Swimming Lessons

Now we are in New Zealand we are keen to get the kids into the outdoor lifestyle and, as we live near so many beaches, that means getting them swimming.

Joe has always been happy in the water. From being small he has loved being under the water rather than above it. He got his confidence fast and learned to swim really quickly.

Cameron had some swimming lessons when he was little but hasn't had any for ages and has never been confident in the water really. When he was three the girls were born and this coincided with the UK bringing in 'rules' at council pools that meant children under 5 had to have one adult supervising. Children between 5 and 8 needed a ratio of one adult to 2 kids. This meant we had two adults and three kids under 5, so we couldn't take them swimming without an extra adult. We enquired about swimming lessons as they got older and were told they would cost £300+ for a few sessions (can't remember how many exactly but it wasn't many) and they wanted the money all up front. Not very affordable for a family of 6. As a result the girls and Cameron didn't get much swimming in when they were young.

We bought a Bestways pool recently as the weather is really hot in the summer here. It is 10ft wide and Erin has totally taken to it. Within a couple of days she was throwing herself in, swimming under the water and really loving it. Cameron is enjoying it too, though he was reluctant to stick his head under the water at the beginning. Rosie has always been reluctant to get in the water, so we were surprised she got in and enjoyed herself. Though she didn't really get in deeper than her tummy, it was still progress.

The kids are having swimming lessons in these summer holidays. I have to sing the praises of the Kiwi way of learning to swim. It is totally different from any lesson I've seen in the UK. The kids don't learn breast stroke. They don't wear armbands. They don't learn to swim with their heads above the water. Basically they get the kids used to breathing and putting their heads under the water from day one. Once they get the hang of this they get them to kick their legs and they turn into fishes almost instantly! Then it's lots of water games including going up to the deep end early on, and learning to jump in and dive for stuff. The kids get their confidence in the water really fast, even though they can't really swim proper strokes, which they learn as they go. Getting the kids to stick their head under is the big thing here. Then they are off. Oh and the lessons are a whole lot cheaper too!

Originally the lessons were meant to be just for last week at the local college pool. The pool is big, cold and a good metre deep at the shallow end. A bit deep for little ones. Cameron can touch the bottom easily but Erin can only just reach with her tiptoes. Luckily the teachers use these platforms in the water for the kids to wait on, so they are in their depth.

Cameron and Erin had some really good lessons and had a week of major progress. Erin is now swimming like a fish, mostly under the water. Cameron quickly got used to putting his head under water and has spent most of his swimming time under it since.

Rosie spent 2 minutes in the cold, deep water and started shaking in fear. After 5 minutes I took her out as she plainly couldn't cope. After the lesson I had a chat with the lady in charge and she also phoned me afterwards. They decided we would be better taking Rosie to lessons the following week at the pool at Matakana School, which is warmer and much shallower. It is also outdoors. So we decided to try that. As we would be there for Rosie, I though I might as well used the opportunity for the other two to get some more lessons too and really give them an intensive period of swimming.

So week 2 arrived and Monday morning saw us at Matakana pool. Rosie was much happier and enjoyed the lesson. She actually blew some bubbles in the water. Then on Monday evening I had a phone call from the instructor. They were transferring back to the college for the week. This was because the tail end of the cyclone that had caused all the trouble in Queensland was heading here. The forecast was for wind, rain and thunder for several days. Being at the outdoor pool would be misery, and probably unsafe if it decided to thunder.

Rosie was unhappy to say the least. I thought she'd refuse to get in the water at the college, but after watching the others for a week and having the lesson in the Matakana pool, she got in happily in the end. She has actually being making progress, though she was reluctant to have a go at jumping in today, even though she had a 'noodle' wrapped around her. She did actually put her face in the water today.  We still have a couple more lessons before the week is out and I have arranged for the kids to have regular session once a week next term. We really are determined to get the kids to be proficient swimmers.

Kiwi Vowels

Kiwis have taken the normal English vowels, thrown them in a bag, picked them out at random, and had a laugh changing all the pronunciations round. There must have been some colonials a few generations back who were bored and drunk.

The first time this became apparent was shortly after we arrived here. We were staying in Browns Bay in our holiday let. Martin had started his new job and it was mine to trawl the Internet looking for places to rent. The best place to look here in NZ is on Trade Me - which is a NZ version of Ebay.

I rang what turned out to be the same estate agent a number of times, about properties advertised in Warkworth that fitted the bill. This lady must be the broadest Kiwi since these rocks emerged from the depths of the ocean. Or at least this was my experience as a new arrival talking on the phone. Not the best medium. You can't lip read or use other body language for clues.

I wanted to arrange to look at several properties she was in charge of. The adverts on Trade Me did not give the actual addresses, only that they were in Warkworth, so I had to ask for the details over the phone when arranging a viewing.

One property stands out. Her Kiwi Speak announced it was Eeestree Close. I wasn't sure, so reflected back to check.

"Sorry, was that Istry Close?" It was the nearest I could think of.
"No, Eeestree Close."
" East Tree Close?" My next attempt. Sounded a fair possibility.
"No, Eeestree Close."

By now she was sounding a bit annoyed with me, having told me several times. I don't think she was a patient woman. Like me, she probably thought we spoke the same language. Finally, having run out of ideas and admitting defeat I asked for her to spell it. Even then the letters didn't sound completely familiar, but I got it in the end.

"E S T U A R Y Close."

I would never have got that in a million years.

Then there's school. Now I know that I can't expect all the teachers at school to speak Queen's English, but with all the influx of different nationalities here, you'd think they would be aware that it can be confusing.

My girls have a lovely American teacher with a gentle US accent, but often they are taught reading by a class assistant with a very broad Kiwi accent.

One day I went in to visit, and watched as the assistant spelt out letter sound to my girls. She said the sound 'eh'. Of course my girls fought with each other to be the first one to point to 'egg'. At which point the teacher said, "No," and then told them it was meant to be "eh" for "epple". Now I don't know what an epple is any more than my kids do. The picture was of an apple, that well known fruit grown here and usually filling the produce isle at Sainsbury's. But do you see "Epple" written on those bags of NZ apples? No.

So then the teacher says the sound "i", as in the beginning of the word "is". Of course my kids point to the picture of "ink", only to be told it is meant to be "igg". (Hens lay them apparently.) And by now you are wondering what the "ah" sound could be - well ah is for ahmbrella, didn't you know? ...Whatever one of those is. I'm told they keep the rain off you.

The only bloody vowel that seems to be left unscathed as far as I can tell is "O".

This is proving to be a bit awkward for the girls. Being told something so obviously right to you is now wrong is very disconcerting. I have pointed it out to the assistant teacher. She gave me a funny, slightly offended look. I hope she can bear in mind it isn't about doing it her way, it's about understanding the girls are not actually wrong, and not making them feel they are, which confuses them and ruins their confidence!

And Cameron, who is a bit older, came home recently to tell me they had been learning about wheetas. I was assuming it was some strange kiwi implement to harvest grain, or maybe a breakfast cereal....but no. It's a cricket type creature we would call a weta.

It dawned eventually and I exclaimed, "Ah, you mean a weta."

"No Mum," says Cameron, "It is definitely a Wheeta."

There was no convincing him otherwise. Maybe it's as well he learns their way. It's just that now I can't always understand my own children, and my accent is confusing them.

The other day Rosie came home and told me about a teacher named Mrs Flay. I had a few attempts at alternatives to see if this was her name, as I think it's most unfortunate to be named after a form of punishment, but so far I haven't come up with anything else. As the Kiwis are used to watching a lot of British TV, they understand us very well, even if we don't pronounce our vowels the same. It just doesn't work the other way around. (Neighbours is from Oz and the accent really isn't the same.) So I know if I approach "Mrs Flay" and call her by name I may be in trouble.......

Coming to a country that speaks the same language is really deceptive. You think you understand each other but often you are missing the point by a mile, and you aren't always aware of it. I have had a number of situations where I had no idea what someone was talking about, only to find it was just a different name for a common item.

At some point, perhaps when we've been here a bit longer, I should post a Kiwi - English Dictionary. Once I can understand the lingo myself that is.

Here's some we've come across so far:

Jandles = flip flops
Togs = swimwear
Twink (or Twank!?) = Tippex (Joe was asked for some of this by a fellow school pupil, to his amusement.)
Mesclun = mixed salad leaves. (I thought it was a new type of lettuce.)
Sharpie = felt tip pen - NOT a sharp pencil or pencil sharpener, like I thought they meant.

Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams and the Kakapo

Joe and I love reading Douglas Adams' books. Here he is talking about New Zealand and the endangered flightless parrot called the Kakapo.

Followed by the fab Stephen Fry on "Last Chance To See... meeting the now famous Kakapo. After Mr Fry and Co's visit they apparently had 33 chicks reach fledgling age that year, so that's put the population up a fair bit. Nice one Mr Fry.

Enjoy :-) ....

Trip to Piha

Piha Beach on the west coast

We finally got chance to explore a bit of the West Coast last weekend. At least the local part.

We drove to Piha, west of Auckland.  The trip involved a drive through the Waitakere range of hills, where the road is quite narrow. Sometimes the camber of the roads is really steep here, with a deep gulley at the side for the high rainfall, so it can be a bit nerve wracking (for me anyway) negotiating the winding, narrow roads. The views were lovely though and well worth the trouble.

Eventually we wound our way down the steep hill into Piha. The west coast is quite different to the east. The beaches are a lot wilder and the sand is black and volcanic. At Piha the dry sand has a coating of little, black, reflective flecks that I'm told are iron. The flecks seem to rise to the surface and sit on top of the dunes. And there's one more thing. White, sandy beaches get quite warm. Black sandy beaches absorb a hell of a lot more heat from the sun, and the sand can literally BURN YOUR FEET! Looking at our photos the sand looks deceptively light coloured - but it isn't. It's dark and hot.

Lions Rock - Do you reckon it looks like a lion?

We found this out the hard way. As we walked along a wooden walkway to the beach the kids took their shoes off, as they often do. As we approached the sand, Martin and Cameron were a way behind and I was walking ahead with the others with Cameron's Crocks in my hand. Rosie had left her shoes in the bag with Martin but her feet were burning and Joe had had to lift her up. I put Cameron's Crocks on her and was heading quickly down to the sea to get her feet cooled off. Behind me, and out of earshot, Cameron had hit the sand, wanted his shoes and didn't have them, so Martin let Cameron have his. I looked round while paddling with Rosie to see Martin doing a frantic runner, full pelt down the beach to the sea, as his feet were burning.  He actually got a couple of blisters!

Piha is a beautiful beach though. There is a huge rock there called Lions Rock - and it really does look like a lion. One thing about the west coast is it isn't really safe to swim. You can swim between the flags where the life guards are, but Piha is notorious for people getting swept out on rip tides. So we only had a little paddle there. Anything more adventurous we'll save for the much safer East Coast I think.

Warmer Weather and Single Storey Houses.

Kids 'paddling' at Orewa 

The last two weeks have been school holidays and we spent some time at the beach. Joe had a flying lesson one day, so while the other kids and I were waiting for him we went for a 'paddle' at Orewa. Only the kids didn't get the 'paddle' bit and liked the sea so much they threw themselves into the waves with great gusto, clothes and all - and I had no change of clothes with me. I won't make that mistake again! Later that week we took the cozzies and had a lovely time with the waves.

The children have gone back to school now. This is the term when it starts to hot up here weather wise, so my kids now have their regulation school sun hats, which they have to wear when they are outside. If not they are sent to a covered area to keep out of the sun. Everyone says the sun is really strong here and that in the summer the burn time is 10 minutes.

Orewa Beach

So far we've had the odd bit of hot weather, but it's been very changeable. Often you think it's lovely, then a small, white, innocuous looking cloud will pass over - and dump a right downpour on you. Then two minutes later it's back to sunshine again. In fact it is often rainy and sunny at the same time. New Zealand is called 'The Land of the Long White Cloud', but we think it should be called 'The Land of Rainbows'. They are everywhere.

Rainbow over sea at Wenderholm

The house is proving to be small with little storage space now our belongings have turned up. We were wondering about getting some garden furniture for the summer. We didn't bring any because the 'seeds and soil' issue meant we were advised not to. The only trouble is, we'd have to store it in the garage which is smaller than the one at our old house and still has loads of boxes in it with no home at the moment. And we still have to fit the car, motorbike and my tumble dryer in there.

Our last house had four bedrooms. One was Martin and mine, one was the girls room, one the boys and the fourth we used as a study. We also had a small family room downstairs where the kids did the Playstation thing. Here we have four bedrooms but Joe, who is 15, needed his own room, which puts us out of a study - and we have no family room. So we are effectively 2 rooms down. This was fine when we were living out of suitcases, but now we are struggling. Martin sometimes works from home too, so we are using our bedroom as a study, but we are woefully short of storage space. I think single storey houses look deceptively big if you are used to two storey ones. Everything seems so spread out, but in reality there isn't necessarily more room, it's just harder to judge.

Hey ho, we needed to move somewhere, and I guess we now have a better idea of what we need, and more time to find an alternative. We have committed to stay here for 6 months, so I think we'll be looking for somewhere new once the time is up. At least that's a good thing about rented houses. You can move on fairly easily.

The Ship Comes In

Our shipped belongings finally turned up on 27th September. The container originally arrived at the port in Auckland on 6th. It has spent most of the month going through the 'red tape'.

Firstly it was handed over to the moving company, World Movers (The company that deals with this end for Anglo Pacific), then we had to fill in a form declaring what was in it for customs. We were a bit confused by this as we thought we'd done that bit already. It was particularly awkward, as by then we had long since forgotten half the stuff we had put in the container, and looking at the packing list didn't give us many more clues. We did our best.

The Bio Security people, MAF, look at the list of contents too, then decide if they should have a look. They don't look into every container, but unluckily for us, and probably because we were shipping a trail bike (potential for mud, seeds etc.), they decided to look into ours. So that added to the wait and the cost, as we have to foot the bill. (An emigration hazard it seems.) We got an email later saying they had found and confiscated some "pine cones and a box of soil". Well as they have confiscated them we will never know what they were on about, but both Martin and I know we took anything like pine cones to the dump, so there was nothing of that ilk anywhere near the shippers. We'd been told what we couldn't take and we didn't take it. As for the box of soil? Why on earth would we have taken that? We didn't even own a 'box of soil' to our knowledge (other than the soil in the garden and that's where it stayed). So I don't know what they confiscated!! Well at least we didn't get a fine for our mysterious items.

When we heard the arrival date Martin arranged to take the day off. The kids are on school holidays so they were at home too. We were expecting the Maersk container to turn up, but they'd put our stuff in a moving lorry instead after the MAF inspection. I ticked off all the box numbers as they came out. They had the rooms they'd come from in Sheffield written on the boxes, and an idea of what was inside on some of them. The packers had called the family room the study, and the study the small back bedroom, so that caused some confusion. Some of the descriptions were odd. One said "Fishing Equipment". No one in the family has ever been fishing and the guys on the lorry were having a big laugh about it saying I had a secret life!

In the end we located everything except one box - a basketball hoop. Maybe the guys at MAF fancied it, I don't know, but it is still missing. Oh and there are also some missing pine cones and some soil too apparently ;-) Darn it, I sooo wanted that soil.

Our 4 bedroom house seemed really big before. Now it's full of boxes. We realise we have less space than we thought and are really appreciating our old garage and all it's storage space. Maybe when our six month rental term is up here we'll need to look for a bigger house. 

On the plus side, Martin now has his motorbike back. It had to be taken to Takapuna for compliance testing (in other words to make sure it fits NZ rules), then back to Warkworth for it's Warranty of Fitness (like an MOT), then registering. All that took a week. He got the bike on Saturday and rode it to work for the first time today. And I got a lie in, as I no longer have to get up at 6.15am and drive to Albany twice a day. Sweet relief!

Auckland to Pauanui for a Cuppa

A colleague of mine, John, is a keen pilot, and had offerred to fly me and the boys out to the Coromandel peninsula.

This weekend I took him up on his offer and we flew over to Pauanui for elevenses.

Joe, who had his first flying lesson last week, rode in the co-pilot's seat and took the controls for a bit.

The weather was glorious - the best it has been since we got here!

Pauanui was very picturesque - even the airfield was covered in flowers. The airfield is lined with houses and some have their own integral hangars!

Our Cessna on the tarmac at Ardmore

Country side below east of Ardmore

Looking north along the Coromandel

Crossing the west coast of Coromandel

Prettiest runway ever

Plenty of parking at Pauanui

Some des res by the beach at Paku

The boys walking by Pauanui Beach

Who needs a garage when you can have a hangar!

Pauanui & Tairua from the air

School Time

A carpet covered rabbit car! Not our courtesy car, I hasten to add :-)

We are still awaiting the return of our car. It is still missing a part that has had to be ordered from Japan. Hopefully that'll turn up this week and we'll be back to a car that can seat the whole family. In the meantime I am still driving Martin to Albany every morning in the courtesy car.

Last week the kids started school. It's been interesting, as the three little ones have never been before. Joe went for a while when he was younger, but the others have only ever been home educated. They are all really enjoying themselves I'm glad to say. Joe has been amusing everyone with his BBC English accent at Mahurangi College, while the younger three have been finding their feet at Warkworth Primary.

One of the surprising things about school here is that a lot of the little kids run around all day barefoot.  When they do PE they don't have to bring pumps as they all just take their shoes off - that's if they were wearing any in the first place. Some of the kids come with no shoes on right at the beginning of the day. It isn't because they can't afford them, it's just the done thing.

The kids do a lot of exercise too, and the schools have big playing fields - unlike in the UK where most of the playing fields have been sold off and turned into housing developments these days. It's refreshing to see little ones running around in the playground in the mornings playing ball games of all sorts. Another thing they seem to discourage in UK schools. Rugby is the national game, so here the kids play something called Touch Rugby. I think it means they don't all pile on each other when someone gets the ball, but I may be wrong.

All in all the school thing is going okay. I have found it a bit strange having the day to myself as I haven't had days like this since Joe originally started school. I have a few things to keep me occupied at the moment, but once all our stuff gets here I will need to find some thing to do here.

Our shipping container finally arrived at Auckland docks last Monday (6th Sept). The moving company took it over on Wednesday, but the bio security people (MAF) have decided they want to inspect it. Not all containers get inspected but as ours has some camping stuff and a trail bike in it I guess it's attracted their attention. I hope it meets with their approval as we cleaned everything before it went in. Once they've done their thing, the container will be sent up here and Martin's bike will go to a local motorbike firm to be checked, registered etc. So hopefully we'll be reunited with our belongings by next week.