The adventure continues

Hello friends,

It's been a few busy weeks here at 115 Roker Street. Summer holidays have just wound up for New Zealand students, and everyone is just finishing up their first or second week of school now. Originally we had hoped to have our children enrolled in school here, but upon further investigation of our current visa allowances, we can't send them without paying international fees, which we're not willing to do at this point. C'est la vie. Thankfully I had hounded both teachers in Saskatoon and Nova Scotia for curriculum over the past year, and the option of doing school at home has always been in our back pocket. I don't think any of us were keen on the idea originally, but I thrive with a good, well defined, short-term challenge (especially if I think other people don't think I can do it). It is working out well for all of us. 

Silent reading time has never been so cozy!

The first thing we decided once we sorted out the schooling business was to enrol the girls in surfing lessons. Seems to me a pretty NZ kind of skill to pick up, and without the confines of a normal 8-3 school day, we have heaps of time to get it in. The kids are fabulous, by the way. Both were up on their boards within 2 tries. They have 8 more weeks to go, and I can't wait to see what they'll get up to on surf boards during that time.

They surf on Tuesdays, and for the rest of the week, if the weather stacks up we hit the local beaches for boogie boarding, once we're done our school work, of course. Our typical weekday looks like this: wake up (whenever...), grab some breakfast, check on the chooks, get some real-people clothes on and head to the 'school room'. There, we tackle math (or 'maths' as they call it here), and some french writing for 1.5-2 hrs. After that it's pretty free-style. We have 2 great libraries nearby so we hit those up pretty frequently, and our house is full of books. So we take on what's interesting to us.

Boogie boarding at Pegasus Beach

Swimming at New Brighton Beach

The kids spotted an albino House Sparrow, leading in to a short lesson on genetics

Feeding giraffes at Orana Wildlife Park

Kea bird, Orana Wildlife Park

Orana Wildlife Park

Tibetan Musk Oxen, Orana Wildlife Park

At Orana you can get up close to the lions, thankfully my children were not keen.

We're building a model solar system, we explore through geo-caching, the kids have both been cooking, and we've been learning all about NZ cicadas, including how to catch them, as they are fabulously interesting and we really want to get our hands on some. We haven't caught any yet, but we're still trying. We also have a trampoline, and a great park nearby, so that covers P.E. Brian Fry (super intelligent retired stable isotope scientist, and all around great human) will be visiting us next week, I'm hoping he can be a guest lecturer in our school room.

New Zealand's Chorus Cicada

Cicada nymph

This is a 'temporary' display honouring the 185 victims of the 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch. It has been on display since 2012. We stumbled upon it on a geo-cache hunt.

We have been exploring lots in the area. Because we're so transient this year, we opted not to buy Christmas presents for the kids or ourselves, but rather spend money on special activities in NZ. A few weekends ago, Edie cashed in on her present by asking for a sailing afternoon in Akaroa harbour, where dolphin sightings are guarenteed. It was an incredible afternoon.

Akaroa Harbour

If you look closely, you'll see a Blue Penguin

Hector's Dolphins, endemic to NZ, also claimed as world's smallest dolphin 

Happy Jardines

We hope you are well, and getting through the winter. If you need a respite and have time, energy and money (ha!) we'd love to have you. This is a very easy place to spend a Canadian winter.

New Zealand!

Hello friends,

We have left the northern hemisphere, and are happily sunning ourselves in Christchurch, NZ for the next 5 months, beginning the second phase of our sabbatical year. We arrived earlier this week, after a 48 hour trek across the planet that started with a flight from Halifax to Toronto, followed by a flight from Toronto to Guangzhou (China) that took us due north of Toronto, over the north pole, then south through Russia, Mongolia and finally to the Western edge of China. We spent 19 hours there, exploring the region as much as we could, and then flew from Guangzhou to Christchurch over southeast Asia and Australia the following day.

Needless to say, we are a bit jet lagged, but are pretty content to be here. The home we are renting in the suburb of Somerfield is lovely, a great size for us with beautiful gardens and fruit trees everywhere. And the rental includes taking care of the 4 resident chooks (the girls just earned cash by chasing the last, and smartest, hen back into the pen with the others, an hour-long ordeal). We have been so lucky to have had wonderful places to live this year.

We have explored a bit on foot and by car in the area. Epic adventure awaits!

Christmas and New Year with the family this year was incredible, and difficult. Heather's absence is so much more noticeable when the family is together. However, not having to travel from Saskatoon to enjoy the time together with our family was nice. We feel like we struck gold with this sabbatical year.

Best wishes for the year to come for everyone. We miss you all, especially those in Saskatoon- but hey, we'll be back soon.

With so much love,

the Jardines

PS. Our local orchestra played 2 Christmas concerts with 2 local chorales, and some video and audio footage was taken by Mazel Musical Arts, (Gregg Mazel is the amazing bass clarinet player you'll see in the video). Follow this link. Enjoy.

Family feasting has been one of our favourite passtimes in NS.

Funny things collect in the woods near oceans.

Feeding Chickadees in Le Petit Bois behind Universite Sainte Anne 

Still geo-cacheing.

Christmas with the cousins.

Christmas morning with Nanny, Grampy and Lily.

Beach below our home in Clare.

Cold, but still fun.

New Years with our buddies in Clare.

One of our favorite trees near our home- the whomping willow.

Haircut date with Aunt Saysie.

From our hotel room window at the airport in Guangzhou

Cab ride to Canton tower...Pretty epic.

McDonalds in China- yes please!

Celia got a hold of my phone for photo editing purposes. Smoothies were a big part of her Chinese diet.

Edie and Celia in front of the Canton tower (world's 2nd tallest tower) in Guangzhou province.

Pretty epic slide at Victoria Park in the hills south of Christchurch.

The highlands en route to Awaroa. A lesson in NZ driving, narrow roads, no guardrails and opposite side (for us).

Celia and some local cacti.

Lyttleton Harbour/ Whakaraupo.

 

Baie St Marie

Hello folks,

Fall fun at Kejimkujik National Park.

We have spent most of our sabbatical time in a place called Saint Bernard, or Bas-de-la-Riviere. Our neighborhood is tucked on an out of the way loop which boarders the North end of the Clare region, and Weymouth. Our mailing address puts us in Weymouth, but municipal boundaries say that we're in Clare. These are 2 very distinct communities, Weymouth being an English settlement founded in 1783, and Clare being a re-settlement location for recently deported Acadian people (resettled in 1768, deported by the English, beginning in 1755), and still remains a predominantly French region. We are located about a 40 minute drive from Yarmouth, where I grew up. We're about an hour and a half drive from the Annapolis Valley, where Tim's parents live.

Brier Island, just across Baie St Marie.

Keji fun.

There were a few big reasons we decided to begin our sabbatical year in this area. The major reason was that we wanted to be close to our families for some period of time, and the second, we wanted to immerse our kids in the French culture in this area, which is distinctly Acadian. These obejctives have been achieved- with so much more goodness on top of it all.

Through some old connections from our undergraduate days, we were able to find a house to rent in the region. We had no idea what we were walking into, but have been pleasantly surprised in so many ways. We live in a big house on top of a hill which overlooks Baie St Marie, many days we see more boat traffic on the water than traffic on our road. We share a driveway with the landowners, who are fabulous, and we have an ongoing agreement with them where we provide them with homemade bread in exchange for fresh haddock. Every evening we get a different picture of the sunset over the bay, and every morning I sip my tea while on "baywatch" (as Tim loves to refer to my passtime). It's great big wide open space, and we love it. There is also so much to be said for Acadian hospitality and music. The best being where these two things intersect- the Acadian Kitchen Party. We've been able to really relax and enjoy ourselves here.

First day of school.

The girls are in French Immersion in the school in Weymouth, and are adapting well. It's very interesting to find out that some friends of theirs are the kids of people I used to go to school with. Never saw that coming! The girls also dance at the local dance school in Clare and have made lots of friends there, and have really enjoyed dancing. We've also started geo-caching with the kids, which has been a great way to explore the area.

Tim has been working on local research projects with scientists in the region, which has been keeping him busy. He's also enjoying time to catch up on writing and data analysis, and is really enjoying spending his work days in his home office where he can wear slippers all day.

I've been spending a lot of time doing 3 of my favorite things: biking, baking and band. There are so many places to explore here on a bike, and we still have the weather to do it in mid-November! Fall always brings out the baker in me, and the abundance of local produce has meant a lot of time spent on pies. This also gives justification to time on a bike for me. As for band, through connections made at a kitchen party, I was invited to play trombone in the local orchestra. I love it. We have 2 Christmas concerts in the next 2 weeks, and have been working on that for most of the Fall. Quite a few of my old teachers are in the orchestra, and so that has been a neat connection as well.

We have about 6 weeks left here, and although the next stop is New Zealand, I'll be sad to leave. This has been a really restorative time for our family. A time to step out of the rat race and find joy again in a simpler way of life.

Our first geo-cache find!

Another find!

Halloween hoodlums in a cop car.

Owl banding with the biology department at Universite Sainte-Anne.

Our Halloween spread at the bottom of our driveway.