happy Birthday, Mike!  It will only get BETTER from here on out…!)
....)












Sunday, April 6, 2014

Feijoas and Japanese Anenome

The Big News of the week is that I am moving my Pics of the Week to a blog.  This will allow me to keep a better long-term record of my pictures.  If you still want to receive my Pics of the Week, please subscribe to the blog by typing your email in the box provided in the upper right hand corner.   

If you type in your email address, my Pics of the Week will still show up in your email inbox, just like they have been, without you having to actually check the blog.  

I hope you will do it, because I take the time to send these pictures in an effort to stay close to you, and to remain in contact with an extended family that I care about very much.  Writing home once a week is something I learned on my mission, and I have felt inspired to keep up this missionary habit through my weekly pictures.  

I hope you don't feel that I'm showing off, or that my life is a lark.  It's not.  I send the highlights.  I enjoy keeping an eye out, during the week, for high points that I want to share with you.  I send the smiles, not the tears.  When I look back there is the "danger" that I'll JUST remember the many things for which I'm grateful - and that the hard times, self-pitying moments, the messy counters, and heavy bags of groceries won't be all that important any more.  

1.  Joyce wrote her name all by herself!  If you notice, all the letters are there!
When we drive around, just the two of us, we often take turns picking songs to sing.  (Joycie says, "hing hongs" for "sing songs")  She almost stumped me one time this week when she asked for the "Golden Dishes Song."  (It turned out to be "the Golden Plates")

 
2.  Tuesday night I hosted a combined YW/YM/YSA activity which was a birthday party for a nonLDS girl named Kaley.  Kaley's been coming to YW for the last couple of months and her mom does zumba and waka (Maori rowing) with some of the other members of our branch. 



3.  VB game at Kaley's party.  This was a good turnout, which basically includes all our youth and YSAs, - so you can see there really aren't very many of us…



4.  Nai, Eno and I at Kaley's party.  Little Eno is currently learning 4 languages!  Both of her parents have their native dialects, plus Swahili, plus English.  Her Mom, Nai, speaks 6 languages!  Nai grew up in the bush in Kenya, going to school under a little tree with a few other kids, but was adopted by a Kenyan diplomat when she was 8.  (She was actually adopted at birth, but her adopted parents wanted her to live with her birth family until she was 8, which she says is not uncommon in her area.)  

Nai joined the church about the same time she met her husband.  When they met, they were both studying at university in Ireland.  He is from Nigeria.  When I asked him why he was so different than other African men I have met, he said that it was because he grew up in the LDS culture, not the African culture.  As one of two YM leaders, he has been one of the biggest influences on our boys since we moved here, and I feel very grateful for him.  


5.  These white flowers are called Japanese Anemone and are growing all over our yard and driveway!  They make me very happy whenever I pull up to our house!
(Yes, that's laundry hanging to the right of the kitchen windows.  Like many kiwis, we don't own a dryer.)

6.  Same view as the previous picture, but taken from the inside of the kitchen.  
 
7.  Hike up to Wilkies Pools on Saturday.  Missed Mike (in USA) and Noah and Danny (in the middle of a 12-hour adventure race at Hawke's Bay)



8.  Feijoas!  Pronounced fi-joe'-uz.  Has anyone else, besides me, lived all these years on earth without hearing about feijoas?  They are in season here in NZ and are growing all over the place.  A neighbor brought me this box just yesterday.  They are about the same texture as kiwifruit on the inside, but with a very different flavor, and with a strong smell.  Kids of all ages take them to school in their lunches; we throw them into smoothies.