Painting for Enviroschools Display

This post is going to be short and sweet. I am spending every moment that I'm not at work or asleep trying to find us a place to live in Wellington, where houses and apartments are expensive and often get rented before I have a chance to snap them up. I am traveling to Wellington (4.5 hours away) this weekend to look at as many as I can, and hopefully to nail one down. Getting prepared to make maximum use of this trip is overwhelming and stressful, but I'm convinced that it will be worthwhile. The good news is that while J can't come, my friend Jan has generously offered to come and help me look at places, as well as to host me at her house in Whanganui before and after, so I don't have to do so much driving in one day. Friends make everything so much better!

Anyway, this quick post is just to show you the painting I did for kindergarten over the last few weeks. We wanted a beautiful, colourful display to go behind all our Enviroschools information. For those of you who don't know, Enviroschools is a national initiative in NZ to increase conservation, environmentalism, and sustainability in schools. (Click here to read more about it in my Enviroschools post from last year). My teaching team also discussed that Enviroschools often uses a river as an image for a school/kindergarten's Enviroschools journey. I offered to paint a river background for our display over the school holidays, and so I took home the huge piece of fabric and went to work.

This is a small section of the painting, so you can see some details The swirls are called koru, and they are a central theme of many of our displays around kindergarten. They are like waves, but also like unfolding fern fronds, and are important in Māori culture.

Here is the finished product. Notice the size. It's about 30 feet by 4 feet, and I had thought that it wouldn't take me a million years. What was I thinking? I have never thought that spatial awareness was one of my strengths, but I impressed even myself with my total lack of understanding of how long this would take. Oh well. I got it done, and it is beautiful, if I do say so myself.

Here it is with all of our display items up. I should have taken a "before" picture, so you could see how much the background improves the display. When I showed this picture to J, he said, "You painted for over a week straight only to cover it up?" Which is a fairly good point, based on the picture. But remember, in real life, it is HUGE, and so the gaps between the things are big enough that you can still appreciate the painting.

Anyway, the moral of the story is the while I have no ability to judge sizes realistically, I have made something beautiful that will stay at Puketapu Kindergarten after I leave next month, and I feel wonderful about that contribution.

Our Adventures Are Taking Us to Wellington!

Just in case you were getting bored of the humdrum routine of our year and half in New Plymouth, we've decided to switch things up again and move to Wellington! Tah dah! No boredom for my readers, no way!

As you probably surmised, that is not the reason for our upcoming move (although I do want to save you all from boredom when possible). 

The real reason is: J got an amazing job at the National Headquarters of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)!! Yay for J! 

MPI is the branch of government that J has worked for since we moved to NZ, and while he likes the branch, his current job is very high-stress and leaves him exhausted and worried at the end of each day, which is unhelpful in every aspect of life. He has therefore been on the lookout for a promotion to the main office in Wellington, where he could work in the same field, but in a different environment and fill a different role. And it finally happened! In November, J will become MPI's Senior Veterinary Medicines Advisor, and we will move to Wellington!

We will be sad to leave New Plymouth, where we have been happy, but Wellington will be a new and exciting step. We have enjoyed getting to know the people we've met here, but haven't made a lot of really close friends, so it's not as hard to leave as it might have been. Wellington is still just two hours away from Wanganui, where our closest Kiwi friends live, which means we'll still visit regularly. But regardless of other considerations, we're just so excited for J to finally have a job that he can enjoy.

Wellington is an upbeat, active city, and almost every Kiwi we've talked to about it has said that he/she would love to live there, so that's bound to be a good sign. Apparently, the only downside is that it's extremely windy, but we can deal with that.

I went to Wellington for the weekend with some friends, and had an energizing, pleasant time wandering around the waterfront and exploring. It made me even more excited to move there, as I can just imagine all the fun times J and I are going to have delving into all the interesting places there.

Wellington is the capital of NZ (hence J's work being there), and is located on the southern end of the North Island. It's population is a little over 200,000. It is built all around a big harbour, so that it has a long, winding waterfront with beautiful views to the land across. The islands in the middle of the harbour are wildlife sanctuaries, and just to the north-west of the main city is the Kapiti Coast, with Kapiti Island just offshore, both of which are stunningly beautiful.

I know I've posted pictures of Wellington before, but I thought I'd share a couple of my favourites, and some new ones that I took this weekend, so you can see what a beautiful place it is.

This is looking down from Mount Victoria, which is near the centre of the city, and one of the big Lord of the Rings filming locations.

This is one of my favourite areas along the waterfront.

Walk a little ways from there down Oriental Parade, which runs along the waterfront, and you get to this charming little beach.

This round building is the Beehive, which is the Parliament building. It's a few blocks away from the waterfront.

Right across the street from it is this building: Pastoral House is the MPI main office, where J will be working. It is so special for him to work right downtown!

This is looking in the other direction from near the top of Mount Victoria. 

We are so lucky that J's exciting work opportunity is taking us to such and amazing and beautiful place!

Last Pictures from our USA Trip

At long last, we have reached the end of the pictures I will post from our USA trip, which means that after this post, I will be back to writing about Kiwi adventures. I'm sure you're all relieved.

This post has just a few random pictures from our visit to Kansas. Unfortunately, it did not occur to me to ask any of my friends or family if I could use the pictures I took with them on my blog, so I won't be posting all the pictures of me hugging various people I adore. Or perhaps that's a good thing; they're probably special to me and not that interesting for the rest of you. (The pictures, not the people. Everyone would love the people).

Here's me on Johnny Kaw's foot. He is a Kansas legend, and he lives in the park right down the street from where I grew up!

Stories about him "related how Johnny Kaw created the kansas landscape, geography and pioneer trails. Kawa was said to have dug the Kansas River Valley, planted wheat, invented sunflowers, and grown giant potatoes. Kaw even controlled the weather, lopping the funnels off tornadoes and wringing out the clouds to end droughts. He pets were the mascots for the two state universities: a wildcat and a jayhawk, who enjoyed a good fight. The Dust Bowl was said to be a result of their fights" (https://en.wikipediea.org/wiki/Jonny_Kaw).

Dad made J and me an awesome lunch made almost exclusively from things from his garden. The exception were some sausages, which were from his girlfriend Lucinda's farm, about an hour away. Yay for eating local (and with Dad)!

These last pictures are from our second-to-last day in the States, which also happened to be my birthday. We went to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival, which is one of my favourite annual traditions. We've gone almost every year for most of my life, and I always look forward to it. I was especially eager this time because we got to go with Maria, and got to meet her boyfriend Josh, who I'd only met over Skype.

This is Maid Marian schooling Robin Hood on fencing. She knocks both him and Little John into the pond, which I always enjoy.

Mom, John (my brother) and his girlfriend Alyssa came up to the Festival as well. I didn't know John and Alyssa were coming, so it was a fabulous surprise! It was so amazing to see them all! Here they are watching a magic show.

I got to be in the magic show! The magician is making salt disappear and reappear in my hand and his hand. It is actually very impressive.

Maria got to be in the show as well, and I accidentally caught the exact moment when she realized that the wizard had magically detached the long rope they were using while she was faithfully trying to cut it like he'd asked her to. Wizards are so sneaky!

We also caught a few minutes of the joust, which was fairly exciting for stage combat. I know that they practice how to do it without hurting each other, but they still hit really hard, and I don't think I'd like to be getting hit with those staffs! Anyway, in all my years of going, I'd never seen the joust, so it was fun to see.

This brings to a close the first installment of American Adventures on this blog. Stay tuned for Kiwi Adventures in the next week or so.

Wakulla Springs

After the Tallahassee Museum, we met J's sister Lauren and her fiancé for lunch, and then J's dad took us all to Wakulla Springs. Last time we were in Florida, we kayaked a little further down the spring, and this time we went on a boat tour right at the beginning. We were very lucky; apparently sometimes people go the entire tour and only see a few animals, but the river seemed almost crowded with animal life on our tour. Of course, we had an unfair advantage, because Mike and Lauren were very good at spotting all the animals.

We saw alligators of all shapes and sizes (mostly huge).

The water was so beautiful with reeds growing all around. I'm sure that there were many creatures hiding in them.

We spotted an entire family of alligators resting on the shore.

There were multitudes of stunning birds, including this white ibis.

We saw this mother and baby manatee, relaxing in the water. They are such amazing animals. 

This cormorant and turtle looked like they were intentionally posing for our pictures, and then a manatee was thoughtful enough to drift over so its tail was in the shot as well (to the far right). Very cool.

Can you spot the alligator? Apparently, they like to make these little coves off the side of the river, where they can hide out of sight until something delicious passes by. 

On this sign, you can see the beautiful manor house, where we had a delicious chocolate malt with Mike and Lauren.

Happy father and son. They really look so much alike!

Tallahassee Museum

We are back home in New Plymouth now, and after 16 hours of sleep our first night back, we are (amazingly) still tired, but coping well. We are thankful to have a weekend to rest and recuperate before heading back to work on Monday, and thankful for our entire trip, which was filled with many good times with friends and family.

Before I get back to Kiwi adventures, I still have some pictures from our trip, and I've decided that they're much too fun not to share, so... I'm going to share them.

The following pictures are from our visit with J's dad, Mike, in Tallahassee, Florida. We spent two wonderful days there with him, doing all kinds of fun things, and enjoying getting to catch up as well. 

We went to the Tallahassee Museum, to which Mike took J when he was a kid, so it was fun for me to get to see it as well. Plus, it was just a great place!

The zoo part of the museum is in this beautiful wetlands, which we loved wandering through.

This is a Florida panther. I thought it was so fierce and beautiful, I bought a postcard of it to send to my kids at kindergarten. (I hope it actually made it to them).

 This little duck seemed to have drifted off to sleep while taking a drink of water, which is pretty darn adorable.

There was an otter habitat, and I was so excited, because I love otters. But then we couldn't see them, and I had just started to feel disappointed when Mike pointed out a guy who was walking past and said that he'd worked at the museum for a long time. When Mike said hi, they guy came over and started chatting about the otters, and then called them by name, and they came running right out! Apparently, he had raised one of the, and it still loves him and will crawl right into his lap. It was so amazing, and I was delighted to get to watch the otters. Good thing we came with someone who knew the place!

We got to see a big, black bear. I thought it was surprising cute for being the size of a small car.

We also got to see quite a few different dinosaurs (and other prehistoric animals that look like dinosaurs but aren't) made out of car parts. They were phenomenal.

The museum also included a very interesting area that is set up like an old-fashioned farm, which was fun and informative. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures in that area, but we enjoyed it.

Bahamian Beaches

We learned on our cruise that people are not exaggerating when they say that the most amazing beaches are in the Bahamas. We love our beaches in New Zealand, but we were definitely impressed with these!

We had an afternoon in Freeport, and a day in Nassau. Freeport is among the biggest of the 700 islands, while Nassau is one of the smallest. I didn’t even know that there were lots of islands, this was all new to me.

So… without further ado, I present beautiful beach number one. This was a 15 minute drive from the port at Freeport, near a lovely little market at Port Lucaya.

The colours of the water were unbelievable!

It rained during part of the time we were swimming, but the water and the air were so warm, it didn’t really bother us. In fact, wading into the water was like getting into a warm bath. The ocean in NZ (at least when we’ve been in it) is always quite cold, so this was a completely different experience.

Someone was selling these beautiful conch shells, and though I wasn’t interested in buying them, they made for a lovely picture.

We always take pictures of our feet at the beach. Our feet are actually covered in a bit of water, but you can’t tell, because it’s so clear!

In the market, we got drinks in fresh coconuts! They chop them open right there with a machete, then mix the coconut milk with some slushy yumminess (and rum, in J’s case) and when you’ve finished the drink, you can scoop out the coconut and eat that as well. It was amazing.

This is the market we walked around. It was a beautiful place, but we quickly became uncomfortable with the pressure to buy things. I remember the same thing from Jamaica, and I know that it’s a product of the unfortunate situation of trying to make a living selling things to vacationers who are only there for a day and will never be back, but I struggle to cope with it, so we tended to move on quite quickly.

The boat took us to Nassau as we slept, and when we woke up, this was the first view we saw. Stunning.

This beautiful lady was on the street, all dressed up in Bahamian dancing garb.

We also met this friendly pirate, who even held my purse while we posed for a picture.

We headed to the beach, which, unsurprisingly, was amazing.

Look how clear the water is! I’m almost up to my knees.

The tiny, gentle waves looked like liquid glass, sliding across the sand.

Back on the ship, I went back to Serenity (on the back deck) and watched as we left the Bahamas and the sun set.  I love this glowing cloud, with the wisps above it and the moon already peaking out.