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\b\f28\fs20\ul\cf1 Part 3 21st - 30th October 2003
\par }{\f1\fs20 Basically everything is fine and we still have some funny littl
e things happen.  Centipedes.actually these arent funny, these are kinda scary cos these critters over here bite and apparently the sting hurts more than when Wellington got robbed of the Ranfurly Shield by the young Steve Walsh against Canturbury two yea
r
s ago..ROBBED I SAY..but we@re not bitter about that anymore, (apparently we didnt lose to them in the weekend, but we still didnt get the shield.poor old wellington!)..oops I digress...anyways, we have had at least 5 of these critters in our home in the 
l
ast two weeks, the first one was about 8-9cm long and the rest have only been about 4-5 cm long....although Im sure by the time we get home they will all have grown to being a foot long with 2cm nippers!! The funny thing here is that kids have cicadas and
 
bugs for pets...which i think look pretty scary cos theyre huge buggers these bugs..but god help the students if a black butterfly comes into the classroom...they stand up and move away from it as if its a bloodsucking bat!! I must say I have appeared to 
b
e the saviour a few times now by shooing the black butterfly out...isnt that funny.   So we are lying in bed and Maatavera says,`daddy theres a snake`..and it was a centipede so Terry whopped the s**t out of it and we were ok....then that afternoon Maatav
e
ra was watching tv and then she called out to Terry and there was one on her leg..terry zoomed over flicked it off Maatavera then whopped the s**t out of it..last night I am on the computer and i see one under it..so Ria runs away as fast as possible..I h
a
d to get soemthing big to whop it with..(yeah right) meanwhile Terry grabs his trusty weapon - the remote and whops the s**t out of it....so we seem to be doing our bit to rid Japan of these pesky but dangerous critters.  Biking - as Jody Allen knows (ano
t
her ALT who is just a bit smaller than Terry) japanese bikes are not made for the polynesian build..so when Terry tried to bike with him and the two kids on (one in the front and one on the back)..they made it all the way to my school until the bike tire 
h
it the curb then that was the end of that! Terry had to push the bike home with one child on it and the other begrudgingly walking next to it. Now me and the kids live life on the edge cos I ride the bike with the two kids ..and anyone who knows about me 
a
nd bikes may remember certain -wiggle wiggle wiggle almost fall to the left - overcompensate almost fall off to the right- wiggle some more -fall off` incidents and there have been a few..yep my biking skills will be honed to perfection by the time we com
e
 home.  school students - the students here are so nice, last week when I was walking from the school to teh station, one of the students offered to double me home on the back of his bike, and as much as I wanted to say yes my fear of puncturing his tire 
u
nder my weight far outweighed the fact that it was a tad hot that day and i didnt fancy walking another 15 mins to the station. Also, I am amazed at the students ability to sleep in class but make it look like they are still writing now that is a skill!  
J
apanese friends - generous generous generous..   Weather now is great, we dont use the airconditioner at all now so life is getting easier. Also we get our car next weekend and we are really looking forward to that, we will be able to get out in the weeke
n
ds now.  terry has met up with a band a couple of times now and went to the studio to do some practising for a recording. They really like him, only thing is the place is so far away and htey dont practice till late in the evening that it is tiring for te
r
ry...so the jury is still out on how much involvement he will have.  my welcome party..well the English staff had my welcome party last Friday so Ii hopped on the trusty bike to ride to the party cos it started at 6.30pm and i had no intention of drinking
 
too much...and of course warning bells should already be ringing when you read the phrase "no intention"....I drank a few glasses of beer, small glasses then a few of this drink called chu-hi, bigger glasses but this stuff is like softdrinks....or SO I TH
O
UGHT..after the kai it was off to the local kareoke box , and I shoulda realised how tiddly i was then when i actually agreed to sing a song!!..so by the time i chose my second song I was beyond hope and well on my way to hang-over material..but funnily e
n
ough i felt fine enuff to bike home at 10.30pm in the dark and everything was OK..UNTIL I LAY DOWN..then oh my god, all the alcohol which musta previously been stored in some other part of me (probly my thighs, you could hide a horse in them and not notic
e
)seemed to run to my head and i felt TERRIBLE and spent the next 10 mins in the toilet!!(no need for explanations and descriptions of what i was doing there)..the next morning the kids woke up at the usual perky time of 6.00am AAAGGGHH but Terry was so ki
n
d (cos you know if he had been a tad under the weather from drinking I woulda had no sympathy for him!!)and let me stay horizontal until 8.00am when i had to get up and get ready for the two visitors we had at 9.00am!  As you can see life is not that much
 
different here than anywhere else...except we have a lot more time here to spend with the kids and do things together which is definitely one of the best things about coming here - our quality of life..sure we live in a house the size of mum and dads rump
u
s room, we have to cook off two gas rings, a grill the size of a packet of superwine biscuits and a toaster, there is no running hot water until you heat it via a gas unit, the doorways are a foot lower than Terrys forehead and the bugs are bigger than yo
u
 would believe..but as long as we have Sky perfect and access to the world cup rugby...oooops i mean Each other..as long as we have each other wwe have everything we need, and we are very happy......soo mumm stop worrying!  I cant wait till you all come a
n
d visit..just dont come all at once or we wont have enough floor space.  stay tuned for the next episode where Ria and Terry buy their first car and travel somewhere AND HOPEFULLY DONT GET LOST Well as you may remember from part 1 , we bought a car and so
 
far our trips on it have been a bit difficult to say the least. The width of the roads we have travelled have been no wider than our drive-way..LITERALLY..why? because we are still waiting on some administrative glitch [replace those last two words with H
U
GE BOTCHUP BY SOME JAPANESE PERSON] so we can ONLY drive around our carpark. so far we have taken the kids out for a spin 3 times and I dare say we may even be able to squeeze in one more round of the carpark before we get our official papers saying we ow
n
 the car and can drive it!! What an experience in frustration.  But there is an upside, we can now legitimately feel ok about staying in and watching the world cup rugby games (didnt Japan do well..and what about Reuben Parkinson..and um..dont want to nam
e
 drop BUT did I mention that we met im and his family while we were out with Dylan ika..hahahahah)  Not much is happening at the moment, the weather is lovely and cool and now we even need to use A blanket at night. Last night I went thru all the winter g
e
ar we lugged all he way over here and thought "it bloody better get colder than this or else Im taking all these useless thick clothes some"  The kids seem to be growing up so fast here. We are always telling Maatavera not to do naughty things because Te 
K
Aonga will copy her..well last Friday, I gave Maatavera a smack because of some bad thing she had done and about 10 mmins after that Te Akonga went over and tried to hit her. Thats when Maatavera said "see mama, Te Akonga learnt that off you.he learnt tha
t
 off you mama, you shouldnt hit me cos he will copy you"!! errr..i didnt have a clue of what to say to her, blingin three year old know-it-alls!  Te Akonga has suddenly decided he no longer wants a bottle or his special milk (uhhh nobody tell Pam and mahi
n
a that the tins of formula they carefully lugged over may not get used!)and its just as well that we got to Sid before he bought another four tins of the stuff to send to us!  Speaking of Te Akonga, he created a wee moral dilemma for me on Sunday. We had 
s
ome japanese friends over for tea one fun night and the husband went to the wharepaku. This would normally not be a problem except Te Akonga really likes this japanese couple and he followed the husband..WHO DIDNT PUT THE LOCK ON THE DOOR TIGHT ENUFF...an
d
 unbeknown to the husband, Te Akonga had swung the toilet door open and was standing there watching him...thank goodness it was a standing visit!  How do I know? because you can see the wharepaku from the kitchen where I was getting kai ready. My dilemma 
w
as ..  A) do I sneakily go and close the door and risk our friend catching me doing it and then make myself look more suspicious by blaming it on Te Akonga, MAKING ME SEEM LIKE A PERVERT and embarrassing our friend at the same time?, or B) do I sneakily t
a
ke Te Akonga away and not risk getting caught by leaving the door open and pretending that nobody saw anything? or C) quickly whip into the room and get the digital camera and shout "cheese" to our friend as he is standing there???  You get 5 points for s
a
ying A, 10 points for B, and 15 points plus a heavy tsk tsk tsk for choosing C.  Needless to say I did B and then me and Terry had a big laugh about it.   Work is ok. Actually yesterday as we were going to catch a train for a day out, we were approached b
y
 a young couple who wanted to know whether we did private English lessons. Of course we lied thru our teeth and said "YES we do, in fact we already have two students..(this is not a complete lie cos we do have two japanese women who are coming this weeken
d
 for english conversation,but they arent students and they dont pay!..but we ALWAYS INTENDED to do private English lessons). So today I have been busily looking thru books on what kind of things we could teach these people...oh noooo. We thought we could 
p
ut on "Hi5 and Barney videos and teach the kids those songs, just put those on for the kids over and over again..becasue as we all know repetition is a KEY factor in language acquisition.. which is true but perhaps an asepct not appreciated and acknowledg
e
d by all parents.21 Oct -30 Oct..part 3  Well we finally got our ownership papers, and our`cost-an-arm-and-a-leg` car insurance last Friday, so that was me, straight on my bike and zoomed home to go for a ride in our car. (As I thought in our last message
,
 the kids did indeed get one last spin around the carpark before we could finally take it out on the road. )  So we put the kids in so excited and anxious at the same time, well maybe just I was anxious cos I was the one having to navigate these footpaths
-
posing-as-roads..but in we got.  Then Terry thought he would warm it up and KLUNK KLUNK KLUNK..the blasted battery was flat.!!It seems that our `one last whizz around the carpark` afforded our wee darling of a son or daughter to leave a light on inside th
e
 car and flatten the blasted battery!(we didnt know which one did it so we gave them both a hua of a hiding...yeah right..)   What a major disappointment,and of course, none of our neigbours own jumper leads so we had to wait till Sat arvo till we could f
i
nd someone with jumper leads..  So I went off to school cos it was the teachers sports afternoon. There were sposed to be 4 sports, but cos teachers are practically at school for about 70 hours a WEEK already, who can blame them for not wanting to come to
 
school on a sat afternoon.   So we ONLY had softball and badminton, and cos badminton is a really well played sport here, all the teachers opted to play softball cos they knew that the teachers who did play badminton play it very well...which means ol mug
g
ins here got put in the badminton team, even tho the only time I can remember playing a real game was in high school on Sep 25 1985!!.well soemthing like that, so I played doubles with a female teacher, who actuaully proved my first point wrong..she was p
r
obably the only teacher who doesnt play badminton well, heck I even played better than her, so it was no wonder we got whipped 15-1! Then I paired up with one of our schools badminton coaches and I thought YAY...until we started playing, cos he had decide
d
 (and quite rightly) that I knew nothing about badminton except how to hit the shuttlecock and HE thought he would save me and the reputation of our school by trying to hit all the shots himself. Weeelll we all know how that works..it doesnt!!! There were
 
so many times he was running here and there that I didnt know where the hell I shoulda been but you can bet when the shuttlecock hit the floor,THAT WAS WHERE I SHOULDA BEEN!..ok ok, so another beating 15-5!   By then I had had enough of this and decided I
 
would make an executive decision and just go and play softball, and things were on the up. They asked me where I used to play, and I remembered that when I played (way back in 1982?83?)..I used to play 3rd..so FOOLISH IDIOT ME, thinking nothing of it said
 
3rd base. Next game, I was in and I was on 3rd base. Oh my god, there were some baseball players in the team we were playing and all I could think of was "please dont hit it at me, please dont hit it at me". First batter up, a man, he whops the ball strai
g
ht at me, so i catch it and throw it to first -OUT!!yayy - the foreigner is a hero for one nano second! Then the next batter hit it up and I caught it..wow..everyone thinks im amazing and Im so surprised Im even beginning to think I am GOOD!!...so after t
h
at I think the other team decided to not hit it near me, and ended up hitting huge home runs instead! Needless to say we lost the softball as well! Of the 4 schools that participated, we came last at everything but it was enjoyable, and we still got vouch
e
rs for 4 free large cans of beer and 3000 yen worth of books.(an unusual combination )  Te Akonga is so funny now, you should see him do his bow when you say "good morning or thank you in japanese" He starts off with a cute head nod, then continues noddin
g
 his head until he ends up with the full half-body bow. Maatavera is the park "monitor"..if any kids come to play in the park, she is out there lickity split to play with them (it doesnt matter if she cant talk to them) The kids are due to start daycare i
n
 Dec so that will be interesting.  Terry had a gig the other night which went really well so that is exciting. One of the guys who ran the bar told him that if he carried on like that he would definitely make it in te Fukuoka music scene..which is really 
e
ncoraging  No other happenings here besides that, well if you dont count me burning the microwave popcorn yesterday afternoon in the staff kitchen..I accidentally pushed the button which changes the oven from microwave to convection oven...derr...bloomin 
k
anji buttons..so after two minutes I noticed a burning smell and when I opened the oven the packet that the popcorn was in had burnt in one spot and all the dye from the outside of the packet had melted onto the turntable..needless to say there was a bit 
o
f smoke as well!! Yeegods! SO i quickly opened up all the windows closed the door and did a frantic clean up of the oven as well as swish the teatowels around to get rid of the smoke!! It musta been pretty noticeable cos the principal popped his head in t
o check out what was happening and his office is on the floor below..!! I just smiled calmly at him as if everything was ok and if it wasnt it was SOMEONE ELSES fault, that seemed to do the trcik cos he smiled back and left!! phew!}{
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