Winter Wow!

Who would have guessed – in amongst all the global warming hype we arrived in Manchester to a scene covered in snow! In fact, on our flight from Dubai, all we could see from the time the sun came up as we flew over Europe was a sea of snow. Snow everywhere. Luckily our flight wasn’t significantly delayed, by the time we got to Manchester the airport had been open long enough to clear most of the back-log.

Although it snowed more the day we arrived, from then on it was really just sub-zero temperatures with frosts & no snow – so the snow didn’t melt & the footpaths became dangerously icy & everyone walked on the roads instead.

By Christmas, it was still icy and much of the snow was gone, but with the boys with us for Christmas morning & the whole family for Christmas dinner it was a wonderful day. After Christmas we visited Bill’s aunts and cousins in Scotland – many of whom he hadn’t seen for nearly twenty years. They made us feel very welcome & the snow up there was still thick. The kids had a great time with snow-ball fights & learning how to roll snowballs to make snowmen. They even got to go sledging down a hill behind Bill’s cousins house.
After just 12 short days, the boys flew back to Paris to their mother & we flew out the next day. But our last morning in Manchester we woke up to about 7 inches of fresh snow on the ground! No one could remember seeing so much snow for years. It was so weird – everything was strangely quiet as the schools had been closed & many businesses as well. Cars were trapped & supplies of grit to clear the roads almost exhausted by the series of heavy frosts and icy roads. Bill & I took our cameras out to the nearby park & found what seemed to be half the population making snowmen. And not just families with kids either.

With all the snow, we were a little anxious about our flight out, but with an 8pm departure we hoped we’d have no problems. As it turned out, we were lucky – Manchester airport opened about 1pm & our departure was delayed by only about an hour.

We are currently in Dubai airport waiting for our flight through to Bangkok for the job fair. Here’s hoping it goes well!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Bill & I are enjoying what looks like will be a white Christmas - it was snowing when we flew into Manchester airport. We'll be with family & loving every minute of it. We hope that everyone reading this also has a great Christmas and a wonderful 2010.

Rio Longa Once Again

The last day of school was a Thursday, & although most people fly out as fast as possible, once again Bill & I had booked our flights for about a week later. However, just like last year we found ourselves so busy in the run up to end of term that we didn’t get around to booking ourselves a break away. When the holidays actually came, we were still quite busy as we needed to make cover lessons for the first 6 days because we are going to the job fair in Bangkok.

We’d spoken to Tony B several months ago about our plans – we are happy at the school, but know it’s not the place we’ll stay long term. We wanted to start the process of looking for another school because we will be quite fussy about where we go next & reasoned it may take two years of looking to find the right school. Tony was great & agreed to let us postpone our final resignation until after the Bangkok fair, by advertising our positions as tentative.

We’d spent ages updating our CV’s – mine in particular needed re-working due to the fact that I’ve been teaching mathematics and MYP for the first time. Our first few days of holidays we found ourselves writing letters to a few schools that had matching vacancies, which had just come up on the job-fair website. I was also busy with my two online courses (an advanced Flash course & an intermediate Photoshop course) – the final assignments were due just as we finished school.

After spending several days on cover and writing application letters, we decided that the only realistic plan for our remaining week was to go to Rio Longa for a couple nights. We tried the telephone number we had, but of course, couldn’t get through. However, I managed eventually to find the website & make a booking online.

We were a bit surprised to find that we weren’t the only ones still around – one day when I was in my classroom working on my cover, Carolina walked in. It turned out that her son’s passport still hadn’t come back from getting his family visa. (Sami’s was late too – but had arrived with just under two weeks before the holiday). The school was doing its best to get the passport back, but because his original visa had well and truly expired, they couldn’t even just get his passport back & leave as the fine for overstaying his original visa could be thousands of dollars. They had missed the flight they had intended to leave on that day, and the remaining flights before Christmas were all heavily booked. Tony B had said they could take 3 weeks holiday from when his passport arrived, but understandably, she was quite anxious about where they would be for Christmas. She was remarkably calm about the situation – I know how stressed we would have been if we’d had to miss our flight. The whole visa thing has been a nightmare this year – the “blue stamp” issue is unofficially resolved – after a meeting with several people in the school and the board with the minister for petroleum who reassured the school that the people with blue stamps would in fact be able to renew their visas next year. The reassurances have worked, very few people other than Bill & I are looking at other schools, despite the large number of blue stamps issued.

We went up to Rio Longa early Wednesday morning & although the boat to pick us up wasn’t there, it arrived about 5 minutes later. The trip on the boat didn’t go past many birds, but we did see a very big crocodile – one of the biggest we’ve seen there. It was sunning itself on the bank, but as our boat came in closer we obviously disturbed it as it launched itself into the water in a fraction of a second. Very scary that a crocodile so big can move so fast!

When we got to the resort, we could see that we had it to ourselves & after explaining that we were the type of vegetarians that didn’t even eat chicken, yet alone fish, we sat out on the balcony and relaxed before lunch. After lunch we went in a kayak across to the ocean side & walked up to the headland. Distances are quite deceptive – we walked for a good couple of hours before we got to the end & then we finished off the water we’d carried – for some reason no matter how much water we have, it never quite seems to be enough! We saw several palm nut vultures which are common there, but not low down – they were circling way up in the thermals of the cliffs. The beach was covered in crabs as usual, we found a dead fish that been washed up in the waves – it was covered in a heaving mass of crabs trying to eat as much of it as possible before the sea reclaimed it.

By the time we’d walked back to the kayak we were quite exhausted & spent the rest of the afternoon being lazy & reading our books. The thing we love about Rio Longa is how totally relaxing it is & how beautiful it is to just sit & watch the lagoon with the sound of the sea in the background. It is also the sort of place that you go to bed really early (no electricity, so not much choice) and then get a great night’s sleep.

The next day after breakfast we went on our first “kayak safari” – we perfected this when we were here last year – one of us gets to paddle the other as close to the birds as possible while they take photos, and after working our way around the central lily pads and up the mangroves, we swap over when we can land the kayak on a beach. We thought the water hyacinth was much thicker this year than last, and it made it quite hard to get close to the mangrove roots. However, we saw a good assortment of birds, including the tiny pygmy kingfishers that live in the reeds.

In the afternoon we walked along the beach in the opposite direction (with much more water in our packs), but didn’t go nearly as far. We also went out on the resort boat, but it can’t get very close to the banks or trees, so not as good for taking photos of birds as the kayaks. We had another quiet and relaxing evening & the next day we went out on the kayak again – it was a very overcast day & there were noticeably less birds around, but we still managed to find a few. We had arranged to be picked up at 2pm, so had lunch before we left. When Bill went to pay our bill, they gave a price 50% more than the price quoted on their booking page on the internet. In the end we paid the price we’d expected, but to be honest the new prices are beyond even Angolan expensive. I doubt we will go back – US$600 a night for the two of us is just too much to pay for no electricity, free beers & sodas, but not wine or spirits & pretty average meals. The beauty of the place just isn’t worth that sort of money. With rates like that it is no wonder that we had the place to ourselves for two days with another couple only arriving just before we left. But, it was the perfect relaxing holiday for us before we headed back to the UK for the craziness of Christmas shopping and full on family. We have just a few days in Manchester before the boys arrive on Christmas Eve & from then on our days will be based around them. We are looking forward to it hugely, but it has been nice to have a bit of respite between the craziness of the end of school, getting ready for the job fair and being busy with family.

Fashion Extravaganza

Dahni, one of our year 13 students organised a fashion show as part of her CAS hours. She had designed a whole set of clothes and for the previous month or so had been organising practice sessions with the student “models”. As well as her clothes, one of the ladies in the office also designs clothes & she provided clothes for the second half of the show.

As well as the actual fashion parade, a group of mostly year 9 students choreographed a dance to perform & a student band – “the alternatives” performed as well.

I spent a couple of hours the day of the show taking photos of the dress rehearsal – the parade was on the ramp of building 6 as the theatre was still a construction site with the guys installing the light & sound system not quite finished. At first I wasn’t convinced it was going to work, but after watching the rehearsals, I could see that it would be very successful – the turns on the ramp gave the models a chance to turn & pose.

Danhi had a big crew of student helpers – they set up chairs both downstairs in the foyer & “VIP” seats upstairs at twice the price. The show started late (maybe that’s standard for fashion shows), partly because Danhi had taken the girls who were modelling to the hairdressers & they weren’t back by the time it was supposed to start. Dahni had done a superb organising job, as well as actually getting everything ready for the show. I took photos of the first half but went home at half time exhausted. All the money from the audience went to UNICEF and Dahni & Callie gave a very impressive speech at the start about UNICEF in general and what they are doing in Angola in particular. Although we don’t have the exact amount raised yet, we think it was around US$500. The whole evening was a real credit to her – no one has done anything like that before at the school.

Windhoek Sports Tournament

Bill set off to Windhoek with the boys soccer team, the girls soccer team and Bora, Tomi & a parent volleyball coach the morning after my birthday. He’d been organising the details of the trip for over two months & was more than ready for the tournament to actually start. The tournament was firstly a soccer tournament but there was also a volleyball tournament with mixed teams made from the girls and boys soccer teams.

The boys came second to the team from Malawi, the girls came fourth and the volleyball team showed its makeshift nature by playing well but failing to be placed.

The Jungle Book

This year’s PYP musical was The Jungle Book – Kim & Maggie did it as a joint effort with kids from year 5 to 7. They had originally planned for it to be in the theatre, but the technicians who were installing the lights and sound system had the theatre out of action & couldn’t guarantee that it would be ready in time for the performance. They decided they were better off just having it in the dining room again & hoping it would be their last performance there.

I went to the dress rehearsal during the day, when the younger kids were the first audience. It seemed to go really smoothly – so maybe the rather fraught rehearsal Sheila went to the day before had had the desired effect. I couldn’t stay until the very end, so I arranged with Kim to sit on the edge of the stage for the final night’s production & try to catch some photos from there.

Bill was in Windhoek so I came back to school early to catch the face-painting of the main characters. The kids had made their own “jungle” outfits in art classes & the costuming was very effective considering the limited resources. The elephant trunks were last year’s kangaroo tails!

There was lots of “line” dancing in this production & I wasn’t in a good position to photograph that, but I did manage to get some nice shots of many of the main actors. I couldn’t use a flash as I thought it would be distracting for the audience & I doubted it would catch the atmosphere effectively anyway.

After the performance I joined a group of teachers to go around to Kim’s place for some celebratory drinks. Tomi was in Windhoek with Bill – as was Bora, so Tina was babysitting Ella & Sami. Tony B joined us there & we had a very pleasant evening, although as it was still mid-week, we didn’t stay particularly late.

International Day 2009

International day had me busy once again making NZ themed stickers to give out for the children’s “passports”. There is actually a couple of half-kiwi kids in the school this year – their mum said they would be responsible for making questions that the kids would have to answer to get their sticker.

Despite Shannon & Danielle both being back in NZ (with their baby due in just a couple of weeks), and Nikki gone to Thailand, we’d gained three more kiwis this year. Candi had the idea of having a “Kiwi Café” theme – serving coffee lattes and having sofas with a DVD of NZ scenery playing in the background. We’d met and allocated tasks a month ago, so everyone knew what they were doing &/or providing. The official theme for the day was “Peace” and Whetu had a Maori story about a rainbow and warring colours. So I made a new set of stickers with a rainbow theme to go with the stickers I made last year.

As usual, I helped with setting up, & then excused myself to take photos for yearbook. I had made myself a “yearbook photographer” sticker for myself, Bill, Sheila and Oscar who were also taking photos for yearbook. It was much more overcast than last year, so not quite so hot watching the performances on stage. After the performances were over, I managed to get something to eat, have a look at the silent auction gift bags (nothing for us there) & check out the various stalls. Surprisingly fast, it was time to start taking our stall down – we’d had several boards with pictures and information on them, but we decided that no one had really bothered to stop and look at it – so we thought we’d try pictures only next year. Just as things were coming to a close, the bus bringing the teachers and kids back from a week in South Africa on their International Award trip arrived back from the airport. Talking to Marek, it seemed they’d had a fantastic time away & the kids had really enjoyed it.