Currently

So much to do, so little time. 

Apologies if I'm meant to catch up with you! I've had it on my to do list to make contact with a few people but life has been so crazy I haven't managed it I'm afraid :/ Miss you though and one day we actually will meet up again! :)

I've just gotten back into flute lessons again (had about three months off because my teacher had a baby), so now we need to get preparing for my next exam, and decide when it's realistic to sit it. Sitting it sooner means I can go for my diploma earlier, but would require a significant amount of time in practice, and already my to-do list is growing faster than I can keep up with. 

I'm juggling a few jobs now -- seriously why can't they all fit seamlessly into my schedule?! So yeah, I'm getting a bit of practice at adjusting my schedule (haven't turned up to the wrong place yet!! :P) but thankfully at this stage I have managed to work things out so I don't have to drop anything.

Nearly every night now we have to work out who's going where the next day, and with which vehicle. With four drivers, three vehicles, more and more places to be, small parking spaces that make it super difficult to park the van, and me not being able to drive the manual, it's becoming increasingly difficult to work out through vehicle logistics. So if anyone is giving a car away, I'd love to hear from you ;P hahaha

Right now I'm sitting here typing this while Mum has been cooking, and is now serving dinner. I can see a lounge chair dissapearing under a mound of washing waiting to be folded by me later tonight. Either tonight or tomorrow I'll have to give Diana another recorder lesson; we're putting in some extra ones to prepare for her exam later this month. And I didn't manage to do the irnoning last weekend so guess what I'll be amusing myself with in my spare time? :P lol

Oh and I've been thinking it might be fun to host a giveaway of some sort on here at some point, but based on the amount of comments I usually get it seems a bit pointless :P

Xj if you're reading this, I'm now 54% fluent in French apparently. Just sayin'.

Recently

I'm sure the summer holidays get shorter every year! At least, that's what it feels like. I guess it's more general than that though, all of life just seems to speed up as we grow older. 

My laptop adapter finally did arrive, so the technical difficulties have been overcome and I just need to find {ahem, make) the time to edit my mountains of images and then post them here. (Cheer me on guys ;) :P)

Over the past few months I have accomplished a fair bit of walking; an hour plus most days. (Xj why am I applying French pronunciation to English words now?! *insert 2015's word of the year* The above image was taken on one of said walks, on my iPhone admittedly, since I haven't been taking the camera with me.

In January the rest of the fam abandoned me (kidding) for a couple weeks and went on holiday to the Taranaki. I did have several good study days, but somehow I didn't manage to catch up on sleep like I planned lol. Ate plenty of good food though!! ;P Got in some good catch-ups with friends and finally went to a couple of services at a friends' church. It was different than I'm used to lol but I won't complain. And being in a church that didn't feel like it was trying to give Antarctica a run for it's money was a very welcome change. (I'm not telling the time I'm writing this, and yes I am sarcastic normally, but this is probably worse.)

Life took a sad turn midway through my time home alone when my nana in Wellington passed away. My family drove straight down from the Taranaki and I flew day on the Monday, in time for the Tuesday funeral. Hopefully a post in the near future will feature a number of photos from Nana's life. It was a pretty short trip for me, as we all left on Wednesday, with the others dropping me in Marton at the ATI Student Conference, and then driving back to Auckland. I spent a day and a half-ish with my awesome friend Susannah (first time seeing each other since we swapped numbers back in July last year lol), talking heaps,  drinking way too much coffee, and not sleeping a lot (paid for it when I got back :P) before I came back on Friday. (That bus driver had no de Bruin blood in him. Or the trip would have taken half the time. Just saying.)

Now that school has gone back I'm into teaching again (privately) -- and at this stage I've managed to get all my classes in just one afternoon!! *clapping emoji* This term half my students are returning from last year, and the other half are new students, learning the basics of how to hold a recorder and such. Putting students through exams is exciting, and it's amazing to reflect back over how far they've come, but it's pretty special as well to see new students grasp the basic concepts!

I finally have managed to make a start on job hunting, so to speak; I expect to have an interview pretty soon to discuss details, and then I should be picking up some part time work. I've made a second enquiry somewhere else so we'll see what comes of these two and take it from there. I'm half thinking about joining Stampin' Up! as a demonstrator too. (Anyone interested in a party?!)

And that's my update for now. If it changes it's because I changed my mind about how much I wanted to share once I had more sleep. Lol. 

And I Return

Hello! 

Nope, contrary to what you may have thought, I haven't dropped off the planet! Wow, has it really been three months already since my last post?! I have a stack of photos waiting to be edited and uploaded, but between busyness and technical issues I haven't managed to work on them. :/

During September and October I spent three weeks in Australia, visiting friends and family . . . and enjoying the weather :D lol. In Aus, short sleeves and jandals -- try not to get sunburnt; walk off the plane into Auckland terminal -- *put puffer jacket on* *still freeze*. Lol. Great trip! Photos coming :)

Since I've been back I've taught a full term of recorder classes, and finished the year off with my students and siblings performing a concert at a local rest home. It's somewhat weird to think I've been teaching for three years now!

While I have some extra time on my hands *cough* since my students are on summer holidays, I become student again, solidifying scales for my next flute exam, and studying so I can {one day/finally} graduate. So if I come on here speaking French and {scientific} Latin . . .

Somewhere between knocking things off my to do list and enjoying the warmer weather (if and when it arrives lol) I'm supposed to get some job hunting in. *Sigh*

At present I can't edit photos on our desktop computer (not sure if I can run updates to rectify that or not) and the adapter for my super-slow laptop died last week . . . I should be able to replace that but not sure how quickly with Christmas being this week. So hopefully I can sort something out and get some more photos on here! But for now, 

Farewell!

Responding to a Comment || My Life at Present

Over here I responded to some of the questions in this comment. Now I'll share a bit about "the season of life [I'm] currently in". Wow, that sounds open-ended. Where do I start?!

Well, I think I've said this on here before, but I'm in my last year of formal schooling (yay!), so I'm {meant to

be} working really hard to get everything finished that I want to study in high school (level). That means piles of math and science, along with some French.

Of course, being in my late teens with my graduation approaching, people regularly ask about my plans in terms of a job or career. I've been teaching recorder lessons to a few homeschooled students since the beginning of last year, and next year I plan to teach flute as well. Flute is actually my main instrument (I play it to a higher level than any other), but due to it's greater complexity, I opted to get some teaching experience with the recorder first. Once I've completed all the grades, I can go for my teaching diploma (that's just for flute -- there's one per instrument!) which is through ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music). And voila, I'll be a qualified flute teacher!

So, I think those are the two biggest parts of my life currently. As a daughter at home, I also have various family/household duties, such as working in the family business one day a week, cooking, cleaning, etc.

With my impending 18th {or perhaps that has subjective rather than intrinsic value?} and the end of my "school years" approaching (something akin to the end of an era!), a season (or seasons?) of my life are coming to an end. And I'll leave it at that {can you feel the suspense?!}, since this post was meant to be about the season I'm currently in. And I didn't write all that much. Oops.

Stratford - Day 7 - Thursday 29th December

{Not sure when I wrote this...}

Bonjour, mes amis (my friends)

On Thursday Mum was adament we had to do SOMETHING! We went first to Uncle Mike and Aunty Sonia's to check whether Nana wanted to come - she didn't, then to Mt. Taranaki (or Egmont). It was quite a long drive (an hour or so I think) but it didn't bother me, especially because I had my nose buried in Janette Oak's The Winds of Fall. We went as far as we could go - to this sign:

Which actually wasn't very far anyway! With the weather the way it was (you can see in the above photo) we couldn't see the snow-capped peak of the mountain, which Nana showed us later on her camera. So we drove to this area, Mum (?) went into the visitor centre - green building above - to find out that was as far as we could go, and...then we drove back! How fun..! lol Well driving back I took a heap of photos - just of the trees and stuff that lined either side of the road.

We then went to Fun Ho, in Inglewood.
Fun Ho is a toy museum, and very small - as in it had like three rooms!




These go karts would race around the track if you pressed the button!

 

This train was going right around the edge of the room!





The above picture was taken through one of the windows
in this car!



These cars were moving..

To soldiers and stuff..

There were several windows like this, with the inside
piece spinning around so you could see different scenes

Diana..

On the way out we got photos like the following of everyone (except myself!):

Danielle (8yrs)

For dinner we had Chinese at the campground, with Uncle Mike, Aunty Sonia, Nana, and Lucus. After dinner the adults and I talked (or listened...lol) while the rest all sat down (mostly) to watch Little House on the Prairie.

Dad had forgotten to get the ice creams Mum had asked him to get, so after everyone had left, Dad, Jarrod, and I went to a servo and bought a whole pile. We put four in a bag, Dad parked accross the road from Uncle Mike and Aunty Sonia's, Jarrod ran over, dropped the bag in front of their door, and ran to hide behind one of their cars! Unfortunately he couldn't stay hidded, though, and did end up saying hello. Ah well.

Back at the campground, everyone was excited about their Magnums. (see photo)

I attempted to have an early night..but that didn't exactly happen..I was writing a post for this blog! =)

Ciao.
(Why three languages in one post...don't ask me! haha =))