Ze Pig, Boss! Ze Pig!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Sorry we haven't done a blog entry in a while. Mark was busy working all week, and Sherry and Ro have settled into a routine. Ro goes to Kindy on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday afternoons, as well as Wednesday morning. He's off on Fridays. On Thursday morning, we went to the open house at the primary school he'll be attending, along with a half dozen or so other Kindy kids who'll be turning five this quarter and moving up to the big school. They got to do some arts & crafts, pet the guinea pigs, and enjoy play time with their future classmates. Ro, of course, ditched his class at recess and gravitated to the big jungle gym where the big boys play. Apparently the grade levels don't have staggered recess, so the whole school is basically on the playground at the same time. The facilities are actually pretty sweet; there's a huge jungle gym, a (fenced-off) swimming pool, cricket field, basketball and volleyball courts, and a sandbox hut.

Sherry trying to adjust Ro's bike helmet before their first ride. Note the Princess cruise ship in the background

Ro's likely going to learn some very hard lessons very quickly. One big bully of a kid called him "diaperhead" and poked him on the head, but Ro was undeterred and continued playing with the big kids. Well, not so much "with"..."among" is more like it. He's used to having jungle gyms to himself recently, and inadvertently kept getting in people's way, especially the kids trying to use the "flying fox" (zip line).


Today we stayed close to home, walking down to Pilot Bay (you could probably throw a frisbee from our balcony and hit the water), where a fisherman had caught a loon with his hook. Sherry, ever the Good Samaritan, held the bird's beak shut so it wouldn't bite at the guy while he removed the hook. Ro was pretty freaked out by the agitated bird, and chose to watch from a respectful distance. Mark had slept in after a long week, and met Sherry and Ro at the bay later where a local FM station was hosting a "Birdman" competition, involving people trying to fly various non-aerodynamic contraptions off the end of the pier, competing for both creativity and distance. A homemade hang-glider won the distance competition, and a large pink pig ("And Pigs Might Fly") won for originality. Mark's personal favorite was two blokes dressed as Mario & Luigi (from Super Mario Brothers) trying to fly an oversized mushroom with disastrous results. It seems odd living in the hub of local activity, as none of us have ever really lived in a tourist mecca before.

Ro wielding his dagger-shaped driftwood

The eventual winner takes flight

Luigi & Mario take a dive. Apparently mushrooms don't fly well

Neither do pigs

Ro captaining the salvage of a Birdman plane that the rescue boat dumped on the beach

Sherry and Ro went for a bike ride later this afternoon, only to get caught in a rainstorm. Their tandem bike is quite a scene, and they constantly get compliments of "sweet bike!" from other riders as they take their usual loop route up to The Mount and along the boardwalk. Sherry uses the bike to pick up Ro from Kindy when Mark has to drive to work in Tauranga - it sure beats waking Ro up in the middle of the night to go fetch Mark with the car.

Sherry & Ro embark on a rainy ride

Sherry and Ro came home to a nasty surprise - the power had gone out! We quickly realized the down side of living in a secured building, as they couldn't get into the gated garage, and the elevators didn't work either, so we couldn't bring the bike up to the apartment. Fortunately, Lindy (the lady at the front desk) let us walk the bike through the lobby and leave it in their storage area. Ro had a PB&J for dinner, and just as Sherry and Mark were contemplating the possibility of eating the same thing, the power came back on! Sherry heated up the delicious baked spaghetti that she had prepared ahead of time yesterday, and we enjoyed a leisurely dinner while Ro watched Underdog (he calls it "Thunderdog").