The Love Bracelet

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Auckland held her International festival at the Mt Roskill memorial park.

If you love trying different food, listening to ethnic music and meeting people from other cultures, then the Auckland International Cultural Festival is just the event for you. This free festival is a celebration of Auckland's richness and diversity of cultures and a great opportunity for new refugees and migrants to have a sense of place and feel more connected, while displaying with pride the cultural variety they bring to our city. A feast for the senses, you can walk the world in a day, enjoying the people, music, dance, food, arts, crafts, displays and so much more from over 40 nations in just seven hours!

I promised my African refugee students that I will go. I even got a souvenir.

According to the young man who threaded it on my wrist, he explained The first bead, the Black bead represents all the bad things we do, The red : the love that jesus gave us when he died on the cross, The white: when we ask for forgiveness and we are forgiven, Green: that we grow and the Gold: symbolises the new heaven and the new earth.

I will wear the bracelet to school tomorrow and show them to my students. Doesn't it look good on my wrist?

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day.

To acknowledge the need to take action on Climate Change, people all over the world are encouraged to turn out the lights for one hour.

We are encouraged to switch off our lights for an hour from 8.30 to 9.30pm. My school is encouraging people to go to Coyle's park where there is a massive celebration with torch lights.

We went to our friend J's house for dinner and looked at the Sky Tower and someone wondered why it was so dim. Then we remembered it was earth day. J quickly turned off all the lights and took out extra candles. It wasn't too bad eating under the candle light. To make up for not starting on time, we continued to eat without switching the light back on. We would certainly remember this Earth Day.

New Zealad plant decor

This plant decor at the lobby of the Mt Albert Baptist Chruch has New Zealand plants and flowers. The forage is fruit salad leaves, and palm leaves, and the black one are flax flowers. I am not sure about the greens ones that look like a giant bottle washer.

They look really pretty and it goes to show that flower decors don't need red flowers. Even black flowers look good when the flower decorator knows what to blend in.

Anansi, the spider

In school, I have been using the British Council's interactive lessons in teaching how, Anansi the Spider got his long thin legs. This story comes from West Africa and the Caribbeans. With the adult students, I give them a lesson of the Slavery History. With the children,I give them strings of wool to be the spider web, and they pull Anansi and have lots of fun.

Some of my children are from Africa, and they are very happy to be learning this story. We use a potato to make stamps and make a before and after of Anansi. The we go to the school grounds and look for Anansi.

How did Anansi get his thin legs? Have you guessed? According to legend, Anansi didn't have thin legs, rather, he had short stubby legs. Anansi was greedy and cunning. He got his friends to pull his web when they were ready for him. Of course, by the time a few friends pulled the webs, his legs got thinner and thinner.

Balmoral Verses McDonalds

Balmoral, a little suburban in Auckland is challenging the giant McDonald's Restaurant. McDonalds want to build a mega 24/7 drive-thru in the neighbourhood. They managed to get a resource consent hearing date to be set in June. This has the support of the previous Prime Minister, Helen Clark.

This reminds me of when New Zealand stood up and said NO to nuclear power.

Food in a minute evening with speaker Lana

During our Food in a minute social function in MT Albert Baptist Church, the organisers paid very close attention to the decor and presentation. My friend W displayed his Dutch candle sticks and shoe, and his  collection of tropical fruits (artistic ones) .

Thanks W for sharing. In another post, I will write on some of the fruits,  especially the Indonesian fruit Salak which people in Singapore call the snake skin fruit. In Sarawak, we call it the rattan fruit. It is known to cure kidney problems.

Sneak peek

This is for Kate who likes a sneak peek of the wedding photos. The wedding was thirty years ago this year. This is a sneak. As the photographer was my brother Charles sneaking around taking the photos. The official photographer took other pix which are still in my album and I didn't scan them. Now I don't have a scanner. You can see a pix of my wedding cake 

The wedding train was very very long. The dress was loaned to me by a Samoan friend. The Samoa custom for weddings is when a girl gets married, she is given many wedding dresses by her aunties. She doesn't wear all of them. I got to wear free of charge a brand new wedding dress.

It was summer, and the grass was pretty dry. 

The buildings are the back are Auckland University. You can see parts of Old Arts Building.