Happy 20th Wedding Anniversary to my beloved...

 

This year marks our 20th Wedding Anniversary, with my beloved, where we went to an island just off the coast of Fiji (short 10 minute boat ride) called Sonaisali and had our sunset wedding there.

We returned on our 10th Wedding Anniversary with our then two children who had a swim in the pool (just as I had had with my dad on the wedding morning) and they loved it too.

We also returned on our 15th Wedding Anniversary with our children to Fiji and stayed at another hotel with lots of fun but had planned and booked to go back to Fiji for our 20th Anniversary but alas it was not to be.

Instead, we've spent it today with my family eating cake and having lunch together and later we're going to have a movie night and a dessert too.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has certainly changed many things for many people including the ways that we celebrate special dates and also makes me realise how we took for granted how easy it was to make plans and see it through but with COVID it's a whole new ball game and the rules are so different.

Today, there was an announcement that I heard through the media that the NZ government is planning to open up the borders to Australian vaccinated travellers with a 7 day isolation that doesn't need to be spent in an MIQ Managed Isolation Quarantine facility and could be at home. This is expected to start in January.

We were also given the information that overseas travellers could be welcomed in as soon as February next year and that's when I would love to travel to Samoa with my family to finally visit back home. Wow! what a long time to wait now but will be well worth the wait to be able to celebrate overseas again with family...

Bubble Tea/drink...

 

A new drink has made it's way onto NZ shores (well some time ago) but I only started tasting it this year. Known as bubble tea or Boba with many different varieties, colours and tastes.

It was my children who introduced it to me and we have a new local cafe and bakery that now offer the drinks with a variety of flavours to choose from.

The main ingredients seem to be ice, water, your choice of flavour and then little balls, pearls, tapioca or bubbles of flavour such as taro, blueberry, strawberry, honey, apple, brown sugar etc.

I'd definitely put it in the occasion range of drink as it can be quite sweet although flavoursome or like me you can always drink half and then wait until the ice has all melted before drinking the rest of it more diluted.

I was told by our youngest that the discovery of these types of drinks were quite by mistake as the ingredients were accidentally added (I think maybe the tapioca-like balls) but what started as an accident is now a lucrative business with many people buying these new types of drinks with many places offering them.

So if haven't already, why not give it a go? and see which taste you enjoy the most. Mine still is a variety of chocolate flavours with lots of ice that quenches a big thirst on a hot summer's day. It definitely beats fizzy drinks but that's my humble opinion...

Resource packs for children/families at our Samoan bilingual Early childhood centre...

It's day 79 of our National lockdown and this week I've also been busy with some of the teachers from our Samoan bilingual Early childhood centre to set up packs for children at our centre with some of the resources received from the Ministry of Education.

These will be distributed to families in order to support the learnings and home. So far they include bilingual books for children and also resource support for teachers and parents. 

We're still awaiting a box of hard pack resources, from the Ministry, for our children and hopefully they're not too far away.

With our little ones, it is totally understandable that many parents have chosen not to allow their children to attend the centre because of the uncertainty of having their unvaccinated children in any public place that could bring about an infection. I am also of the same mind but equally there are parents who need to work or study and are unable to look after their children so that they trust the centre to do their best in caring for their children.

Therefore, the packs are for the children who are mostly unable to attend the centre and it gives them added resources to support them at home through reading books together, activity resources in spending time together during these unprecedented times...

Art external portfolio exams in a pandemic...

 

Today has been a very busy with sorting things out at our Samoan bilingual Early childhood centre which has recently re-opened to support parents needing support in their childcare.

As well as also supporting our middle child in her NCEA National Certificate in Educational Achievement external art exams (level 2) Year 12 where she must provide a folio of her art work (Painting) that must be sent to examiners in Wellington.

The difficulty was that the Courier company that was selected to send folios were inundated with so many inquiries that when we went to book for a Courier drive to pick up the folio we were in a wait list of 137 callers and had to wait until it got down to our turn.

So I decided to go through a takeaways drive-thru 3 times whilst awaiting for the call. It was quite funny but we finally got it sorted and by the time we got home it was very quickly picked up and away it's gone to be tracked all the way to Wellington.

What's interesting about our middle child's folio is that I remember in my Level 1 art exams (those many years ago) that I had to provide a portfolio and I chose the subject of hands as my topic of interest. It's interesting to see that echoed in both my two eldests' Year 12 folios too i.e. great artistic minds think alike? (ha ha - no just interesting DNA).

Now there are external exams to contend with starting from 24th November and wishing for our middle child all the best in preparations and getting everything sorted in order to perform to the best of their abilities despite the pandemic and the Alert level 3 lockdown orders. Life seems to still go on...