 The year began pretty much the way 1990 ended except that I no longer had to get up in the morning and go to work. December had been the driest ever and January the second driest on record. In fact, with rain only nine times thru March it was the driest summer in Auckland history. So, with all that lovely weather Gail was in Arizona with her folks for seven weeks and I was too ill to get out much. That's what it seemed like at the time, but checking my diary I see that we did make it out the door quite often. And when Gail came back on 21st Jan we moved into hyper-drive and crammed a lot into the one free week she had before school began. While Gail was away we mice played - mostly with the Whites, who live in Waiuku, 25 miles west of us and near the surfing beach. Their house is the gathering place for the Fiji crowd in the area. Always something going on there. So we were surfing, boating, canoeing, swimming and having barbeques with a regular group of lively people.
I lied to everyone, including my own kids, about the day Gail was coming back. So I could sneak out to the airport on my own and we could have some time alone. We went to Miranda Hot pools where Gail was able to soak away the 24 hours of air travel. But that was the last quiet moment she had once we got her home. During the next week we went swimming, putt-putting twice, surfing twice, out to barbecues at three friends' places and went camping for three days. We basically, crammed into that week what we would normally do in the whole month.
 The camping was a bit different this year. We always go to the same place each year and try to avoid the crowds by going before Christmas or the second half of Jan. This year we were so late that there was only one other couple in out camping area. They were camping with about twenty stuffed toy teddy bears. I mean they had them out sitting around the campfire. We stayed well away from them, and they left the next day leaving us alone in the whole place. This is a junior size Yosemite, capable of accommodating 100+ campsites and we were the only ones there. Mind you the rain that second morning and the fact that school had started for some helped clear the place. The rain ended and we had a spectacular day for hiking up the hills and along the river. The Whites came out the first day but didn't stay. They left 8 year old Matthew with us and we also had David's friend Michael with us. Remember how I said it rained only 9 times. Well one of those downpours came the day we had to pack up and leave. But it was a warm rain. We even stopped on the way out of the valley to pick wild blackberries in the rain.
David's agony came to an end in Jan. The way the system works here is that fifth formers sit external exams in Nov. Then they have to wait until just before school begins to find out their results. The marks arrive the same day in the mail for everyone. Whether you can move up to sixth form depends on the results. A standard curve is used in issuing marks and 50% pass and 50% fail. This worked well in the old days when most kids would drop out of school at this stage anyway. Anyway David knew he passed he just didn't know how well he did. He did WELL. Top 4% in maths and top 12% in accounting and science. This year he is taking on heavy load with Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Accounting, Computing and English. But since we don't have a computer for him to play games, he should find a little time for some studying.
We had a big surprize when out of the blue on our doorstep were the Heasley's. They are the friends we visited in Adelaide in 1988. It had been 12 years since Inemoa had been back in NZ and their children had never been here. Since Murray's father had just had a heart operation, Murray decided to take a couple weeks and visit. So we piled them into the van and went over to Whites for a grand reunion that night. Murray was my roommate in Fiji in 1970. He is from the South Island and is married to a Tongan. Earlier during the month we had been over to Whites to meet up with another ex-Fiji teacher; this time he was a Brit who had married a Rotuman (an island near Fiji), so we had plenty of South Island culture this summer. |
The year began pretty much the way 1990 ended except that I no longer had to get up in the morning and go to work. December had been the driest ever and January the second driest on record. In fact, with rain only nine times thru March it was the driest summer in Auckland history. So, with all that lovely weather Gail was in Arizona with her folks for seven weeks and I was too ill to get out much. That's what it seemed like at the time, but checking my diary I see that we did make it out the door quite often. And when Gail came back on 21st Jan we moved into hyper-drive and crammed a lot into the one free week she had before school began. While Gail was away we mice played - mostly with the Whites, who live in Waiuku, 25 miles west of us and near the surfing beach. Their house is the gathering place for the Fiji crowd in the area. Always something going on there. So we were surfing, boating, canoeing, swimming and having barbeques with a regular group of lively people.
I lied to everyone, including my own kids, about the day Gail was coming back. So I could sneak out to the airport on my own and we could have some time alone. We went to Miranda Hot pools where Gail was able to soak away the 24 hours of air travel. But that was the last quiet moment she had once we got her home. During the next week we went swimming, putt-putting twice, surfing twice, out to barbecues at three friends' places and went camping for three days. We basically, crammed into that week what we would normally do in the whole month.
The camping was a bit different this year. We always go to the same place each year and try to avoid the crowds by going before Christmas or the second half of Jan. This year we were so late that there was only one other couple in out camping area. They were camping with about twenty stuffed toy teddy bears. I mean they had them out sitting around the campfire. We stayed well away from them, and they left the next day leaving us alone in the whole place. This is a junior size Yosemite, capable of accommodating 100+ campsites and we were the only ones there. Mind you the rain that second morning and the fact that school had started for some helped clear the place. The rain ended and we had a spectacular day for hiking up the hills and along the river. The Whites came out the first day but didn't stay. They left 8 year old Matthew with us and we also had David's friend Michael with us. Remember how I said it rained only 9 times. Well one of those downpours came the day we had to pack up and leave. But it was a warm rain. We even stopped on the way out of the valley to pick wild blackberries in the rain.
David's agony came to an end in Jan. The way the system works here is that fifth formers sit external exams in Nov. Then they have to wait until just before school begins to find out their results. The marks arrive the same day in the mail for everyone. Whether you can move up to sixth form depends on the results. A standard curve is used in issuing marks and 50% pass and 50% fail. This worked well in the old days when most kids would drop out of school at this stage anyway. Anyway David knew he passed he just didn't know how well he did. He did WELL. Top 4% in maths and top 12% in accounting and science. This year he is taking on heavy load with Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Accounting, Computing and English. But since we don't have a computer for him to play games, he should find a little time for some studying.
