New Week

Tueday-Well been here a week now, Paige started College yesterday altho daunting she made some friends real quick and felt more at ease. She called me after school as she was walking home and said ' Mum, I'm lost and i cant seem to find the right road to go on,' so i had to TRY and find what road she was on and direct her home. Billie-jo and Jaden seem to have settled in fine, BJ came home yesterday and said she has been invited to a friends house next week for AFTERNOON TEA!!! Get you !!! It's her birthday next week she will be 10, god knows what we are going to do, its Marks on Sunday, to be honest both birthdays have been far from mind, I have been down town today looking at long term rental accomodation, so far nothing. I went out today driving for the first time, how scarey! All the roads looked the same. I checked out our local gym and might enroll in some classes, could get used to this lady of leisure mclarky. At the weekend we were invited out for lunch with some friends at Howick and they took us for a spin on their boat (I want one) it was a good day.
Wednesday-We had a look around AUT University today for Carly it's a campus purely for outdoor recreation, it seems very nice, she gave Carly some options so its up to her to decide what she wants to do.
Thursday-I vollunteered today to help at Jaden's outing at the leisure centre, as we have the 2 cars now i followed Mark to Stanmore as he had to go to Auckland to get car insurance. On the way back i thought i shall follow the bus back to school, that's all well and good until i hit the red lights, OMG palpatations as I wave the bus goodbye, but i then began to recognise roads. I shall tell Mark i had no problem getting home.

New Zealand

We landed in NZ Monday 19th, to a beautiful sunny day, we arranged to get picked up and taken to our rented accomodation where we will be staying for 8 weeks. We were greeted by the smell of lilly's and a bottle of champagne in the fridge, also some goodies to keep us going. All i needed at this moment of time is a nice cup of tea. Everything we need is here, Perfect!

Tuesday, we rang the schools for Paige, Billie-jo & Jaden. Had an appt for the Primary school which we thought was a lovely school for them, it was built 12 months ago, so we bought the uniform and they start Thursday.

Bj & Jaden started school today they had a lovely time, they both were allowed to take their shoes off and jaden said ' Mum, I didnt have to put them on to go outside' his feet were filthy but he enjoyed his day, Bj has got Mr Ellis and said he is lovely. We visited Orewa College and had an interview that afternoon and Paige starts Monday. We got the uniform and she doesn't like it, tartan green. I think she looks fine, and the fact that they will all look the same.

Still in Singapore

We had breakfast at the zoo, where you could have your pictures taken with the orang-utang and her baby, it was one of the best zoo's i ve ever seen. We took unlimited tram rides and also walked the trail. The orang-utangs were playing freely in the trees. We watched how the polar bear behaved under water and what they do when they are hungry.

We took a night adventure cruise down the river one evening and viewed Singapore by night. We visited a night market, and had a singapore sling at the famous Raffles hotel. We also ate out and had a Chinese but it never went down with the kids.

We visited the Island of Sentosa and saw an amazing underwater world Asias largesr tropical fish oceanarium, you were alowed to touch certain fish. We saw the merlion and listened to how Singapore got its name which is interesting to hear but i wont bore you with that now. We watched an amazing (sorry used that word twice but it was) a magial Sentosa show with fireworks. truelly spectackular.

Singapore

Had breakfast at the zoo

Altho my noodles were disgusting Mark enjoyed his fish soup

Now in Singapore, wow so hot, We got taken to our hotel with a free shuttle, we had to take all our luggage as we were staying more than 24 hours, we felt like the Adams family, I'm sure we looked like it after 12 hours on the plane, good flight anyway. Got checked in, and got a taxi to China Town, where we bought a new camcorder and had some noodles which were disgusting. That evening we went out to the night Safari tour. It's a tropical jungle that comes to alive after dusk. We saw the giraffes, and the rare clouded leopards, the endangered Asian rhinocerous and the fishing cats. We saw a fire show.

Marks and my family saying good-bye x x x

Bishops lorry ready to load up our things

Packed & ready to go

Well Bishops came and packed all our gear, they spent 4 days packing, gosh i never realised we had so much stuff, how on earth are we going to find a house big enough like the one we have to fit all this lot in, AND i threw a lot out AND gave alot away, Honest!! This all seems real now, watching my things being wrapped up. We spent our last day at Margarets & Brians with my Mum & Dad and Marks brother having a BBQ, and some of Nigels homemade wine, mmm. In the evening Mum treated us to our last supper of a chinese. I went into town and had my last drink with the locals and to say goodbye.

Sunday.

I wanted to slip quietly away, but no chance we had to have photographs and some of Paige's friends turned up and everyone was crying, Very emotional. Duncan drove us to London and we stayed in a hotel over night, ready for the morning, for our adventure.