As you might guess from the title of this post, this has been a very mixed week of all sorts of things. This blog entry is thus a mix of everything with no particular theme, in other words, a slice of life.
My husband is Swedish, and consequently a great fan of the Eurovision Song Contest. However, now we are living in New Zealand, this meant watching it on Sunday, early in the morning. Friends of ours in Paraparaumu are also fans, so we drove up there on Saturday night to sleep over so we could get up at 6:30am to watch it. This we did, accompanied with glasses of Buck’s Fizz and croissants, Facebook and Twitter, and much laughter and shouting as the scores rolled in as usual. My favourite, France, of course did not do well. Denmark won with an entry I would not have put in the top 10. Oh well! Still one ‘fun fact’ about the Danish entry….the drummer is a multimedia student at KEA where I used to teach. The French song can be heard here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJaab8j4fU
Making flags for Eurovision
On Tuesday evening, we had a very different cultural experience, when we went to see the 3rd year contemporary dance students of the New Zealand School of Dance performing 10 small works choreographed by some of the students. It was a mixed bag as you can imagine, but there were a couple of really strong dancers and some interesting pieces. The whole evening was very well directed and put together, allowing pieces to blend into one another. There was one piece where one dancer was covered in paint and then used the wet paint to ‘paint’ the backdrop and floor, while the other dancers moved empty pots around the floor (very fast too – we were in the front row and cold feel the wind created by the movement!). One of my favourite pieces is pictured below which was danced with mirrors. You can read about the school here http://www.nzschoolofdance.ac.nz/
Paige Shand and Michael Ramsay in Two of You by Hollie Mason
Finally, flowers. Lots of things are blooming despite it being autumn and nearly winter. It is wonderful.
In the garden
Poppies on the way to work
Next time…the Food Show, Nutcracker and a visitor from Auckland…..
Thistles and Kiwis 