Where has November gone??!

I spent some of this week at my new school. On Tuesday I went in & met my HOD. She gave me a good tour of the place & I picked up a few resources. She suggested I come in on Thursday for a day of in-service training on the middle years programme for the IB course. I have no previous experience with this, so it was well worth it. She enquired as to whether I should also attend a training day on Friday, but was informed that actually, they would rather use me for a day of relief teaching. This was fine by me as I got to meet some of the girls, & also got paid for the day! I think I'm going to enjoy working at Queen Margaret, the kids seem great & the staff were very welcoming. I now feel like I know my way around the place a bit more, which will be very useful when I start at the end of January.

On Saturday night we went to see Dave Dobbyn play at the St James Theatre. It was my first time there, & it's a beautiful venue. Dave was great, he played 2 sets, the second of which was pretty much a 'greatest hits' of his 30 years in the business. All in all he played for over 2 & a half hours, & the crowd still couldn't get enough. Songs like 'Whaling' & 'Slice of Heaven' ended up being a mass sing-along. It was great value for a brilliant night of entertainment as he had only charged $19.79 per ticket, in honour of his first year in show biz.

Today was lovely so I decided to go for a walk to the zoo. I'm getting good value out of my years pass! The otters were being particularly cute today...
I've got to put a meerkat in for Richie Roe...
Every time I go I see something different, & today was the first time in my several visits to date that I actually saw the Malayan sun bear! He was well worth the wait...

Lastly, I happened to be passing the wild theatre when they were doing a presentation with Tahi the Kiwi. Poor old Tahi only has one leg (hence his name) as he lost the other in a trap. They built him a hi-tec carbon-fibre prosthetic, but he didn't like it, preferring to hop about on his one leg.

Tonight I had touch rugby. Since I don't (yet!) know enough people in Wellington to get a team together I put in an individual registration instead. The organiser managed to find me 3 teams to play for. One on a Thursday night, & two on a Tuesday night. It was a glorious summer evening tonight, & we won the mixed game 10-7. The mixed team then play in the mens' competition straight after. I didn't play much of this one as the team they were playing against were quite scary! It was my first night playing for them, so I was happy to spend a lot of it watching. It's nice to be playing touch back in NZ again, it's a much bigger deal over here & the reffing is of a higher standard.