Wellington Wanderings

Updates & Ramblings

Well life's staying pretty busy; today I have work as usual, but then instead of collapsing in a heap like I usually do on Friday afternoons, o heading to bed early, I'll be attending a cousin's 21st in Wellington. I think I'll be pretty much going from the airport to dinner so it will be pretty busy. Then on Saturday hopefully meet up with friends, out with my aunty and cousin for a bit, and then fly home again! So I suspect it will be a long weekend, but not very restful :P Should be good though.

Music classes are going well.Private lessons are scheduled fairly evenly over two days, which is more manageable than one, but not all over the place like it could be if I spread them out even more. This term I've picked up a couple new private (recorder) students, and my times at school have shifted to the same day so I can work an extra afternoon at preschool. 

I discovered a new favourite comedian recently! I can't remember exactly how I came across him; he may have done a show with Tim Hawkins? Anyway, John Crist is pretty awesome. Probably his top three videos would be Christian Mingle Inspector, GET OFFENDED: The Fake Outrage App, and Christian Girl Instagram. I can't find the name of the girl in the last one? A few people have said in the comments section that she looks really familiar, and I agree, but I can't place her. I see some resemblance to Jessica Willis. Anyone else have any idea?

We had an interesting culinary experiment yesterday. The littlest bro very thoughtfully made his sis a birthday cake -- chocolate, with pink  icing. I don't know that he was given a specific measurement for the food colouring, so he just kept pouring until he achieved a colour he was happy with. I informed everyone present afterwards that red velvet cake was the ONLY instance in which it is permissible to use a whole, or nearly a whole bottle of colouring. As it turns out, raspberry essence has a much weaker colouring and much stronger flavour than pink food colouring!

Oh and who had the brilliant idea to introduce ads to Instagram?! First the update that blew up social media because the home feed wasn't going to be chronological anymore, and now wonderful ads! Reckon I'll be spending more time over here instead. ;)

During the holidays Susannah was in Auckland for a few days with her family. Coffee, shopping, kids program (the main church building where the actual conference was had free wifi! #score), talking -- the weekend flew by but it was great to catch up in person again. Besides, it's cheaper on the phone bill :P Now, to find a way to bring Auckland and Wellington closer . . .

Also met up with a couple of other friends during the holidays, spent a (minimal) amount of time relaxing at home, crossed a few things off my to do list, helped some friends get organised for their move down south (seriously, Auckland is growing simultaneously larger and smaller! :/) . . . and suddenly term three is upon us!

Lastly, be sure to check back here tomorrow! ;)

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.