Sunday, August 23, 2009
Our NZ Winter Holiday
July 09
We spent the first 5 days of our holiday in the North Island - visiting friends and family in Auckland and Leigh (north of Auckland). Then we flew to Blenheim in the South Island to visit my mum. She had organised a campervan for us, so we did a 10 day trip around the highlights of the South Island - whale watching, hiking in Mt Cook National Park, checking out lots of stunning NZ lakes & climbing on Fox Glacier. It was simply a fantastic holiday & the weather was good to us to (amazing considering it is winter & the weather had been dreadful before we arrived. We'll definately be back.
Back to School – Lots of Changes
August 09
View from our Balcony
View from our Balcony
Well, after a truly great holiday that just seemed to last forever (nearly 4 weeks with the boys & Bill’s family in Manchester followed by about 3 weeks in NZ with my family), we checked into Manchester Airport last Friday and started the trip back to Luanda.
Bill bought 20 soccer balls for his football team & we went mad in the supermarket the day before we left, so we had 4 checked bags + Bills bicycle. Check-in at British Airways is always so easy – no hassles & the bike went free as an added bonus. Even better, we didn’t need to change terminals at Heathrow so that was a smooth turn-around too.
The flight had many more women & children on it than the flight we made just more than a year ago – an indication of how the country is changing I guess. When we arrived (3am, 4am?) we were very surprised to see that the arrivals hall has been made much larger so the queuing seemed more orderly. Also the air conditioning was working as well. The best part of flying BA is that it is the only flight to arrive at that time, so there are no back-logs of people and even the luggage came out reasonably fast.
Bill was concerned about being hit with import tax for the soccer balls & that his bicycle would make customs more likely to stop him. So when we had all our bags together, he went out first with a bag of clothes and the bike, while I followed him out 5 minutes later with the other three bags. Of course they opened the bag with the balls in it (all bags were x-rayed as a matter of course – another first for our Luanda airport experiences) but when they found out I didn’t speak Portuguese and didn’t have the receipt for the balls on me (a lesson for future packing to put receipts into relevant suitcases), they gave up and let me go. Outside was Tony B (there to pick up his wife, but still good to see him) and an empty carpark. The car park expansion had just been recently finished and the barrier arm that let cars into the park had broken earlier in the night – so no one had been able to get into the airport to pick up relatives etc, and traffic was backed-up at the entrance of the airport for ages. Fortunately, we were able to just push our luggage trolleys out of the car-park & the school buses were there on the outside to pick us up. We were on our way back to the school in really a very quick time. Another big advantage of the BA flight is that there is no traffic on the roads so early in the morning, so the trip to school only takes 20 minutes or so – much faster than the hour or more it takes during the day.
We got back to school & our “house” – it had been cleaned during the holidays & it surprised us how much it felt like “home”. It was good to be back in our own place instead of staying with others – no matter how comfortable and welcome we had felt there. There is no time difference between the UK and Angola at the moment, but we’d only arrived in the UK from NZ two days before we flew out again and we were still feeling a bit jet-lagged & tired from all the flying we had done over the previous few days.
We spent the weekend sorting out the house (all our electrical and music stuff had been locked into the bedroom) and getting the basics restocked again. (The fridge and freezer had to be emptied out over the holidays, so we had no milk etc waiting for us). We unpacked the bags, Bill re-constructed his bicycle and despite the fact that it didn’t go first time, got the motorcycle working as well.
Monday was back to school – meeting the new teachers & getting keys for classrooms to get them ready. However, Monday was a day of meetings & we were both booked onto a first aid training course all day Thursday & Friday, so the actual amount of preparation time didn’t feel quite adequate.
Bill was made Head of Science (he’d applied right at the end of last year), which meant he had more to organise than usual. I was putting together a booklet for the MYP math classes, so we were both busy with departmental stuff.
The first aid course was busy – it totally ate up all of Thursday & Friday and everyone found the exam at the end confusing (it had been translated from Portuguese & the questions were poorly worded), but in the end we both passed. I haven’t done first aid training since I left Japan, so I was pleased to be current again. However the time we lost meant that we had to go back to school on Sunday afternoon to get our rooms ready.
The biggest surprise of the week was Di telling us early on Wednesday morning that one of the apartments was available because the teacher who was in it had decided he didn’t like it and wanted to move back to campus. Of course there was another couple we needed to go into a draw for the apartment – we’d lost out in all the previous draws, so weren’t feeling particularly optimistic. We had the draw at lunch time – Bill sent me as he’d been unlucky in previous draws & much to my amazement we won!!!!
We had to shift on Saturday so we booked a bus for 9am, borrowed lots of plastic storage bins to move with & we managed to have most of it packed up by 9am Saturday morning (we did have to get up early to achieve it). Friday night had been the staff barbeque with the board members and to everyone’s horror, the empty field across the road from the school was converted into a temporary church meeting – hundreds of people arrived and some sort of sermon was broadcast at maximum volume – it was impossible to sleep even though we were dead tired & had gone to bed early. Fortunately they turned the speakers off before midnight so we did get some sleep – but it was an ironic last night on campus – the normal peace & quiet well & truly shattered.
The shift went almost effortlessly – Tomi came to help & the driver was a huge help as well – the whole move took less than 2 hours. I’d been at home packing, so my first look at our new apartment was with it filled with boxes, but what a treat – 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and so much space……
We spent the rest of Saturday unpacking and organising. We don’t get a cleaner come to the flats the way we did on campus, but instead we get an extra $400 a month to cover the cost of supplies & a cleaner if we want one. We decided to try to clean ourselves & save the money – but also decided that buying a vacuum cleaner for $100 would be a good investment. We headed off to Shoprite on Saturday afternoon, not sure how busy it would be, but knowing that we had a ton of cleaning stuff we needed to buy. It was our first Shoprite visit since returning (Bill had been buying bits and pieces on his forays on the motorbike, so we’d been able to put it off), and I have to say, we were pleasantly surprised – Shoprite had the best selection of stuff we’ve ever seen there, the crowds weren’t too bad & the whole experience was quite painless. We even got our vacuum cleaner there!
One of our buys was a bottle of champagne – we’ve been celebrating our Angolan milestones with champagne since our champagne picnic lunch in Regents Park, London the day we got our visa – with a follow-up bottle the dawn we arrived a year ago. We haven’t had one since – coming back for our second year hadn’t seemed momentous enough, but without doubt, moving into our new 3rd floor apartment (with a view out over Luanda Sol) certainly was!
The weekend passed at record speed & to be honest I didn’t feel as organised for classes as I normally like to be. However, this last week with the kids back has gone by remarkably quickly, and it has been great to see the kids again & to meet new students. The week was pretty uneventful – we had a productive MYP meeting on Thursday after school organising linkages between different departments. The admin are also determined to crack down on dress code “abuse”, which certainly led to some interesting discussions in my homeroom on Friday afternoon. The whiff of a uniform is in the air….
This weekend has been more of the same – final unpacking of bags & organising the flat – we moved our dining room table into one of the spare bedrooms so we could use it as a study big enough for the two of us (the apartment does have a little office/study but it just isn’t big enough for both of us to work in at the same time). We needed to take some legs off the table to get it into the room we wanted, but we are thrilled with the end result – we have a huge table to do our work on & the living room is wide open with lots of space.
Other delights of the apartment include our own washing machine – no more using the shared laundry – and (a real treat) a dishwasher! We have a balcony that looks out over the street, & although it is a bit noisy and dusty, it is fine for drying clothes and we are thinking about getting a small barbeque for out there. We’ll buy some pots & potting mix (if we can) and see if we can’t grow some of the seeds we have too. We are still pinching ourselves about being here – it’s been a week but it still feels slightly unreal.
Bill bought 20 soccer balls for his football team & we went mad in the supermarket the day before we left, so we had 4 checked bags + Bills bicycle. Check-in at British Airways is always so easy – no hassles & the bike went free as an added bonus. Even better, we didn’t need to change terminals at Heathrow so that was a smooth turn-around too.
The flight had many more women & children on it than the flight we made just more than a year ago – an indication of how the country is changing I guess. When we arrived (3am, 4am?) we were very surprised to see that the arrivals hall has been made much larger so the queuing seemed more orderly. Also the air conditioning was working as well. The best part of flying BA is that it is the only flight to arrive at that time, so there are no back-logs of people and even the luggage came out reasonably fast.
Bill was concerned about being hit with import tax for the soccer balls & that his bicycle would make customs more likely to stop him. So when we had all our bags together, he went out first with a bag of clothes and the bike, while I followed him out 5 minutes later with the other three bags. Of course they opened the bag with the balls in it (all bags were x-rayed as a matter of course – another first for our Luanda airport experiences) but when they found out I didn’t speak Portuguese and didn’t have the receipt for the balls on me (a lesson for future packing to put receipts into relevant suitcases), they gave up and let me go. Outside was Tony B (there to pick up his wife, but still good to see him) and an empty carpark. The car park expansion had just been recently finished and the barrier arm that let cars into the park had broken earlier in the night – so no one had been able to get into the airport to pick up relatives etc, and traffic was backed-up at the entrance of the airport for ages. Fortunately, we were able to just push our luggage trolleys out of the car-park & the school buses were there on the outside to pick us up. We were on our way back to the school in really a very quick time. Another big advantage of the BA flight is that there is no traffic on the roads so early in the morning, so the trip to school only takes 20 minutes or so – much faster than the hour or more it takes during the day.
We got back to school & our “house” – it had been cleaned during the holidays & it surprised us how much it felt like “home”. It was good to be back in our own place instead of staying with others – no matter how comfortable and welcome we had felt there. There is no time difference between the UK and Angola at the moment, but we’d only arrived in the UK from NZ two days before we flew out again and we were still feeling a bit jet-lagged & tired from all the flying we had done over the previous few days.
We spent the weekend sorting out the house (all our electrical and music stuff had been locked into the bedroom) and getting the basics restocked again. (The fridge and freezer had to be emptied out over the holidays, so we had no milk etc waiting for us). We unpacked the bags, Bill re-constructed his bicycle and despite the fact that it didn’t go first time, got the motorcycle working as well.
Monday was back to school – meeting the new teachers & getting keys for classrooms to get them ready. However, Monday was a day of meetings & we were both booked onto a first aid training course all day Thursday & Friday, so the actual amount of preparation time didn’t feel quite adequate.
Bill was made Head of Science (he’d applied right at the end of last year), which meant he had more to organise than usual. I was putting together a booklet for the MYP math classes, so we were both busy with departmental stuff.
The first aid course was busy – it totally ate up all of Thursday & Friday and everyone found the exam at the end confusing (it had been translated from Portuguese & the questions were poorly worded), but in the end we both passed. I haven’t done first aid training since I left Japan, so I was pleased to be current again. However the time we lost meant that we had to go back to school on Sunday afternoon to get our rooms ready.
The biggest surprise of the week was Di telling us early on Wednesday morning that one of the apartments was available because the teacher who was in it had decided he didn’t like it and wanted to move back to campus. Of course there was another couple we needed to go into a draw for the apartment – we’d lost out in all the previous draws, so weren’t feeling particularly optimistic. We had the draw at lunch time – Bill sent me as he’d been unlucky in previous draws & much to my amazement we won!!!!
We had to shift on Saturday so we booked a bus for 9am, borrowed lots of plastic storage bins to move with & we managed to have most of it packed up by 9am Saturday morning (we did have to get up early to achieve it). Friday night had been the staff barbeque with the board members and to everyone’s horror, the empty field across the road from the school was converted into a temporary church meeting – hundreds of people arrived and some sort of sermon was broadcast at maximum volume – it was impossible to sleep even though we were dead tired & had gone to bed early. Fortunately they turned the speakers off before midnight so we did get some sleep – but it was an ironic last night on campus – the normal peace & quiet well & truly shattered.
The shift went almost effortlessly – Tomi came to help & the driver was a huge help as well – the whole move took less than 2 hours. I’d been at home packing, so my first look at our new apartment was with it filled with boxes, but what a treat – 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and so much space……
We spent the rest of Saturday unpacking and organising. We don’t get a cleaner come to the flats the way we did on campus, but instead we get an extra $400 a month to cover the cost of supplies & a cleaner if we want one. We decided to try to clean ourselves & save the money – but also decided that buying a vacuum cleaner for $100 would be a good investment. We headed off to Shoprite on Saturday afternoon, not sure how busy it would be, but knowing that we had a ton of cleaning stuff we needed to buy. It was our first Shoprite visit since returning (Bill had been buying bits and pieces on his forays on the motorbike, so we’d been able to put it off), and I have to say, we were pleasantly surprised – Shoprite had the best selection of stuff we’ve ever seen there, the crowds weren’t too bad & the whole experience was quite painless. We even got our vacuum cleaner there!
One of our buys was a bottle of champagne – we’ve been celebrating our Angolan milestones with champagne since our champagne picnic lunch in Regents Park, London the day we got our visa – with a follow-up bottle the dawn we arrived a year ago. We haven’t had one since – coming back for our second year hadn’t seemed momentous enough, but without doubt, moving into our new 3rd floor apartment (with a view out over Luanda Sol) certainly was!
The weekend passed at record speed & to be honest I didn’t feel as organised for classes as I normally like to be. However, this last week with the kids back has gone by remarkably quickly, and it has been great to see the kids again & to meet new students. The week was pretty uneventful – we had a productive MYP meeting on Thursday after school organising linkages between different departments. The admin are also determined to crack down on dress code “abuse”, which certainly led to some interesting discussions in my homeroom on Friday afternoon. The whiff of a uniform is in the air….
This weekend has been more of the same – final unpacking of bags & organising the flat – we moved our dining room table into one of the spare bedrooms so we could use it as a study big enough for the two of us (the apartment does have a little office/study but it just isn’t big enough for both of us to work in at the same time). We needed to take some legs off the table to get it into the room we wanted, but we are thrilled with the end result – we have a huge table to do our work on & the living room is wide open with lots of space.
Other delights of the apartment include our own washing machine – no more using the shared laundry – and (a real treat) a dishwasher! We have a balcony that looks out over the street, & although it is a bit noisy and dusty, it is fine for drying clothes and we are thinking about getting a small barbeque for out there. We’ll buy some pots & potting mix (if we can) and see if we can’t grow some of the seeds we have too. We are still pinching ourselves about being here – it’s been a week but it still feels slightly unreal.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Our “Year” is Over!
June 09
Finally! Just 1 school day to go, 2 days to get stuff organised and we fly out of Luanda having completed our first “year” here. Of course, that’s a school year – it won’t be a calendar year until we return in August to do it all again!
The last couple of weeks have been crazily hectic (like schools everywhere I guess). We have had a graduation ceremony for the year 13 students (the school’s third). The year 7 students have had their PYP exhibition. A couple of performances have taken place including a huge musical production of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Reports have been written and students across the school have had their student led conferences.
In our life, finalising the yearbook has been the biggest issue – but it too is done, several hundred copies burned (in both PAL and NSTC formats), the signing booklets arrived from South Africa and today the students received their first yearbook before the end of school in years (ever ?) as previous printed ones have never arrived or cleared customs in time for the students to receive them before they leave. I was worried the kids might be dismissive of the little signing booklet, but I shouldn’t have worried. Hopefully the feedback tomorrow on the DVD will be good too.
Bill has spent the last three days away at Rio Longa with the entire year 12 class – they have been doing their Group 4 science project there. Every day there are less and less kids in class as they and their parents leave early to go on holiday (a process that has been going on for more than 3 weeks now!). Reports won’t be issued until the end of school tomorrow, but it doesn’t seem a big enough incentive to keep families here till the end of school. (and at the other end of the school year, many don’t think arriving on time is particularly important either).
So – what a year it has been! Partly I feel as if we’ve been here “forever” as the novelty has well & truly worn off, but also I find it hard to believe that a whole year has gone by so quickly. Amongst the teachers here, there have been 3 weddings (with two more these holidays), one baby born, and one definitely on the way. Five teachers have needed to be evacuated to South Africa for health reasons and just in the last two weeks, two others have come down with malaria. The school grew 30% this year and looks like growing a similar amount next year – so already the school is at capacity again (despite a new two-storey teaching block opening this year) – and enrolment at many year levels is closed. It seems more and more families are coming to Luanda all the time & once our school is full, there is really no where else to go. New apartment complexes are springing up all around the local area and the queues in the supermarkets get longer every week. Food prices haven’t come down and supply is still intermittent at best – everyone shops and hordes as you never know when something will disappear off the shelves for a month or two. But the new roads in and around the city have made travel much easier, although if you have the misfortune to travel during rush hour, the trips still take 3 hours or more. Luanda is gearing up for big international football matches in January of 2010 – apparently a new stadium is being built, although we haven’t seen it. There are also rumours of improvements at the airport – at the moment it only seems to be the carparks outside that have changed, but who knows by the time we come back?
Over the year the weather has gone from hazy & cool by day and chilly at night when we first arrived, to clear & then very hot and sunny. We even got about 4 days of rain (not on end) – one rainfall was so heavy it flooded the paths at school & we couldn’t let the kids change classes at the end of the lesson. The temperatures are now noticeably dropping again & it was decidedly hazy at Rio Longa this week. During this time, the baobab trees have gone from bare branches when we arrived, to new leaves, flowered, grew massive fruit pods & although still heavily in leaf, no doubt they will drop while we are away to start the cycle all over again.
Finally! Just 1 school day to go, 2 days to get stuff organised and we fly out of Luanda having completed our first “year” here. Of course, that’s a school year – it won’t be a calendar year until we return in August to do it all again!
The last couple of weeks have been crazily hectic (like schools everywhere I guess). We have had a graduation ceremony for the year 13 students (the school’s third). The year 7 students have had their PYP exhibition. A couple of performances have taken place including a huge musical production of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Reports have been written and students across the school have had their student led conferences.
In our life, finalising the yearbook has been the biggest issue – but it too is done, several hundred copies burned (in both PAL and NSTC formats), the signing booklets arrived from South Africa and today the students received their first yearbook before the end of school in years (ever ?) as previous printed ones have never arrived or cleared customs in time for the students to receive them before they leave. I was worried the kids might be dismissive of the little signing booklet, but I shouldn’t have worried. Hopefully the feedback tomorrow on the DVD will be good too.
Bill has spent the last three days away at Rio Longa with the entire year 12 class – they have been doing their Group 4 science project there. Every day there are less and less kids in class as they and their parents leave early to go on holiday (a process that has been going on for more than 3 weeks now!). Reports won’t be issued until the end of school tomorrow, but it doesn’t seem a big enough incentive to keep families here till the end of school. (and at the other end of the school year, many don’t think arriving on time is particularly important either).
So – what a year it has been! Partly I feel as if we’ve been here “forever” as the novelty has well & truly worn off, but also I find it hard to believe that a whole year has gone by so quickly. Amongst the teachers here, there have been 3 weddings (with two more these holidays), one baby born, and one definitely on the way. Five teachers have needed to be evacuated to South Africa for health reasons and just in the last two weeks, two others have come down with malaria. The school grew 30% this year and looks like growing a similar amount next year – so already the school is at capacity again (despite a new two-storey teaching block opening this year) – and enrolment at many year levels is closed. It seems more and more families are coming to Luanda all the time & once our school is full, there is really no where else to go. New apartment complexes are springing up all around the local area and the queues in the supermarkets get longer every week. Food prices haven’t come down and supply is still intermittent at best – everyone shops and hordes as you never know when something will disappear off the shelves for a month or two. But the new roads in and around the city have made travel much easier, although if you have the misfortune to travel during rush hour, the trips still take 3 hours or more. Luanda is gearing up for big international football matches in January of 2010 – apparently a new stadium is being built, although we haven’t seen it. There are also rumours of improvements at the airport – at the moment it only seems to be the carparks outside that have changed, but who knows by the time we come back?
Over the year the weather has gone from hazy & cool by day and chilly at night when we first arrived, to clear & then very hot and sunny. We even got about 4 days of rain (not on end) – one rainfall was so heavy it flooded the paths at school & we couldn’t let the kids change classes at the end of the lesson. The temperatures are now noticeably dropping again & it was decidedly hazy at Rio Longa this week. During this time, the baobab trees have gone from bare branches when we arrived, to new leaves, flowered, grew massive fruit pods & although still heavily in leaf, no doubt they will drop while we are away to start the cycle all over again.
Monday, May 25, 2009
“Postcards from Angola”
May 09
These last few weeks have been very uneventful for us as the craziness of the last few weeks of school takes over. I am doing three online courses – one is due to finish soon, the other two have just started. But a much bigger drain on my time (to the extent that it is literally taking up all my spare time) is that I am putting the school’s yearbook together – virtually single headedly, although Bill has stepped in to help with some of the organisation that still needs to be done. We are making a digital yearbook & I have never made one of those or even a normal yearbook before (which is one of the reasons why it is running so late in the year).
Anyway, we are not doing much other than just surviving it seems. But the big treat this week arrived yesterday from my sister Pam in Australia. She has been working on making a video as part of her job (she is a librarian in Brisbane). When she discovered she needed to make a video, she decided to use our life in Angola as her topic. Yesterday, she sent me the final product – the video labels has slipped a bit in the uploading & downloading process, but what a treat – to see a 5 minute summary of our time here this year. We both love it – thank you Pam!
These last few weeks have been very uneventful for us as the craziness of the last few weeks of school takes over. I am doing three online courses – one is due to finish soon, the other two have just started. But a much bigger drain on my time (to the extent that it is literally taking up all my spare time) is that I am putting the school’s yearbook together – virtually single headedly, although Bill has stepped in to help with some of the organisation that still needs to be done. We are making a digital yearbook & I have never made one of those or even a normal yearbook before (which is one of the reasons why it is running so late in the year).
Anyway, we are not doing much other than just surviving it seems. But the big treat this week arrived yesterday from my sister Pam in Australia. She has been working on making a video as part of her job (she is a librarian in Brisbane). When she discovered she needed to make a video, she decided to use our life in Angola as her topic. Yesterday, she sent me the final product – the video labels has slipped a bit in the uploading & downloading process, but what a treat – to see a 5 minute summary of our time here this year. We both love it – thank you Pam!
Friday, May 22, 2009
The Etosha Pan "Sea"
Another (non-edited) video from Namibia. You can see just how wet the Etosha pan was. This was taken in two different locations, with the second half shot out the moving car. In the first half you get a glimpse of the state of the car! It was so covered in mud that we had to get it washed twice (once to clear the plates and the lights & again at the end of the trip) before we could hand it back. Everyone who saw us after we left Etosha could tell that's where we'd been by looking at the car.
Monday, May 18, 2009
A slice of carnival
It's a bit late, but this gives you an idea of the craziness of Carnival. This was taken not long before we went home for the day.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Zebra video
Here are some of the many zebras we saw in Etosha. The first part shows lots of them at a waterhole (where we stayed for the first two nights) and then the rest are the zebras we encounted on a drive in the afternoon. The zebras were standing around, with many of them leaning their heads on each other's backs. You can hear more camera clicking in the background!
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