We had a fabulous Canada Day barbecue in the park near our apartments. I really feel links between New Zealanders and Canadians, we seem to both be underdogs against the larger and brasher Australia and America, and seem to have a similar relaxed attitude to life in general. Hence, I was thrilled to help them celebrate their national birthday (plus, who would EVER turn down a barbecue!)
A game of "Beerball", involving baseball while constantly carrying
your beer in your hand. After hitting the ball or before running
between bases you must have some of your beer. Very fun game!
Janine and the amazing Canada Day cake she made, complete with a plum Canada maple leaf flag.
My Canada trivia team, Ann from America and Carp, my Canadian coworker. Despite the lack of Candian
nationals, we took out this quiz!
Another great weekend was going into Seoul to meet up with Nicci, a New Zealander living in Tokyo who was great friends with my old Tinakori Rd flatmates (Miss you guys!) and I met when she stayed with us earlier this year. She and some friends found cheap tickets to Seoul and we had a great weekend, it was nice to meet some new people as well as catch up with another New Zealander. Got my first delicious taste of New Zealand wine since I left the country - Tohu sav, you tasted like nectar.
Nicci and I with delicious NZ wine
Sara and I at a galbi restaurant which gaveus bibs to eat with - perhaps they knew
instinctively I can't eat neatly?!
Sara, Nicci and I before heading out for a bignight in Seoul.
I had to farewell my two closest friends here, Laura and Kathleen, which was very sad, I already really miss their presence, we always had such fun together and they were my constant weekend (and many weeknight) companions. Hopefully will get to see them again sooner rather than later, Laura's planning on coming back in January and going to convince Kathleen to come too.
Who would ever want to say goodbye to thesefaces? Laura being a pirate (I think) and Kathleen's
"model face" (while I fail at the attempt)
Another very sad time has been the adoption and subsequent death of two tiny and lovely little kittens.
Harry (Potter)
Oliver (Twist) My friend Janine discovered these two newborn orphaned darlings in her appartment after hearing what sounded like birds for two days. Apparently their mother was dead, and they were very weak and frightened. Because she already has two cats and was looking after a third, I offered to look after them until we could decide what to do with them.
We named them Oliver and Harry due to their orphaned status. I spent two days rushing home at every opportunity to force feed them milk. They were aged at about 7 - 10 days old, and were incapable of looking after themselves at all. But I totally fell in love with them and was happy to do all I could for them.
In that short time I watched them as their shaky legs got stronger and they began to walk (very delicately). However by Tuesday night Harry was clearly fading, it was worrying but I really knew nothing about orphaned cats so I fed him as much as I could and left them to sleep. Sadly, he got worse overnight and died the next morning. I felt horrible with guilt and sadness.
Oliver however, was clearly the stronger of the pair, but he was terribly frightened being alone and stopped letting me feed him. I still thought it would be ok, but he too died overnight on Wednesday.
It was very traumatic, but I have since read a lot about fading kitten syndrome, similar to SIDS in children, where for no apparent reason kittens will just fade away. They obviously needed their mothers and I couldn't give them any more care to prevent it happening.
But I did love them. Oliver was certainly the cuter of the two, with nicer markings, and his ears would shake back and forth when he was being fed - it was adorable.
That almost brings me up to date - except for Mudfest. I will try not to be such a tardy blogger in the future.
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