Views of the Mountain

I spent the weekend back in Taranaki at a full immersion Maori language weekend. It was fantastic and particularly wonderful being with friends and seeing the mountain every day.

And here it is again, in a slightly different form.  This is how we learned the names of five rivers running from the mountain to the sea, all their marae, communities and sub-tribes.

China, Spain and Greece

This is the middle weekend of our annual two week food festival, Wellington on a Plate.  It has kind of passed me by but today I did go out to the Food Truck Rally to get some lunch and it turns out, dinner too.  So, dumplings, churros, spanakopita and baclava.  Yum.

As you can see the weather is not that flash, what you can't see is a biting southerly. 

I really love that I live in a city where the official weather warnings include (regularly) whether the wind is strong enough to take your trampoline. 

Yesterday - Sleet

Today - this...

Tomorrow - who knows.

Cool loos

I haven't posted signage for a while but I spent most of Friday at the Wananga at Otaki and spotted these - Maori loo signs with poi and taiaha.

Dressing Appropriatly

Today has been cold, 8 degrees maximum, wet and windy, a proper southerly buster. Flights and ferries were cancelled and I decided that the best thing to do, other than layer up, was wear my flash Wellies to work.

And it looks like they may get another outing tomorrow. 

Fog and a Full Moon

The trip to work this morning started normally but once the bus got to the Esplanade we could see that things were about to take a turn.  The twinkly lights of the motorway disappeared into a thick bank of fog topped off by a full moon hanging above.

Hangi time

Part of the Matariki celebrations at work this week was the chance to order hangi.  It was the real deal too, that wonderful smokey, cooked in the ground flavour. A few of the team ordered so we ate lunch together on Friday having repurposed a book basket trolley to do the pickup.

 

In other news the British and Irish Lions are in town to play the All Blacks which means thousand of travelling supporters for both teams. The site of the demolished building over the road from work has been turned into a car park and is currently hosting a fleet of camper vans.