Waitangi Day in Waikikamukau

Our summer holiday was a welcome break. The return to cool, rainy weather was depressing after the sun and warmth of Wanaka but 'home' does have a snugness of its own. The weather this week, with school returning has of course been glorious, three sunny temperate days in a row!

Waitangi Day was Tuesday. Lily went back to school Wednesday and Willem Thursday. The summer holidays have definitely ended and the new school year has kicked off. It is fine to think, okay—pretend it’s like Labor Day signaling back to school--and substitute this Waitangi business. [For the occasion itself, there is no parallel in American history. If you were able to conflate the occasion of Pete Minuet purchasing Manhattan from Native Americans and the signing of a peace accord with some Hopi’s out West, you would have something like the treaty signed with the Maori’s that is celebrated on Waitangi Day.] There remains a bit of cognitive dissonance about the scholastic year rhythm juxtaposed with the calendar…

When we were having tea on the morning of Lily’s first day back, she came in with the following list that she had written out when she arose early (she said it was like Christmas—so exciting that she had to get up)
Feb. 7th--Lily’s list of “things I’m scared of in school”
1 Not having a nice teacher
2 Maybe I’ll forget something
3 I wear the wrong uniform
4 One of my friends will be in Mrs. Hogg’s class and not in Mrs. Evan’s class
(my class)
5 (Note: I’m not actually scared of number 6)
6 Vacation to be over
7 (I forget what school feels like)
8 Willem’s first day of school is tomorrow
9 (Unfair: number 8)
10 I’m afraid that my handwriting is not good enough
[Lily then said, “Having written these things down, now I’m not afraid of them”]
(At the end of her first day, the teacher was already calling her Miss Sunshine)

Willem was pretty quiet at the breakfast of his first day of school. In the car though, he said "I'm a veteran" and Tessa knew that everything would be fine…) He is quite excited that his courses will include a term’s introduction to German followed by a trial in French. (We have a friend who is trying to organize a Saturday class in Mandarin on top of that!) Wim came home from school yesterday with the news that he had been voted onto the Super Squad for his class. This is a team of four boys that will compete with Year Eight squads from other schools. Each team includes an Entertainer, a Daredevil, a Sports Guy and a Brainbox—his ‘position’. Finalists (in all of New Zealand) are awarded ipods and the winners will get a trip to Australia’s Golden Coast! Also, Lily brought home an informational form from school to fill out. From her answers we now know that her top three occupational interests at the moment are: teacher, scientist and/or fashion designer.

In other household news, we have added three tadpoles to our dining table. They swim around in a modest aquiline expanse shared with a couple of ferns, three tiny snails (water purification) and yummy cooked lettuce or cabbage. A gift from his friend James, Willem has dreams of selling Roley, Poley and Oly to the pet store after they morph into frogs ($5 each?). Also, this past weekend, we gave into the Kiwi (and suburban American) love of a good Barb-y and purchased a gas grill. It has surpassed every expectation on all three of our idyllic outdoor-type evenings.

I am the last of the Kiwikirks to have visited the Amity Health Centre. Our doctor there is not Susie Lawless (Lucy’s sister? cousin?) but a quiet compact man with a dry wit. Dr. Philip (Phil?) White says that taping your ribs is a thing of the past—this could result in an infection. In addition, the extent of my injury is not clear. If the pain goes away in two weeks time, the chest wall is merely bruised. If recovery takes six weeks, my ribs were probably cracked. I have an ACC number, an official recording of my incident that achieves a government contribution towards the fee for service and would have given automatic replacement of lost wages if I had a salaried job that my incident precluded me carrying on. What happened you might well ask? I had ridden up from downtown on my bike and taken a wrong turn so that instead of going only as high as necessary to get to our house, I was continuing upwards. I found myself on Pacific Street (a misnomer in my case) going steeper and steeper in the lowest gear (21st?). A passing van necessitated a pause in the side-to-side rhythm that I had trusted would get me to the top. When I tried to resume this maneuvering, my forward momentum ceased and I slowly (at first) toppled—to the downhill side of the bike, probably coming down with my side briefly on the handlebars before turning a very tidy summersault. After picking up bicycle and startled body, I resumed my climb in the street--the sidewalk next to the road had turned to stairs! We’ll give you an update when the prognosis becomes clear. The pain has subsided now to some degree although the occasional sneeze is still a major cataclysm for the nervous system.

Rather than going into details—other than reporting, as I already did, that we had three sunny days when the mercury would had hit 80, if there were mercury and Fahrenheit existed and today we started out in the 50’s—I will write, verbatim, “The Star”’s
headline and first paragraphs from this week’s edition:

“It’s the favorite saying of residents, gardeners and weather-watchers, and it’s true…
WE LIVE IN A MICRO-CLIMATE
The commonest claim in the city is reality—Dunedin is riddled with microclimates.
For years, residents have said their suburb, street, or indeed ‘the left side of the house’ is not subject to the vagaries of Dunedin weather; that their special spot is ‘a micro-climate’.
Now, after an in-depth investigation (involving at least five phone calls and more than 90 minutes of aimless cruising in the boss’ car) The Star can confirm Dunedin is the microclimate capital of New Zealand.
The verdict is not unanimous, but consensus and several carefully worded statistics do clearly point to a plethora of this climatic phenomena in our fair city.
No one gets to know the subtleties of our city’s suburbs like a real estate agent. The boundary lines between Mornington and City Rise, the difference between ‘wind-blown’ and ‘refreshing vistas’ are their specialty.
The search for bronzed men in Speedos tending pineapple patches had begun.”

Actually, the major event of these three weeks just past was the viewing of a comet that will not be visible again for another million years…We did see it. It was even visible from our bedroom. If you google McNaught’s Comet, you can oogle fantastic photos of this event. What was amazing was the very long trail, a very Disney-esque sparkling thing, under the comet—neither of which appeared to be actually in motion to any discernable degree…(I leave the metaphoric potential of this juxtaposition as material for you other creative types)

wishing you well from the antipodes…