A letter from Fiji...

At the School...

Yes I know I could be posting pics of fireworks and white women in saris (ie Diwali), however we have been flat out here on the island with the 35th anniversary (no not ours! we're not that old...) of the resort... and I haven't quite got it together... There have been lots of returnees around and lots of fun activities and trips. So I'll just quickly post some from a trip which included a visit to the school. The headmistress took us all into a class and asked which children had relatives that worked at Treasure or Bounty Islands...all of them! 

They're keen to show us their work...

I told them we weren't allowed any shots like this one... but they still tried to sneak the old "fingers" in (look carefully at the first photo). At least there was no such danger with this little one waiting in the village...

Nacula School

...and where we have told the kids they will go next year!

 

Nacula School (say Nah- thu- lah) is situated on the edge of the village and is actually a boarding school for a large part of the district. Children come in on Sunday afternoon from surrounding islands and commute home on Friday afternoons. Parents from the village help out with the cooking for the boarders. When we visited one class was nominated to sing for us. Our kids LOVED it, especially the younger ones. Little S amused herself by making faces at the class which cracked them up. It was a happy school and full of spirit. 

Now before I post some more of my favourites here's my public service notice: In NZ and maybe Australia too school books, in particular the school journals are retired at around 10 years old. Over here most schools do not have access to the readers our kids take for granted, in fact we have observed classes reading the same books, but off a large poster on the black board. This puts any children with vision or hearing problems (which lets face it are unlikely to be diagnosed as they would be back home) at an immediate disadvantage. When we lived in Rotorua the librarian at Lynmore Primary School, John, saved all the retired readers, and there will be other school librarians who do this too. When we were coming over for a holiday we would carry about 20kg of these and give to the local school. Please do this! If you are coming over see if you can get some retired readers from a local school, and use your spare luggage allowance to bring them over and donate to a school... When GB was interviewing for the job over here he told the children he was visiting his friend Mac in Auckland, but they suspected he had been in Fiji for the weekend: why? Because he had raced into the school on the Friday with his overnight bag and John had filled it with retired school journals!

 

Curious children looked out as we walked past, me saying "kerekere na taba?" (please a photo? -my Fijian grammar is not too hot) each time someone looked out at us. Disruptive? yes probably, Vosoti Au... (I'm sorry).

The school had inspirational messages painted on the walls...

That's all from Nacula, I must just add that those frames that work so well here are by Renee Oakenfull of Vibe...

"One" from Oarsmans (a photo in my next post) tells us there is also a very good Catholic boarding school on Turtle Island. So I told the kids that's where they could go next year- one of those two schools. We would put them on the boat on Sunday afternoon, and pick them back up off it on Friday at 5pm. They weren't so keen, but really they're quite safe and have no need to worry that we would send them away. We would miss them too much...

I've got to go to town on the big boat now (the "Cougar") so I can't be late and miss it- it won't wait... So I will stop here and post again tomorrow, I know, what the!?? Before we leave Oarsmans there are 3 or 4 more photos, also Renee has tagged me, and I've got two birthdays to share including why 12 year olds like the Hard Rock Cafe... Then of course the beautiful wedding of Jim and Mylene. The photos are done (well my ones are), I'll pick a few out and show them (gorgeous couple!) then burn the disc and mail to Montreal...

Don't be Confused...

I haven't finished posting the pics from our trip up to Nacula, I will post more soon... I just thought I'd post the Shakespeare ones while I was working with them... So this is a bonus post for the wag who quipped that I don't update my blog daily, but quarterly! you know who you are :D

We're going to town, its flooding...

No, we haven't got so callous that we race into town to watch misfortune... on the sunday night my mum and sister (alias Granny and Ape, ok lets just call her Jane) flew into Nadi to visit us, and we stayed the night in town so we could meet them at the airport. We stayed at the Nadi Bay Hotel (of course- we like to stay there or the Mercure as they don't break the bank AND they have great food which is not a given even at flash resorts). True to form we had a great meal at the Nadi Bay. But it was raining and raining and raining. We took comfort in the fact that its generally much drier out on the island. The next morning the plan was to let the travelers sleep in while I dropped the kids to school. Then we would sightsee until the boat at 4.30pm...

So they were not expecting the call just before 8am. Quick! get packed, we're going to town, its flooding...(so why are we going there?) Infact the school was closed as high tide was 0930 and it was still raining. If we were going to see Nadi the best thing to do was to get into town, assess the water level, park in the appropriate place, then do a bit of shopping and sightseeing while everything was still open. As it turned out the river didn't come into town as in this other time if it had of course I would've been all prepared with the car parked safely over the bridge and the rellies all in good shoes for walking in water. But the banks seem to be a different shape this year, and the village doesn't flood as much, which is good, very good. We headed to Bulaccino of course, the best spot to have brek, assess the situation, and watch local school kids walking past as the schools were closed early one by one...

So what do you buy as a souvenir if you have studied traditional cultural women's clothing as part of your university degree? A Salwar Kameez of course! Jane tried on maybe 100? no I am just kidding, but Gran and I did have to find seats before she was finished- luckily the one she did buy was gorgeous so we all voted it well worthwhile.

Then as a contrast to the fine cafe style of Bulaccino we had another local experience for lunch- dining at MH (which is a supermarket)! OK they do good basic curries, chowmein, chicken, fish and chips. Infact some of the best fish and chips I have had anywhere. And cheap as chips too! I didn't get much in the way of comments from the rellies there. Hopefully because they were too full and happy, and not (the possible alternative) too shocked to speak... Then to finish the day we hopped on the boat, still raining (I am assuring them there will be lots of sunshine and I have just arranged this to help them acclimatise), a huge swell and we bounce our way out to the island (Veniana throws up on the sink just off Bounty). Welcome to our paradise (tee hee)...

(visit from the rellies to be continued...Jane learns to snorkel and meets the local sea lice and mosquitoes)

2006 was the year we...tried homeschooling

In what is probably the last of the flashbacks form last year, mainly ‘cos I haven’t got time to revisit all the great things we did whilst keeping up with the stuff we’re doing this year (touch wood) we look at the year we “home schooled”. If you're on dial up this may be a big post. Same rules as I always recommend, go away, hang up the washing (or chore of similar time duration) and have a cup of tea. Then come back and read...

Those of you who know me well or grew up with me (as opposed to my photog friends) know that teaching was not ever going to be a career option for me (I’m so patient- not!!). Add this to the fact that my three specialise in winding me up, and potentially homeschooling’s a recipe for disaster. So one of the best things about GB’s job offer over here was the fact we could coordinate the boats to send the children to school on the mainland if we wished.

We looked around at schools, it wasn’t something to just jump into, but the first thing apparent was the Fijian (by which I mean those of all races- Fijian or Indo Fijian) schools, especially the popular of well regarded ones were very full- up to 50 children per class/teacher. And some we couldn’t get into at all, including one Catholic one we liked (apparently whether or not you’re catholic doesn’t count in Nadi- so different from Rotorua!). No space, no chance. Well at the end of the day we didn’t really think our kids would benefit from classes so big anyway, so we enrolled them in the international school. 30 children per class, and two teachers. But then Amy decided she didn’t want to go, and we thought it was maybe too big a day for Tom being only 5… so while Alice headed off in uniform to the international school, Tom and Amy enrolled in the NZ Correspondence school, run by the NZ state school system, to cater for children who can’t get to their local (NZ) school.

Correspondence school was to say the least very disappointing and frustrating, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to go into why here. This will just dwell on the fun bits! Tom proved himself quite unsuited to home schooling, quite rapidly in fact. Looking back at photos I can see by Ratu Sukuna day (28 May) he was at the International School and participating in his first mufti day- in a pocket sulu and a bula shirt…(on Ratu Sukuna mufti day the kids wear sulu and jaba (long skirt and matching top in bula fabric) or pocket sulu (mens’ skirt) and bula shirt….)

Any meantime was put in an online class called "space blasters"(!) and teamed up with her class mate (its true, they were in the same online class)- who lived on the island next door, only 1000m away…  (her parents own a dive company) and took on the task of school. They had to submit photos for the class- here's Amy's- she chose her style, outfit, background etc etc so carefully!

They spent sometime on studying water, experiments, surveys, observations. There were a whole host of experiments about water.

Amy even wrote about it in her diary...

This is actually the girls trying to do their stream study. Yep, no streams on the island! No creeks, definitely no rivers or similar ecosystems to search for invertebrates in. Their class mates in China had similar problems from their twelfth floor apartment in a city of 16 million people (they said the stream wasn't looking as dirty as usual but there was no way they were going near it).

So the girls are peering off the sea wall checking for water clarity when they see something coming...and it was this

They finished this study off by going snorkeling instead to look for biodiversity…

Studying by correspondence also meant they didn’t always study in the same place. Once a week we went out for Tom’s soccer practices, and while Tom was doing his practice, the girls sat and finished their work. The result of this was they were at the school one afternoon each week. Eventually they looked at the other girls their age, overcame some of their trepidation, and decided to enroll at the school. But just before they changed schools they had an “e-lective” they really enjoyed- making a photo slide show. You can see by the unique take on the subject that its entirely Alice and Estelle’s concept. Their classmates posted nice little narrated slide shows. But Amy and Estelle posted this… (with apologies to Barbie. OK and to Kelly Clarkson too)...(GB's comment when they created it was "you girls are sick...")

(Slide show program used was Microsoft Photostory 3 -its a free download, and my goodness I have to say photobucket has been really p*ssing me off today! So I hope this works)(AGAAC- the photos in this post are with my old camera gear- can you tell? I can...)