Spring has Sprung in August

Wow!!!

It's August, and the daffodils are blooming.

This is a first for us.

The days are lengthening, and the weather is warming!! We have almost beaten winter.

Judy has taken her leave of New Zealand and gone back to Canada to catch the last bit of summer there.

She is organizing our storage unit and getting it all ready for packing into a container and shipping to New Zealand. It's quite a daunting task. I don't envy that part of her trip to Canada.Judy will finish up organizing, then take a few days to head to Saskatchewan and visit with Anita and Jake. She's quite looking forward to that. It's been over a year since she has seen them.

As for me, work is plugging along. We have just completed week 3 of the school year's 3rd term. The kids actually seem to be coming around. Our worst day last week was better than our best day in the last term. The kids seem to be focusing on accomplishing something. The next couple of weeks will be interesting though, as the woman who has been teaching the kids is off to the UK for 6 weeks. We've got a substitute teacher. Hopefully all works out well.

I'm now down to coaching just 2 basketball teams. The under 14 girls have been taken over by a woman who has coached that age group for quite a few years. I now have the grammar school boys team, and the under 15 boys. The grammar school team has made dramatic improvements through the season. We're in the playoffs now, and whilst we are on the consolation side, we beat a team last week that had beaten us 67 -14 during the season. I figure,  that's quite a turnaround .

The Under 15's is an interesting group of kids. They're quite enjoyable, and they work hard and listen well, but I know some of the teams we're up against are much more experienced. Our tournament is on the same weekend as the New Zealand Federal Election. September 17th & 18th

Judy and I are now both registered to Vote here in New Zealand. One doesn't need to be a citizen to have that right, we just need our landed immigrant status.

Seems a bit odd.

Some political parties seem to be willing to give the entire country away in order to be elected. That's pretty similar to Canadian elections, but New Zealand's absence of the "fear mongering" that has prevailed in North American Elections is quite refreshing.

Hope everyone is doing well.

All our love

Jim and Judy