First trip back to Wellington

Tuesday 19 December 2006

5:30 pm

For some reason, Aidan looks like a bug when he runs on the beach. This is one of my new discoveries in this new land. Naomi and her friend Jessica are playing outside, hair wet from the cold swim and then the hot shower; Aidan is running naked through the house. Just another summer December afternoon in Paekakariki.

Today I took the train in to town (Wellington), and experienced both the length and the beauty of the commute. It’s a magnificent trip on the train, past harbours and inlets and through steep, green, sheep-covered hills. Water and hills, that’s what you see. Have I mentioned yet that New Zealand seems to do both of those things rather well?

I saw Michael’s new office, and my new office, too. Michael’s is a full-time job at the Department of Conservation (http://www.doc.govt.nz/) in leadership development, and DoC just moved into new offices which are both spectacularly beautiful, fantastically laid out for work purposes, and also totally environmentally friendly. Not a bad combination, eh? He seems totally happy there.

My new office, for my very part time job at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (http://www.nzcer.org.nz/), is not so environmentally sound, but it has a window that opens and closes and it looks out over the sea. I took this job so that I could get a feel for the schools and teacher education here in NZ, and I could keep myself in the ed research game and keep learning and publishing (and also because I need colleagues to stay sane). And I think it looks like this job will do the trick, helping me learn about the NZ schools, which are so different from US schools (so so so many things are so different from things in the US). My new boss, whom I love, showed me around the place, introduced me to the chief researchers, and then took us out to lunch. I got to have conversations about ed leadership and motivation and assessment and professional development, the first real work talk I’ve had in the 10 or so days we’ve been here. It was lovely to feel that I could contribute—and also lovely to feel that there was so so so much to learn, and that this might be the context for me to do that.

Tomorrow is a half day for the kids, the last day of school. Aidan is having more trouble making friends than Naomi and seems to sometimes be in a pissy stage. I don’t know whether that’s because of the mood or because no stage lasts particularly long for a 5-year-old. I’ll keep you posted. Tonight Jessica will stay for dinner and then we’ll head over to Trish and Keith’s to decorate their Christmas tree. (Do you want to hear things at this level of detail??) I’m a little worried about the next 6 weeks—from here until 7 Feb when school begins again. I’ve never taken this much time to just hang out with the kids, and I don’t know quite what it’ll feel like. I also hope to figure out what I’m doing about book project #1 in this time, AND to finish the proposal for book project #2. So small bits of work (if I can get motivated—have NEVER been less motivated to work than I have been these last 10 days) and large bits of watching children splash in the beach. Typing that, it doesn’t look half bad…

I’ll download the pictures from the Christmas and Hanukkah celebrations as soon as M comes home and tells me where the cord is (it’s not like we have any drawers in the house or many places for things to get lost—where did he put it?). I hope you’re all well in your corner of the world—I love to hear from you.

Love,

Jennifer

PS today at work they told me I should be doing something of a study about the children’s accent development (or eradication, depending on which accent you’re talking about). They have switched from US expressions to NZ expressions for common words (like “rubbish bin” and “mobile phone”) but they still have clear and present US accents. Just for those of you following.