Bianca leaves for Auckland!

Bianca (right of the picture) with her twin sister, Bonnita at the casual get-together to bid her farewell as she embarks on her studies in Auckland. These two have been typical twins and we know that they are going to pine for one another when they are not making arrangements to see each other - either in Auckland or here in Wanganui!

A pleasant evening at 'Breakers' - attached to a really old character hotel in town.

Dis al!

International Sevens Rugby in Wellington

Wellington (pretty far South on the North Island of New Zealand) is the country's capital, although it's not nearly as big as Auckland (up North) - each year Wellington hosts the International Sevens Rugby Tournament, and this year Jo was invited to attend this extravaganza with a few of his colleagues from work. They were treated like kings and had the best of everything - corporate box with all the catering laid on, sponsored shirts and caps and the like and plenty of 'boys cameradarie' - all in all a fabulous weekend away from the stresses of the office and the roads!

A closer view of some of the opening ceremony dancers - these representing the Pacific Island contingent of players.

An 'opening ceremony' of sorts - and the stadium filling up with the most incredible array of costumes and characters - this event has become a 'not to be missed' on the North Island calendar each year and people go to extreme lengths with their outfits. There is the most amazing atmosphere the entire time - in between the short games of sevens rugby, there is loud rock and roll music played to which the entire crowd sings along - choices of music are always songs that 'everybody knows'!

Our team of team support - looks like they were all really enjoying the incredible atmosphere at the Wellington stadium.

Each team had two girls to wave the flags - one for the tournament and one for the country represented! Pleasing to see that the SA flag is at least the right way up - amazing how often the flag is flown with the blue on top!

'Our Bokkies' take to the field - played pretty well for the most part apparently, but failed to win the tournament! Incidentally, the All Blacks didn't win either - the trophy was lifted by Fiji, who were a formiddable force both in skill and especially in size!

Some of our lads were a 'bietjie lig in die broek'!

Dis al!

A surprise farewell party for Pierre

Pierre has spent two months with us here in New Zealand and was about to return to South Africa towards the end of January. Being the folks we are, we couldn't possibly let him just fade onto a plane and disappear without us giving him at least a half decent send-off. We got 'our Pierre' to take Pierretjie out onto the golf course for the afternoon and managed to assemble quite an impressive group of surprisors, who arrived armed with all the trappings for a real good shindig and squeezed themselves into Willem and Alna's dining room under the sign which Julia made!

Lurking and skulking around corners, waiting for the guest of honour to arrive!

It really was a fantastic surprise!

A picture says it all! Martin, on the left of the picture, was at school with Pierre (known colloquially as 'our Pierre, since he is not the Pierre going back to SA) and his expression says to us that he's heard whatever it is Pierre is on about, before - probably many times.

'Our' Pierre, being who he is, is just being his usual animated, enthusiastic, motivated and determined self and is clearly believing every word that is coming out of his mouth. Jo, on the other hand, has that 'no! Really! Are you absolutely convinced? Rerig???' look about his body language, wouldn't you say?

Andre, saying his goodbyes in the book of photographs and memories we compiled for Pierre to take back with him.

Bonnita raising a little glass to Pierre's health and safe trip back to South Africa.

It's nice to have a picture of the 'important people' in our lives here in New Zealand - here's a happy picture of Deon, our GP, with Jo. A lovely evening with not even a whisper of anything medical - except maybe for the odd mention of the medicinal benefits of a wee dram every so often.

We hear that Pierre is safely back in South Africa and claiming to miss us all!!!

Dis al!

Honesty!

We have been threatening to stop and take a picture of this 'honesty' fruit and vegetable stall for ages. It floors us that such a thing actually works! The idea is that the supplier supplies the fruit and vegetables - sometimes also bottled chutneys and jams and things, and us consumers stop by if we want to buy something and pick up whatever it is we want, check the price marked on the item and pop the money into the 'honesty' box. Simple!
There are many of these types of arrangements around - at the dairy farm where I did the workshops for children over the last couple of weeks, they have a similar arrangement - if you need a litre or two of fresh, farm milk or could do with some fresh cream you can pop into the farm and wander into the cool room and help yourself to whatever it is you need, leaving the money in the - you guessed it - honesty box.
Apparently, some weeks at the farm, there will be a couple of hundred dollars in the honesty box, other weeks much less, but everyone assumes that the money and the products that have gone, will tally. All quite amazing really!
The day we took this picture, the stall was looking quite bare, so we assume that the honesty box is brimming with dollars just waiting for the owner of the stall (who quite possibly lives in the house you can just see in the picture behind the stall) to nip out and restock the shelves and collect the money all ready for banking!
This fruit and veggie stall is situated a couple of kilometres out of the centre of town, but on an ordinary biggish street - in fact on the main road out to the Top Ten holiday park. It's the only road out to the park, so every campervaner, biker or tourist heading out there will pass it. We just wonder how many folk from other countries are as fascinated with the whole concept as we are.
Dis al!