Kindergarten Christmas

Wondering why I haven't posted in a week and a half? Well, wonder no more. Check out the totally adorable Christmas tree ornaments in this picture!

Due to a misunderstanding about when family Christmas gifts were handed out, I spent every waking moment between last Thursday and today (Thursday) getting 48 of these gorgeous little ornaments done, so that 48 adorable children could swing off of 48 Christmas trees, starting today. Well, I am ferociously proud of how wonderful they are, but they took a staggering amount of time to do!

Note: I'm not sure why, but I took this picture before this set was finished - they all ended up like the one on the far left with the little red bar that makes it look more like a trapeze (except the ones holding on to one loop, because that would have been silly).

Anyway, no time for blogging while these were in progress, but they're all done now, and I'm feeling free and happy!

Also, I made one of me as an example for the kids, which is currently swinging on the kindergarten Christmas tree.

Speaking of kindergarten Christmas trees, have you seen ours? It is over 15 feet tall and very fluffy and wonderful, and the whole place smells of pine. As one of the kids said when he walked in this morning, "Emma, wow! Look at that biggest Christmas tree I ever seen! It is HUGE!"

In a shocking lack of blogging skill, I forgot to take a picture of it after the children and I spent all day decorating it. I will get one tomorrow and post it soon.

Also, while we're on the subject of Christmas, here are some pictures of our truck/float in the Bell Block Christmas parade! We went with an Enviroschools theme, so we made tripods with bean and pea vines growing up them, and we had hay bales, a worm farm, and several real plants on it as well. It was a lot of fun to make everything with the children. We teachers added pictures of the kids having fun at kindergarten, and the whole thing looked great.

Getting ready to go.

I was Santa, as was one of my kindergarteners' little brother. Big Santa, Little Santa!

I would like to share that, although I have never actually been Santa before, I will hazard a guess that it would be more fun to wear velvet (even fake stuff) in a place where Christmas is in winter. Just a thought.

On this particular Christmas, Santa and Snow Queen Elsa made friends, which we think is good, because she can make sure that there is plenty of snow for Santa's reindeer to land on, although she'll have her work cut out for her during the warm NZ summer.

The children got to dress up as whatever they wanted, which meant that we had a lot of Spidermen. Which worked out well, given that they were still Christmasy red.

J came and watched the parade, and after spending the whole time looking for the children's families along the road to make sure that they were in time to see their child and give a special wave, I was rather unreasonably excited to see the person who wanted to give me a special wave!

Hard to tell in the picture (J took pictures with his phone, which doesn't have a very nice camera), but the bit that says Puketapu Kindergarten at the back is a big, long worm. You know, for helping the gardens grow.

The Christmas parade, like the ornaments, was a lot of work and a lot of fun. We also had our End of Year party during kindergarten today, and now that that's all over, and we have one more week of kindergarten before the Christmas/summer holiday, I'm glad that we're on the downhill slope. Now, off to bed for a well-deserved good night's sleep.

We Made Sushi!

Did you know that you can make sushi at home? I didn't, until I moved to Taranaki, where I've learned that not only is it possible, it's easy and quite common. Now, I am not sure whether home-made sushi is less popular in the States, or if my rather limited cooking experience had simply not included it, but suffice it to say that the discovery that I could make my own sushi was rather a shocking one for me.

I deeply doubt that sushi-making would typically fall under the category of "Kiwi Adventures," but for us it did, so here you have the story of J and I making sushi. 

I don't really know what this mix is, but it seems to include some powdered form of vinegar, and it made the rice a bit stickier as well.

Pickles, carrots, and cucumber. We also had shrimp, but I didn't like it as much. I think next time we'll try smoked salmon, and we will definitely get some avocado. I though about postponing the sushi-making when I discovered the lack of avocados in the supermarket, except that I was just fooling myself because in reality I was too excited to wait.

You get this sushi mat and some seaweed wraps, and you smooth the rice all over, leaving gaps at the top and bottom.

Then you put whatever ingredients you want in the middle. In case you can't tell by the picture, I think we overstuffed ours. Then you just roll up the whole mat and push the rice-less ends together.

Then you end up with this long sushi log, which you put on the cutting board with the seem-side down, so that the moister soaks through and makes it stick (J pulled this piece of knowledge out of who-knows-where, and I thought he was making it up, but it worked very well). After a few minutes, you can cut it into pieces, and it doesn't fall apart (mostly).

And... voila! Our very own, home-made sushi! I am not going to say that it was anywhere near as good as Sushi Ninja (our new favourite sushi restaurant), but it was yummy, and I think we'll get better with practice. My co-teacher Maree makes sushi with her kids, and I think she mixes some spices in with the rice, so I'll have to talk to her about how to make ours even more delicious.

Side-note: If you make the full pot of rice that the packet is measured for, you end up with over 60 pieces of sushi, which means that you better be happy to eat sushi for every meal for several days. Fortunately, I was thrilled to do so!

Hamilton Zoo

After a quiet weekend of rest, I am feeling almost completely better during the day, and if I could stop keeping myself (and J) up at night with my coughing, all would be well. Last night was better, so I'm optimistic. 

This is the last post of pictures from Hamilton. I know that it is not nearly as entertaining to see pictures of animals in zoos as it is to actually see them, so I've selected (mostly) animals that might be new to my northern hemisphere readers, in the hopes that that will make it interesting.

This is a Himalayan Monal. 

This is an Agouti. I got very excited when I read the sign, because it says that it has five toes in the front and three in the back. For some reason, I thought it meant on each foot, and I was excited to think that an animals could have 32 toes. Fortunately (or unfortunately), J was there to set me straight.

I realize that this will be no one's first introduction to red pandas, but this one gets a picture because they're my very favourite animal!

Also, thanks to Madagascar, you all know ring-tailed lemurs, but look how cute they are, hanging out with their tails.

This is a Fishing Cat. Neither J nor I had ever heard of it. They live in Southeast Asia. We think that its face looks a lot like a seal, which makes sense, given that they both hunt fish in the water. Must be a good shape for that.

This is a Cape Barren Goose, which lives on islands off the coast of Australia. This particular one desperately wanted to jump off this bank and into the water, but couldn't seem to convince itself that that was a good idea, so the poor thing paced back and forth for several minutes before running around the other way.

I love the soft, brown feathers, and then the bright red and black legs.

This is a Brolga, and I think that it's so cool, because it looks like it's wearing wrestling headgear, complete with the bulge for the ear protectors!

I think that these Painted Hunting Dogs were my favourite new discovery of the day. They are from Africa, and really should have been in the Lion King, because they are so beautiful and interesting-looking!

This baby American Bison must have known that we were from its homeland, because it followed us around as we walked by its enclosure, and stood and watched us as we left. So sweet!

This is one of the White Rhinos that the Hamilton Zoo is famous for. There are a shockingly small number left in the whole world, and this zoo has 7, so it's a big part of the global program to protect them. Interestingly, White Rhinos actually have black skin, but they constantly coat themselves in mud, so they always look very light tan, like the dirt around them.

This is a Ruru, a native New Zealand owl. (Sorry for the blurriness, but it was dark in their enclosure). The European settlers named them Morepork, because that's what their call sounds like. Well, it sounds like moh-pok, but that's how they say it here, given their aversion to 'r's. Anyway, you can often hear them in the evenings, and it's quite a nice little call.

This is a North Island Kaka, which is a native New Zealand parrot. These particular ones were very fun, because they will fly right up to people and land on them. Apparently, they like to rub themselves against women who are wearing perfume, and then rub the good smell all through their feathers. This means that they very rudely snubbed J and I. Had I known, I would have bought some perfume!

Well, there's your introduction to the Hamilton Zoo, and the conclusion of our trip to Hamilton. It was a good time!

Baby Birds at Lake Rotoroa

I originally named this post "Lake Rotoroa (and Baby Birds)", but then I uploaded the pictures and realized that seven out of nine of them are of birds, one is of bugs, and only one is actually of Lake Rotoroa, so... I renamed it more appropriately.

When J and I were in Hamilton, we made the mistake of checking out of the hotel early, thinking to have a nice breakfast somewhere before heading to the zoo. I am totally obsessed with the way Kiwis make French toast, but they pretty much don't have all day breakfasts, so I was excited for the opportunity. The mistake part came in when we realized that not a single restaurant was open at 7:30am Sunday morning. Oops. We ended up (to my chagrin and J's excitement) at McDonald's. Fortunately, they had chai and pancakes, which made me less upset about breaking my no-McDonald's rule, and we actually had a nice time chatting over breakfast.

When we finished eating, we still had time before the zoo opened, so we went and walked around Lake Rotoroa (not to be confused with Rotorua, where we went several months ago, with all the geothermal activity), which is a pretty little lake in the middle of Hamilton.

It was a cloudy day, but not cold or windy, and we had a really nice walk, mostly thanks to it being spring and there being so many happy little fowl families waddling about.

Just look at this lovely mother with her brood! They were cuddled up so tightly underneath her that every once in a while, a baby would get crowded out, and it would have to scuttle around and nuzzle back in.

This is a coot, which is my second favourite bird after pūkeko. Apprently, the feeling is mutual, because this one swam right over to us and followed us along the shore for a minute. I think it expected food, but we didn't have any, so it left disappointed.

This is a mum pūkeko with her baby. We were walking on a raised boardwalk, and this mother pūkeko charged us when she saw us, just to make sure we weren't coming to threaten her baby.

Later, we found some even younger pūkeko chicks. By this time, we were off the raised boardwalk and on a part of the path that was considerably closer to the lake. Just after I took this picture, as I was assuring this mum that I meant no harm to her chicks, she charged me so rapidly and unexpectedly that I screamed and ran away, much to J's amusement (although I didn't see him getting any closer to her).

I feel that I should mention the one downside to our charming little walk - the bugs. Notice how the sky is FULL of them? You'd think that that picture would be an exaggeration, but it is not. J says that they are attracted to carbon dioxide, so they hover in clouds above the walking trail. I don't understand how the carbon dioxide would stay concentrated enough to make that happen, but they were in this long funnel about six inches over our head along the whole entire trail, so it must be true. You can see in the picture how there are the most in a strip right across the middle, with less at the top and bottom - that's how clearly concentrated they were.

 Fortunately, they had no interest in biting us or landing on us, so as long as we managed not to breathe them in, we were okay. But it was a bit unfortunate.

On the bright side, we learned that coot chicks have these crazy red and yellow heads, and are amazingly adorable! I think that grown-up pūkeko are my favourite, but baby coots beat baby pūkeko any day!

And, bonus, none of the coot mums or dads scared us. They just took very good care of their colourful babies.

Here is the only picture I managed to take of the actual lake, which is a bit of a pity, because it really was beautiful. 

In conclusion, and giving the coots yet another bonus, we learned that they stand on one leg like flamingos. Or at least, I learned that. J maintains that we've seen them like that before, but apparently I wasn't paying attention.

I am currently home sick from work, as I have finally caught the nasty sore throat that has been going around for weeks. Oh well. I am doing better, and think I will be back to work tomorrow.

I'll post the last installment of our Hamilton trip (the zoo) sometime soon.

Hamilton Gardens Part 2

As promised, I am posting the rest of the pictures from the Hamilton Gardens. Even looking at the pictures makes me want to go back!

Herb Gardens 

(Remember that here, they pronounce the 'h' in 'herb'.)

This part of the garden smelled AMAZING! And just as J was mentioning how ready the smell made him for dinner, this guy walked by and said loudly, "This garden makes me want to go and eat!" We were quite entertained.

This four-part herb garden was divided into "Medicinal," "Cosmetic," "Pot-pourri," and "Culinary." 

The Sustainable Backyard

This garden was designed with a family of two adults and two children in mind. It is imagined that half a day a week is spent in the garden by the whole family.

The garden would provide some in season food with relative ease, but not necessarily all the food needed. The children would be involved in ways such as collecting the eggs, and would learn some of the ideals of gardening and sustainability.

The vegetables have been incorporated into the design in a way which is aesthetically pleasing while also being practical.

That triangle is a very neat little chicken coop!

This space was so compact and full of cool things, it was hard to get any good pictures, but it was really neat.

 Eucalyptus Tree

We were strolling calmly along by some flowers, when I said, "Hmmm, smells like someone used that lemon/eucalyptus bug spray I used to like." J, being slightly better educated than I am (at times), said, "No, that's an actual eucalyptus tree." Once I got over being impressed with myself for so accurately identifying a smell (which I usually cannot do), I was slightly unnerved to realize that I only know the smell in its processed, bug spray version.

Anyway, beautiful smell (and much better in real life), and a beautiful tree!

Look how lovely it is!

Valley Walk

A landscape garden in Naturalistic/Aesthetic Style using indigenous Waikato plants.

(Remember, Waikato is the region Hamilton is in).

This part was much less like a manicured garden, and much more like walking through a natural valley, but still very beautiful, so I'd say they achieved their goal in the description.

Lovely little bridge in the valley.

Well, thus concludes my photos from the Hamilton Gardens - until next time, that is.

Hamilton Gardens Part 1

Since we've been in NZ, every time the subject of Hamilton has come up, someone has said, "You absolutely must go to the gardens! They are unbelievable!" (or some variation on that message). I like going to gardens, but found it surprising that so many people were so specifically impressed with these ones. Anyway, when we decided to go to Hamilton for the archery store, the gardens were my main point of interest, so after a nice lunch and a relaxing cup of tea at the hotel, off we went.

Now, at the risk of sounding like everyone else in NZ, I will tell you, if you're ever in Hamilton... You absolutely must go to the gardens! They are unbelievable!

I tried to be judicious in my picture choices, but even so, I was unable to prune them down to few enough for one post, so the rest will be coming next week.

One section of the garden is divided into little gardens based on themes of different times and places, so I'll label the pictures accordingly. Each section really merits its down blog post, but that's not really feasible, so I have forced myself to choose only one or two pictures from each area. It was not easy. Try to imagine, as you look at the pictures, the surreal and exciting idea of walking through a gap in a tall hedge and feeling as though you've been transported to a different time and place. I have actually been to several of the countries we "visited" in the gardens, and I was shocked at how much it felt like the real thing! I will refrain from commenting unless I feel explanation is necessary, so you can just enjoy the pictures.

Italian Renaissance Garden: An interpretation of the 15th-16th Century Renaissance Gardens that sought to rationalize and improve upon nature.

Te Parapara Garden: A garden demonstrating traditional Māori horticulture, with particular reference to Waikato. 

(Waikato is the region).

These are kumara (NZ sweet potato) mounds, and a kumara storehouse.

Japanese Garden of Contemplation: An example of the 14th-16th Century Muromachi Period gardens designed for quiet contemplation and study.

Notice that this is a giant zen sand garden, complete with beautiful patterns raked into the sand.

Chinese Scholar's Garden: An interpretation of the 10th-12th Century Sung Dynasty gardens that were designed as natural worlds of imagination and surprise.

English Flower Garden: An example of the English 19th Century Arts and Crafts gardens designed as a setting for plant collections and planned seasonal colour compositions.

Unfortunately, there was a wedding going on in this area, so we didn't get to see much, and what we did see was mostly not in bloom. We'll have to go back!

Although the English garden was not one of my favourites, this doorway and bench were a part of it, and I find them quite captivating, for some reason.

Indian Char Bagh Garden: An interpretation of a 16th-17th Century symbolic four-quartered garden built for the Mughal aristocracy as an escape from a harsh environment.

This garden was the smallest, but one of the most beautiful. I wish that I could have gotten further away to take the picture, to give you the whole scope, but it didn't work that way.

Tropical Garden

(This one wasn't from a specific location, but rather showcased all kinds of tropical plants).

And that's the end of the "place and time" gardens. They are working on an American Moderist (West Coast) garden, which is opening later this year, so next time we go we'll check that out).

The one downside of our experience of the gardens was the abundance of unregulated children. Now, I like children, and this girl with the water gun is adorable-looking. However, it is my firm belief that if you bring your children to a place where people come to calmly stroll and enjoy beauty, you should not bring a water gun. Nor should you allow your children to climb into the fountains, run at full speed into strangers, scream and yell at the top of their lungs, or put their fingers on the nozzles of the fountains so that they spray everywhere. Apparently, the majority of the parents there did not agree. Oh well.

So... now you know part of the reason that everyone insists that everyone else go to the Hamilton Gardens. Amazing!! I will post the rest of my pictures next week.