APPA 2009

Last night we had the anual APPA Concert (Auckland Primary Principals Association). The festival is held over 7 evenings and each school participates in one concert. This year I had two students selected to sing in a quartet, and another to be a drummer for one of the songs. They did a nice job as expected.

I do tend to get a bit nervous for this concert because we spend most of the year preparing for it. The students learn 17 songs from memory over the year and come together with the other schools 4 times before the concert at the Town Hall. The concert also includes the APPA festival orchetra and other special items. This year there was a young cellist (11 or 12 yrs old) who absolutely blew the socks off the entire audience and the other students who were part of the choir.

I feel pretty good about the concert overall and my students participation in it. The choir did sing well and I was proud of their contribution to the concert overall. Praise the Lord they were all on their best behavor and followed instructions very well.

Running Goal

Hopefully I will soon have a picture to post with this but right now I am super excited that I finally reached my goal of running a half marathon! There's a group from church that I've been running with and four of us ran the Auckland half last week Sunday. Amazing feeling, painful at times, but amazing! This has been a goal in my mind for the past two years and it finally came to fruition through the encouragement of friends and God teaching me discipline. My goal was to jog the whole thing and finish, that's exactly what I did and it took about 2:35. It definitely wasn't fast, but I didn't so much care about my time as long as I kept a consistent pace and kept going. God is so good. One thing I learned in this process was that it's good to push yourself beyond what you think you are capable of, yet don't be over-zealous and get yourself hurt. I am stoked that I was able to do this run, but I know there is no way I would have been ready to run a full marathon. I might be able to do one someday, but I'm not ready to set that goal yet. For now, I'm praising God for the opportunity and ability to enjoy worshiping Him through a sport which I have to work at to give Him glory.

Life with Sara

And the adventures continue...

A few weekends ago Hannah (my student teacher from IWU) and I went on a spontaneous trip to Queenstown via Christchurch. Tons of fun, crazy adventures and great conversations along the way.

Friday Evening: Fly to Christchurch.

Find our hostel and chill for the evening gearing up for....

Saturday: Driving to Geraldine where we went on a Lord of the Rings tour

Where we went to "helms deep"

Then it was off to Queenstown via a 5hr drive with stunning scenery along the way.

We arrived in Queenstown late Saturday night, scoped out town a bit, grabbed some dinner and slept.

Sunday morning I went for a running worship session and spent the morning in awe of God's splendor.

Sunday afternoon I crossed off the goal of doing the Nevis Bungy (134 meter jump)

Good times! Whooohoooo!
Sunday late arvo we started our journey back to Christchurch to the same hostel we stayed in the first night. Again, we enjoyed beautiful scenery and made a few more stops along the way.
First stop, Lake Wanaka, honestly one of most lovely places, I seriously enjoyed just soaking in God's majesty while sipping a coffee.

Next stop, just outside Wanaka, was Puzzling World. We were just a bit late to experience the illusion rooms here but I definitely want to go back here at some stage, we did however conquer the silly maze. The Yellow tower was especially challenging to find for some reason and it took us as long to find yellow as it did blue, green, and red combined! Talk about frustrating.

After this maze we pretty much just drove and enjoyed great convos, Hannah even took the wheel for a bit and managed to stay on the LEFT side of the road:)

We ended our trip with this gorgeous sunset along the way and on Monday morning flew back to Auckland where real life resumed.