Birthday Week 🎉

Monday 8th - Sunday 14th May 2017

The boys were still pretty tired from the weekend so we had a chilled start to the week. But with my birthday and Mother's Day coming up I had plenty planned! Although, saying that, we've spent most of the week making some awesome forts!

It was Julia's birthday on Tuesday, so we all went back to Koji for sushi to celebrate. There's quite a few au Pair birthdays over the next week or so which is pretty strange! I met Marion and Anka, two other au pairs that aren't doing it through Au Pair link. It's pretty cool to meet up with the girls, especially as they all know what Au Pair life is like, we share funny stories and give each other ideas for activities and, most importantly, arrange play dates!

Cushla came for her second visit on Thursday, and brought a castle defender kit with her which the boys love! You build a castle and then use a catapult to shoot knights at it to knock it down. There are also numbers on some of the items so you can play it more competitively, but right now they just like knocking it down!

That evening, Fie, Mara, Fabienne and I met Cushla at coffee culture for our monthly au Pair catch up. As au Pair link is having its 10th anniversary, Cushla bought us all hot chocolates which was amazing! So then, as a start to my birthday treats, I got the hot chocolate cake, basically marshmallow on the top, layer of chocolate cake, layer of chocolate mousse and a bottom layer of chocolate cake. Safe to say it was delicious!

I was pretty lucky that the boys didn't wake me up mega early on my birthday, as I'm pretty sure they were way more excited than me! Darragh was waiting for me in the lounge and then as soon as I got up he went and got everyone else to come so I could open my presents! They got me some chocolates and biscuits as well as a passport cover and luggage tag to remind me of New Zealand when I'm off on my travels, which was super thoughtful!

I also got a few cards from family back home which was really lovely - always nice to know that people are thinking of you on your birthday, even if they are in the other side of the world! Dad and Nickie also surprised me with flowers, chocolate and a bear from a local florist! Was a total surprise did not expect it at all!

Wade took the day off today, and Mary went to pick up Cillian from Kindergarten and then Wade took him upstairs to watch a movie so I had an extra few hours chill time which was awesome! I finally got round to finishing Martin Chuzzlwit - just in time for it to go back to the library! 

After he school run, I made some Mother's Day cards and presents with the boys before making another huge fort surprise surprise! We got an Indian takeaway for dinner, my choice! Mary had made me a white chocolate tim tam and Baileys cheesecake and oh my god it was amazing!

 I then spent the evening chilling with a few beers and watching blind spot so all in all a pretty good day! 

Mary and Wade let me stay in one of the motel units so I could have a lie in the next morning which was a brilliant treat! So nice to not hear the kids fighting over what to play with or watch at 7am! We had a big fry up breakfast Saturday morning and then I pretty much just read for the rest of the day! In the evening, Marion picked me up and we went to Mara's to watch a few movies. 

Sunday again was pretty much a chill out day as well. It was Mother's Day and I had forgotten I had all the cards and bits in my room so I forced myself out of bed at 9 so that the kids could give their presents to Mary. I went to coffee culture with Marion after breakfast as she was driving through Timaru anyway! In the evening I went for a walk with Mary and Cillian but other than that I didn't do a whole lot this weekend! 

Akaroa

Friday 7th April - Sunday 9th April 2017

This weekend, the family were going back on holiday to Akaroa and they invited me along, to which I of course said yes as I definitely want to see as much of New Zealand as I can before I go back home!

We drove up on the Friday evening, and we're staying at a family friends place which as a pretty decent view over the bay! The weather was a bit miserable in the morning but luckily it got much, much better by the afternoon. I didn't take many pictures though!

We went for a walk around the town, it's pretty small but really pretty. After lunch we went back to the house and everyone napped apart from me and one of the boys! So we stayed up playing while everyone else slept! We then got a Thai takeaway and it was soooo good. 

The next day we went to Okains bay, a beach about a 10 minute drive away from Akaroa. It was beautiful. I love the contrast between the beach, forest and hills. 

The banks penninsula is breathtakingly stunning. It is exactly what I imagine New Zealand would look like!

We then made our way back to Timaru. It was such a lovely weekend, just chilling out and exploring new places!

Suva - Centenary Methodist Church & Deaconess House

Friday 10th March 2017

Today I decided to try and meet some of the people my grandparents knew in Suva. I got a taxi to the bus station and then it was a 4 hour journey to the capital. I recognised a few things along the way,
and it reminded me of Linga as I remembered a few of the things he told us about different places. Other than that I kept myself occupied by watching a few things on my iPad.

After arriving in Suva, I headed to Tappoo City as that's where we came and I remember there being a good food hall there. I ordered food and then attempted to ring the Deaconesses - with no such luck unfortunately!

Luckily after a few more tries I managed to get through and we arranged to meet at Tappoo City in half an hour. I started to get a bit nervous as I had no idea what Meresiana looks like! But eventually she found me and took me to the Centenary Methodist Church, which was just across the street.

Firstly she gave me a sulu, as I had stupidly left mine hanging on my bed at Smugglers! Whilst we were at the stall, another deaconess came and was ecstatic to meet me and told me how much my Nana and Grandad had impacted her life.

This was to be continued as every time Meresiana introduced me to someone they had a different, individual story to tell me about my beloved grandparents and their work for the Methodist church in Fiji. Their teaching methods are still used in primary schools to this day! Which is definitely a legacy to be proud of! The only downside is that quite a few people didn't know they had passed away, so I had to keep telling people that as I went along - I held it together though which surprises me!! Meresiana then showed me a photo album she had with photos in my grandparents house and some of my family members which was pretty special.

We then waited for a bit to meet Levi, who I've actually met before when I was a baby! He also brought pictures to show me, and there's one photo of me with his daughter who is in her early thirties now with two children of her own! Both Levi and Meresiana studied in Birmingham and my grandparents invited them to come and stay with them for Christmas and to come and see Dorset. As soon as I get back to England I'm going to rummage through their old photo albums to see who I can recognise!! (Mum sent me a photo of me and Levi not long after I left Fiji, it's crazy how it's been 22 years since I last saw him!)

We then said goodbye to the Methodist church and headed out to the fruit market. Meresiana kindly got me some pineapple as I said it was my favourite! The market was the biggest I've ever seen - so much food everywhere!

After the market, we got a taxi to the Deaconess house, about a five minute journey from the centre of Suva. When I arrived, I went into the teaching room with the students who are training to become Deaconesses themselves. It was such a whirlwind that unfortunately I can't remember many of their names, but it was pretty spectacular! The reverend and another deaconess also came to say hello, and they were students when my grandparents lived in Suva. I kept it together until prayers when so many beautiful words were said about God, my grandparents and I... embarrassingly I started to cry even though I tried my hardest to keep it together!

They then brought out so much food, I presumed that it was for everyone to share but it was all mainly for me! I've never seen so many sandwiches in my life!! They packed up loads for me to take with me on the coach which was so very kind. Unfortunately, I was restricted to the last bus so it was only a quick visit. After a few more songs and a big goodbye I sadly left them all with the promise of returning! I would love to come back and spend a couple of weeks with everybody and get to know them better, keeping up the relationship between my family and theirs.

Meresiana and one of the trainee Deaconesses (called Joanna so I won't forget that!!) came with me to drop me off at the bus stop. It was a sad goodbye but I know I'll be back so it was more of a see you later!

The journey back was long and I kept falling asleep, the sunsets at 6:30 and then it just goes pitch black so it feels like it's the middle of the night! After getting a taxi back to the hostel I found Emma in her upgraded room before going to sleep.

Tour of GuiYang.

Monday 3rd September 2012

Today we were due to go on a tour of Guiyang and had to be at the CC experiment centre by 10am, so I thought I would get up at 8am to make sure I wouldn't be late. However, when I got up to go to the bathroom, my chum sent me back to bed to go back to sleep for another hour... I was OK with this!

She then got me up at 9am and, as soon as I finished my breakfast, she pointed at the door to go, so I had to rush to get ready in just under a minute! We took the bus to the experiment centre, all the different places I had seen whilst in taxis started to join up in my mind, so I felt like I was getting better at navigating thank goodness! When we reached the bus stop we were getting off, Josh was there with his chum so I had a friendly face to enter CC with! 

We got given our sim cards when we reached the fourth floor so it was finally time to put my sexy new phone to use! After everyone else arrived, we went to a traditional chinese building where you can also watch them do arts and crafts, like fan making and painting. 

Then we went to get phones for the people who thought the sim cards would work in their english mobile phones but unfortunately didn't. The phone shop we went to was huge, and sold pretty much every mobile you could think of. Pretty much everyone stuck to the cheap basic phones though, as it was coming out of our own precious money!

Afterwards, we had KFC again and then went to a seriously dodgy looking market to try and get some cheap fake items, gotta love shopping in foreign countries! The place was a maze, we were taken around quite a few shops, but all the decent looking bags were well out of our price range. Being in that place made me very glad I opted to bring a bum bag with me. All my money and my phone was safely tucked away! 

We then went to the same shopping centre I went to yesterday with my chamily. Obviously I had to brag that they took me to the cinema. Half of us decided to stay behind in a tea shop, they didn't want to go shopping, and the other half of us decided to look around the shops. There were loads of shops, but they were mostly all brands we had never heard of and were about the same price as clothes are in England, so we were reluctant to spend any of our money on new clothes. However, we were more than happy to part with our money when we spied a Dairy Queen that sold Oreo ice cream. Definitely worth the money.

We then saw an advertisement for a 5D simulator. Most of us had been in a 5D simulator before so were particularly interested in what made this so spectacular that another 'D' needed to be added. This was still back in the part of the trip when we were naive and took everything literally. We had to pick a movie off of the sheet, there were a lot of different choices. I can't remember which scene we went for, but i remember that it was so bad, that it was actually quite funny. The thing that we were all sitting on moved around a bit, but other than that it was barely 3D let alone 5D! 

To make things even funnier, when we got out of the simulator which, by the way, left us on a cliffhanger despite the fact we had been in there for about 5 minutes, a man tried to sell us a live rooster! This was whilst we were still in the simulator's shop. The shopkeepers then decided to take a photo of us to put on their wall... hopefully we are still there now!

We then went to find everyone back at the tea shop, to which we found them all using the free WiFi. As soon as we realised this, we jumped on the band wagon and immediately started sky ping/ FaceTiming family and friends from back home. We were also introduced to bubble tea, which is basically different flavours of tea with black squidgy ball things in the bottom. I opted for a watermelon flavour and it was genuinely one of the nicest drinks I have ever tasted! Although I was rather unsure about the black balls, I was never sure whether the things we were given to eat were actually edible or not! James decided it would be funny to shoot them across the room at each other with our straws. This seemed absolutely hilarious until we were all told off by the CC English teachers we were with. Oopsie.

We then travelled back to the CC English experiment centre and, when we got there, my chum was the only charent there! I felt so loved! And unbelievably grateful that I didn't have to make my way around GuiYang on my own. We had a quick meeting about the T.I.P training for tomorrow, and we were also told that we will all be sharing one big twelve man apartment with WiFi. At this moment in time this was all we needed to hear. Our hopes were lifted at the thought of the team being reunited again!

Here are some photos of the day, none of them relate to a particular section so I thought I would just bung them all in one place! They are not in chronological order because Blogger is doing my actual head in... they need a better system to add photos into a blog!

      

Thanks for reading!

Hebin Park, Fishing and Spiderman.

Sunday 2nd September 2012

Had a nice lie in today for a change! Lory was still at her music lesson when I eventually got up, so I chilled in bed until my chum knocked on my door to give me her phone, to which Lory told me she was going shopping and would be back later than expected. Chum and I have a paralinguistic communication thing going on; by pointing and smiling or frowning we were able to vaguely understand each other. I had a jam sandwich for breakfast, and I honestly have never appreciated a Jam sandwich that much in my whole life.

When Lory got back, she showed me a program on her computer that plays English films obviously with mandarin subtitles, so I watched the notebook! It was so nice to just sit down and chill out, watching something I actually understand!

Chum had some friends over for lunch, two ladies and two boys, who were about 7 and 10. Lunch was super delicious! I was falling in love with GuiYang's cuisine, although I was pretty horrendous at using chopsticks at this point. It provided everyone with entertainment though!

After lunch we went to Hebin Park, which is surrounded by luscious green trees. Lory told me that they don't have pandas in GuiYang, so sad, I really wanted to see a panda! I really don't know why I expected to see pandas in the wild in China, as I know they are an endangered species and China is absolutely massive!

The best thing about Hebin park is that there are fairground rides there. We went on bumper cars, a cycling monorail and a haunted house. Lory didn't want to go in the haunted house, so I went in with my chum. We properly bonded through that experience. Although, I didn't find it that scary as I had no idea what was being said! We had to sit down around a table and put headphones on. At one point it felt like someone was breathing down your neck. That was horrible, other than that it wasn't too bad!

We then made our way round to the back of the park, to where there are a few decent sized ponds where you could pay for a fishing rod and bait and go fishing. I caught the biggest, ugliest fish, which I named Hagrid much to Lory's amusement. If you catch a fish, then you get to keep to which is pretty cool. It would've been ridiculous for me to keep Hagrid, so I donated him to one of the boys who seemed to have a fascination with him.

We then went to the amusements area of Hebin park, where you had to buy tokens to go on any of the games. We played air hockey, a basketball game and a racing game amongst others. It was good fun!

On our way back, we past a stand that sold all kinds of things, and the boys got some bubbles. These were pretty cool bubbles as it is designed as a whistle, so when you blow bubbles you make a squeaky noise as well! Despite the language barrier between the boys and I, we were still able to play games with each other, which Lory's help with the translation of course.

We then went to a massive department store, which had a huge cinema at the top. We watched the Amazing Spiderman and, to my delight, it was in English with mandarin subtitles. I'd never watched a superhero movie but, surprisingly, I really enjoyed it!

We then went to KFC for dinner, they were going out of their way to get me food as close to English food as they could possibly get, bless. I'm not overly keen on KFC but I daren't say that as they are trying so hard to make me as comfortable as possible.

When we got home, Lory tried to teach me a Chinese card game. At first I thought it was similar to rummy, but then she brought in things like a 'Boom' and I was completely lost! She found it quite hard to explain to me in English, so I decided to show her snap as that's an easy game that you can't get wrong... can you? Well I managed to teach it to her completely wrong. I forgot to say you can't look at your cards! Silly me. It's ok though, in case you were worrying, I totally blagged it by calling it easy snap, and re-taught her snap calling it hard snap! It's worrying that I want to be a teacher. 

I really did feel like I bonded well with my chamily today, even if chad was nowhere to be seen!