Just before Paddy's Birthday

It's been a few weeks, but time for an update.
We are into week 7 of term now and it feels like time for a half-term - 3 weeks to the end of term. The kids are feeling the strain at school even with the odd days off here and there, 10 weeks is a long time for them to toe the line. Our own are struggling from one week-end to the next. Paddy is quite cheerful because he has been counting down to his birthday for the last month and the big day arrives on Monday. Stuart has had a day off every week for the last 3. We were mean this week and sent him in with achey legs and a sore throat. He survived!
Eric is in love with his teacher because she has a whole range of inducements to keep him working, he was making chocolate fudge and blue crystals today and trotted off quite happily to his bus. In fact he complained because I kept him waiting as I was trying to get all my stuff together and he was itching to get to the bus stop.

School weeks are generally unremarkable in my life apart from all the amazing things that happen at school. Not being too sure who reads this blog I am going to keep my counsel about school and work and save it for personal emails. I wonder how other bloggers manage this aspect of the medium. Surely one's colleagues find out about it sooner or later and find out alsorts of interesting things?

Last weekend was interesting. It was the noho marae (marae stay) for the te reo course I have been doing. Chantelle graciously looked after the kids while I was gone. There were over 100 of us staying in the marae and we all slept in one great big room, men, women and child alike. I gather that this is not unusual as well. In Uk people would bed down together if there was some sort of emergency, but we are pretty private about who we sleep with the rest of the time. My understanding is that Maori are a lot more sociable than us European types. So there was a good mix of Maori, NZ pakeha, and more recent immigrants from all over the place. We were all doing the same course but all in different places. It started with the powhiri - a formal welcome onto the marae that follows a particular structure of speeches and songs. All designed to determine the peaceful or war-making intentions of visitors. Once a koha (gift usually of money) had been handed over, there was a massive hongi - everyone files past the home team one by one but instead of just shaking their hand they touch foreheads and breathe the same air.

We had some food and then a couple of talks. The first was about spirituality and was delivered by a bloke who worked with violent offenders. He seemed to be into lots of different ways of healing damaged people including studying their colours and seeing their shadow people. There was a second speaker who gave a fascinating talk illustrated with powerpoint slides all about using the stars to navigate voyaging canoes. This was appropriate as it was the start of the Maori new Year Matariki - named after the star system Pleiades which appears on the eastern horizon at dawn at this time of year. This guy really could talk. He had sailed from NZ to Rarotonga on a canoe made from 2 Kauri trees that he had chopped down from a local forest. That is a distance of 2000 miles! The maori originally arrived from the polynesian islands on these canoes and his voyage was a modern attempt to recreate those voyages. I had always assumed that the original colonists had arrived in little canoes by chance. It appears that they were travelling all over the pacific establishing colonies on all the islands from Christmas Island back to Tahiti(?). They used the movement of constellations to guide them on these voyages.

That finished at mid-night, by which time no amount of snoring in the room - and there was a large amount - was going to keep me awake. In what seemed like minutes later the lights were on and people were stirring. We did 4 workshops during the day and my te reo improved massively. Haere ra kotou (Good bye!)