Saturday one of my colleagues celebrated her 40th birthday in Scottish style with a “ceilidh”. I had no idea what that meant until she send us a reminder-email saying “don’t be put off by the dancing, it will be fun and you don’t need your morning runs for at least two weeks afterwards!”.
I arrived shortly after 8 by bus, it was in this nice little town and the last bus would leave 10:45pm. I hoped someone would be able to give me a lift home.
Luckily there was already a group of people and more arriving, I wasn’t sure what the right time would be to come when the invitation said 8pm, in the NL that usually means you don’t show up until a good hour later. I spotted a few of my colleagues (apart from the birthday girl who was busy of course) and within half an hour I learned about a knitting club and a bake club at work, and whom to ask for more information on any other sort of club. People seem very active at work, you just need to know where to be and whom to ask. So after a mere 30 minutes I was already glad I’d come to the party.
Then the Scottish band leader started speaking Scottish into the microphone and at least some people understood what he was saying and dancing started. I was watching on the side, with most other people, until soon we were all pulled onto the dance floor.
It was soooooo much fun! I wish I were Scottish and could have parties like that! At first it was a bit awkward to “grab your partner” when your actual partner is 1000000 miles away and all your (male) colleagues are debating what to tell their wives when they get home later, but we soon all got over that. Besides there was a lot of these dances where you keep switching partners. That was fun too because you get the chance to meet all other people, although you’re too much out of breath to actually talk.
By the end of the night I felt as if I’d run a marathon. And I did find a lift home luckily.
Sunday I slept most of the day. It had started raining again so I didn’t see the point of getting out of bed.
At night the movie club got together again and we watched “the hurt locker”. We went for a drink afterwards and after we had not found an answer to our general question about the movie “why?”, we didn’t discuss it any further. It sure was a heavy movie and you have to feel for those soldiers out there, but I don’t see why it got an Oscar. And in some strange way it reminded me of my travels through Egypt (“jalla, jalla!”) and so I spend a large part of the movie rethinking my happy times in Egypt.
Today is some Queen’s birthday and a public holiday in NZ. It still rained so again I didn’t really do anything, except for cleaning the bathroom of mold (if only they would insulate their houses, so much troubles could be prevented), baking muffins and test driving a car. The Canadian couple from the movie-club are selling their car and I voiced some interest, which they took very serious. So I might have a car soon, and then everyone in this country will finally take me serious.
That reminds me: there is this interesting debate going on here about how green NZ is, environmentally. The problem is that NZ promotes its greenness to attract tourists, but at the same time they have the highest car density in the world, they don’t really recycle, they are now proposing to open up national parks for mining, and have just settled an agreement with a Brasilian oil company to start off shore drilling (Good timing kiwis…), all pretty controversial issues. Just reminding the rest of the world that this is not paradise.
I arrived shortly after 8 by bus, it was in this nice little town and the last bus would leave 10:45pm. I hoped someone would be able to give me a lift home.
Luckily there was already a group of people and more arriving, I wasn’t sure what the right time would be to come when the invitation said 8pm, in the NL that usually means you don’t show up until a good hour later. I spotted a few of my colleagues (apart from the birthday girl who was busy of course) and within half an hour I learned about a knitting club and a bake club at work, and whom to ask for more information on any other sort of club. People seem very active at work, you just need to know where to be and whom to ask. So after a mere 30 minutes I was already glad I’d come to the party.
Then the Scottish band leader started speaking Scottish into the microphone and at least some people understood what he was saying and dancing started. I was watching on the side, with most other people, until soon we were all pulled onto the dance floor.
It was soooooo much fun! I wish I were Scottish and could have parties like that! At first it was a bit awkward to “grab your partner” when your actual partner is 1000000 miles away and all your (male) colleagues are debating what to tell their wives when they get home later, but we soon all got over that. Besides there was a lot of these dances where you keep switching partners. That was fun too because you get the chance to meet all other people, although you’re too much out of breath to actually talk.
By the end of the night I felt as if I’d run a marathon. And I did find a lift home luckily.
Sunday I slept most of the day. It had started raining again so I didn’t see the point of getting out of bed.
At night the movie club got together again and we watched “the hurt locker”. We went for a drink afterwards and after we had not found an answer to our general question about the movie “why?”, we didn’t discuss it any further. It sure was a heavy movie and you have to feel for those soldiers out there, but I don’t see why it got an Oscar. And in some strange way it reminded me of my travels through Egypt (“jalla, jalla!”) and so I spend a large part of the movie rethinking my happy times in Egypt.
Today is some Queen’s birthday and a public holiday in NZ. It still rained so again I didn’t really do anything, except for cleaning the bathroom of mold (if only they would insulate their houses, so much troubles could be prevented), baking muffins and test driving a car. The Canadian couple from the movie-club are selling their car and I voiced some interest, which they took very serious. So I might have a car soon, and then everyone in this country will finally take me serious.
That reminds me: there is this interesting debate going on here about how green NZ is, environmentally. The problem is that NZ promotes its greenness to attract tourists, but at the same time they have the highest car density in the world, they don’t really recycle, they are now proposing to open up national parks for mining, and have just settled an agreement with a Brasilian oil company to start off shore drilling (Good timing kiwis…), all pretty controversial issues. Just reminding the rest of the world that this is not paradise.
