Its summer break for the kids ...

The kids were settling in nicely at Richmond Montessori (a school that we highly recommend!). Unfortunately for them (and us!), they now have a fairly long summer break till Feb 7. Fortunately the school does have a summer fun session the last two weeks so they go back to school on Jan 21.

On the last day of school, the teachers and children organized a music concert. This was a small fundraiser for the school so they could purchase additional equipment, project materials etc. The children sang around 5 songs and it was quite cute to watch these young kids perform. Maya and PJ were part of the concert and did pretty good considering that they were involved for only the past 2 weeks. Most of the songs also include Maori and maya is starting to say some Maori words (mari and i are a bit lost on this, and we need to pick up a few words)

We went to the local climbing gym earlier today. It was quite empty, so the kids had a blast running around and jumping. They also put on their harness and tried a couple of climbs. The swing rope and the metal ladder kept them occupied. Its quite amazing as to how you adapt to a climbing gym and how the holds and texture of the walls vary. We are fairly decent gym climbers at Mission Cliffs and Planet Granite. At Vertical Limit it was a different story. The holds were a bit too smooth and slippery, the setup of the climbing rope / belay device was a bit too close etc. Hopefully we'll adjust to it and start climbing much better. They also use a different rating scale down under!

We plan to do some amount of traveling and camping around the South Island if and when the weather gets a bit warmer. We are off to visit Blenheim in Marlborough tomorrow for a 3 day visit. We wanted to stay at Queen Charlotte Wilderness Park, but they were booked for the rest of the month. We are planning to go back there with Cecile in early January.