A few weeks ago it looked as if winter had hit us overnight, bypassing autumn altogether. We then had a bit of an Indian summer but this week has been definitely cooler (not cold) with lots of wind and rain. Balloons over the Waikato, a week long balloon festival, has been a write-off but the final day was moved from yesterday to today and looks like that will be OK. Today there are definitely blue skies out there and it looks fairly still. We are going to see it with Juliet and Kev, and both sets of parents. J+K’s rented house is fight by the university where it is all happening.
Having a lazy-ish weekend as I have been away for the last 2. The first was with Waikato Schools Band (which you may recall I am managing) on a music camp which I organised. I felt it had been thrown together and was quite apprehensive about it. Come Friday evening, after a busy week and with a headache the last thing I wanted to do was take 22 hormonal teenagers (12-17years) off to camp! However, it was fabulous and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The camp is on top of the cliffs overlooking Raglan and it’s bay, on the North Island’s west coast about an hour from Hamilton. The views are to die for and, if I can get photobucket to do what I want I’ll try and post some piccies later. The band is quite new and the point of the weekend was getting them to know each other and a bit of team building. It turned out that quite a few had actually not wanted to go and in fact Harriette was in tears over it. Anyway we started Saturday morning in the gym with some games. Firstly I got everyone into a time line by their age and then called people out one by one and got them to pick the person they knew least. I then sent them off in their pairs to find out about each other, including one bizarre fact about their partner, and then got everyone back and they introduced the other person to the group. This was hilarious and was followed by a game where they stood in a circle and threw a ball to someone in the circle at the same time saying that person’s name. The point being names were repeated frequently until everyone knew everyone else’s. Finally we played a game that could be loosely called netball but with no rules and no bibs so people weren’t quite sure who was on their team. It was chaos and the kids loved it!
Over the weekend we parents had 2 hours break each morning and afternoon as the band did their music stuff. They improved hugely and enjoyed the new music they had. We, ie committee members, had been quite disappointed at the lack of help from other parents and it ended up with just Robyn, Cathy (another Matamata mom and on our committee) and myself, along with Roger one of the girls uncles who came for a day. However, by the end of the w/e we decided that it was actually better with just a few of us as there was not 10 parents offering 10 different opinions on what should be done next of how a situation should be handled. We spent our spare time walking or reading. I spent one session with my book lying in a huge hammock on the cliffs overlooking the bay. On the Saturday morning Sarah and I walked at 6.15. We went down (everywhere was down!) to Manu bay and hoped to walk back along the beach but could not get from Manu to the long stretch of sand below our camp so walked back up the road we had just gone down (windy, surrounded by bush and almost no traffic). It was a 50 minute walk and very enjoyable, despite the serious climb. I loved listening to the birdsong which is so very different from that in the UK, or even from home. Some of the birds here, as I may have said before, have such bizarre song, haunting and almost how I imagine pre-historic birds would sound. About 20m from the camp entrance there was a 20 minute bush walk down to the beach. Robyn, Cathy and I did this during the afternoon and walked along the beach watching the surfers who, from the camp looked like seals in the sea!
Saturday evening the plan was for a talent quest but that was not very popular and only the boys did a few things. One of the Youth Band members, Josh, had joined us for the whole weekend to support the brass section. He was such good value and had the rest of the crowd in hysterics mist of the time. He and Darryn led some ‘theatre sports’ and had every single person (including the parents) up on stage acting out some bizarre things. It was hilarious and everyone had a ball. As the weekend progressed I was so pleased to see how everyone got on so well. There were no clicks or set groups and no-one seemed to be excluded from anything. The ‘popular’ boys did not just mix with the ‘prettiest’ girls and being a small camp we relaxed the rules hugely. In particular we didn’t ban the opposite sex from the dorms, which they thought was great. During daylight hours I mean!!! At one point lots of them were in, or draped round, Josh’s car with all the doors open and the CD blaring out, can you believe “My Dingaling” yes a re-run of the old Chuck Berry song. I came round the corner singing and dancing to this in front of them all and some of them thought me very cool knowing the words!! They obviously had no idea of its antecedence. It could have been a scene from the 1950’s!!
These photos were taken from the camp. Not the hammock!
I was rather stiff on Sunday so skipped walking that day! Sunday afternoon the camp culminated with a concert for the parents when they came to collect their offspring and lots of the group coming to me saying ‘When can we come on camp again?’! It was a fabulous weekend and we left feeling like one big happy family and everyone lamenting that there would be no practice for 3 weeks because of Easter!
A busy week preceded the Easter weekend when we went down to Rosie and Bryan to see their new New Plymouth home. We loved it. It is a 2 storey house that looks across paddocks to the Tasman Sea from the kitchen and back inland to Mount Taranaki, a volcano that dominates the region. The garden is seriously high maintenance with a huge excess of crazy paving which Rosie says has to go! It is divided into 10 –12 separate areas including a piggery and orchard and lots of lawn and grass and a stream and pond surrounded by bush. It is very over run and will need days of work to get on top of it and hours each week to keep it nice. Hence their intention to re-think it completely. They also have a 40’ polytunnel which I would die for and we have pleaded with them to give us first refusal if they sell it. We shopped, swam at the Aquatic Centre, went up the mountain and spent a gorgeous evening on the beach at Oakuru as the sun set on Saturday followed by an Indian takeaway. Late nights playing canasta and drinking and eating far too much made for a lovely relaxing weekend. Thank you The Moyes.
Well it’s coming up to 10am so I should get up. Yesterday I slept in until 11.10am! I don’t think I’ve slept that late for years. I think the good book I am reading is to blame, I have stayed up late reading every night. Maybe that’s why I am struggling to get up and walk in the morning!!
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