Outdoor Wednesday: Students at Zero Waste

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These international students from Korea, Vietnam and China spent the whole of this last Sunday at Okahu bay volunteering as our zero waste educators. Often they went round picking up rubbish that festival goers carelessly throw on the ground.

I was partnering with Lien from Vietnam. She was unfazed by people who dump rubbish at the wrong bins, and she would bent over and reach into the bins to sort the rubbish. I enjoyed the ten hours with her under the hot sun getting to know about Vietnam.

As for the students, they went home tired but happy with priceless experience of sleeping in a marae, enjoying the Maori hospitality and powhiri/welcome and a knowledge of recycling. There will be memories of celebrating our National Day with a difference.

Ka Pai and paki paki Lien, Annabell, Richard and Jay, and their teachers Linda and Kath who brought them.

My world Tuesday: Mobile animal farm

http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/

What is more appropriate in a festival for family? A petting mobile farm.

Sunday stills:Emotions

What emotions do you have when you think of breast mammograms? Ouch???? Relief?? Thankfullness?

Today, I was at our Waitangi Festival celebrations as a recycling educator. Next to my station were the Breast cancer awareness ladies. I told them I support them, and they noticed my two pink bangs.

It was a very hot day, Miriam, Andrea and Elisabeth were there the whole day like me doing their educating. Ka Pai.

I just had my mammogram done last week, yes. It is an Ouch, but it is worthed it.
I am very lucky, twice I had breast surgeries to remove lumps in my breast. For a long time, I wear these two inches long scar and mis-shapen nipple. It's been so long ago that I have forgotten I have them, though they are still there. I showed them to a friend when she just had her surgery. She was very thankful. If I didn't feel troubled by them, she too would learn to accept hers.

It was exactly thirty years ago when I had the first surgery. I was in this open ward where there were many old White and Maori women. They came and gave me big hugs and said," You poor thing." The lump was non cancerous, they just nicked a little of it. Ten years later, they found another lump, and another surgery.







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Sunday Stills, the next challenge: Emotions
Posted in Sunday Stills Challenge of the Week, the next challenge with tags Sunday Stills on January 30, 2011 by Ed

Please read the directions for this one…

This weeks challenge it to post pics that will cause an emotion in the person who checks out your blog, not your emotion. Any emotion will do, this will be a fun challenge and try not to use archives, but they will work in a pinch..:-))

Friday Shootout: What I collect

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February 4 - What I Collect by Sue CTG.

I don't collect things, but if I have the money and the space to keep them, I would collect these crystals. agate slices and amethyst I saw at the Crystal Mountain.

Outdoor Wednesday: Workmen

http://asoutherndaydreamer.blogspot.com

Seen sprucing up this Sri Lankan takeaway were two workmen. Auckland city has become very cosmopolitan. There are many kinds of ethnic food all over the city.

My World Tuesday: Climbing

We went to the Otautaua stone fields and climbed a giant rock. It was hard and I thought of my hero, Sir. Edmund Hillary who scaled Mt Everest in 1953.

The Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve is one of Manukau's premier parks. It is an internationally significant heritage landscape and an important natural, archaeological and historic area.





Photo of moving house courtesy NZ Herald
As a primary school kid, I learned it was Edmund Hiillary who conquered Mt Everest in 1953. It was
Sir Ed's ascent of Mt Everest that everyone was proud of, from the Queen to the ordinary folk.

He touched the lives of many and his charitable efforts had built 42 hospitals and schools in Nepal.

Yesterday, his house was placed in a school named after him.

The building, which Sir Ed built and in which he planned many of his expeditions, was welcomed to its new home at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Otara with a morning powhiri.

"It's not looking its best," admitted Sir Ed's son, Peter Hillary.

"But by the time they've put the bottom structure on and reclad it and refitted it out, it's got a whole new life ahead of it and I think that's an absolutely marvellous thing."

Sir Ed and his first wife, the late Lady Louise, built the house in Remuera in 1956.

After Sir Ed's death, his neighbour, former NZ cricket rep Terry Jarvis, bought the property in 2009 and eventually gave the house to the school.

It will be used as a leadership centre for students from throughout New Zealand, and for the wider community.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/sir-ed-s-former-house-arrives-new-home-4011588/video?vid=4011839

Watch the students perform the Traditional Maori welcoming dance, the Haka.

http://showyourworld.blogspot.com/

Save our world: use natural material

Seen at the Arataki Visitor Centre at the Waitakere ranges is this bench. It blended with the natural environment of the bush and forest. I thought what a great idea. We don't need glossy lead, mercury, cobalt, and barium laden paints to make the bench beautiful.

Many out door paints contain serious toxins and are dangerously poisonous to people and the planet. Even stains touted as environmentally friendly will contain over 200 g/L VOC. Some contain ethyl benzene, while others will be full of ethylene glycol.

A natural bench serves the same function as a painted one.

Paki Paki to the Waitakere City Council. In fact, in many places in New Zealand, our outdoor furniture are not painted. In making this particular bench, I can see there is not much need for machinery as well.

Addition: The Waitakere City Council was disestablished in 2010 with the creation of the Auckland Council as a unitary authority - the "SuperCity"

Thanks The probligo,


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