Christchurch Pettys in December 2013

At the end of November Mark and I were on our road trip south, having had a delicious meal at a Japanese restaurant in Timaru. We went to church in Timaru and did some training with the RS Presidency afterwards. Then in the evening we had dinner at the McLaughlins, along with Jenny Watson, whom we have known for many years.

Then on Monday the work began. I visited five schools in Timaru and made it down in time to visit Waimate High School. Then we drove on to Oamaru. All the visits went well. At Timaru Boys High, one of the teachers recognised me as “Dr Nic” and said he should get my autograph. (Joking) But they are grateful and really like my videos. Oamaru was beautiful. Mark and I did some exploring and had dinner in the “Steam punk” area at the Criterion hotel.

The Criterion, Oamaru. Very nearly all this type of building has gone from Christchurch now.

On Tuesday I visited the three schools in Oamaru, and the Regina candy factory. I think their peppermint marshmallows covered in chocolate single-handedly added a kilogram to my weight. Then after lunch in the Gardens we drove to Palmerston where we had a very fruitful visit to East Otago High School.

An interesting tap configuration in Oamaru!

I’d better explain the visits. I go in without an appointment, and ask to see the head of mathematics or teacher of statistics. Then I talk to them about our materials and ask if they would be interested in signing up. Some choose to sign up all the students, and some make it optional. At $25 per student, some schools will be paying us several thousand dollars. Of course they still need to actually sign up. We will see how that goes in February. I had thought we would expand to Australia after we have the New Zealand materials settled and a good market here, but their curriculum is still mathematical and embedded in the mathematics subject, so we probably won’t. AP Statistics in the USA is probably a better prospect.



From Palmerston we drove down to Dunedin and stayed in a motel near the university.  The next day I gave three seminars at a teacher development day. I didn’t get to talk to many people about our materials, and very few of them had seen the videos even, so this was more of an introduction and building up my credibility.Then on Thursday we drove down to Balclutha. We didn’t do visits to Dunedin schools, as I could do that in a one or two day trip by plane later, and we had at least made contact with them. South Otago High School was a lovely visit with a lovely man, who did a total sign-up.  Then we went on to Gore for two more schools, and a truly delicious meat pie. Mmmm – must visit there again. I managed to visit five schools in Invercargill as well, which was pretty good going. Mark drops me at the door and goes off to park in a shady spot. When I’m done, I text him and he picks me up. It was a surprisingly hot day for Southland. The locals were saying it was pretty hot for them. After about 3:30 there isn’t much point in visiting schools, so we get to do other things. This time we drove out to Curio Bay and were lucky with the tides. We saw the petrified forest and two yellow-eyed penguins grooming each other.

A Catholic Church no less! In Gore

For Friday we decided to drive through to Twizel, picking up schools on the way. We visited Central Southland College in Winton and then 25 minutes north of there we visited Northern Southland College in Lumsden. Their school naming makes me smile. We visited a school in Queenstown and were unsuccessful in visiting a school in Cromwell. All the other schools had been fine with my rocking up without an appointment, but Cromwell College weren’t happy! Funny. I didn’t like Queenstown at all, and found it quite claustrophobic with the streets clinging to the edge of the hills above the lake. Our accommodation in Twizel was wonderful, with an expansive view up to Mount Cook, I think. I was so happy to be there after three weeks of hard work, that I just about cried.
On Saturday we had a leisurely start, and lunch in Fairlie. The lupins were in full bloom and quite outrageous in places. I wish I didn’t know that they were destroying braided rivers and habitats for some endangered species of bird, insects and fish.

Curio Bay, Southland

Amazing life-like fossils

The following week was spent catching up on emails and contacting teachers. Over the week I got confirmation of orders from about 40 schools, which is looking good for this financial year. I’m planning a visit to Auckland in January and Hawkes Bay in February. The personal visit makes a big difference. I really enjoy the visits, which is most fortunate. At this point of the business, we are largely selling me and my expertise, so the visits help with establishing credibility.

Our boysenberry plant has done really well this year. We got about 15 litres of fruit off it, spread over about four weeks. I’ve turned some into sauce and frozen it.

Jonathan and I went shopping for Christmas presents. He loves giving gifts, and is quite happy with pyjamas for his gift. We did promise to take him bowling, swimming and climbing, though.

Our ward had an incident regarding having the missionaries in our homes for dinner. We were told by the mission president that no homes with single sisters in could have the missionaries in their homes for dinner. We weren’t happy with the implications for single sisters, so our ward decided it was better for all homes to be banned. (There weren’t many left anyway!) Then there was a retraction and we are back to the rule that there needs to be a male 18 or over present as well as the missionaries. Interesting times.

I took time off from work from 24th December until early January. It was very nice not to feel I should be working. Mark also took time off work from everything for that time.

On Christmas Day we went out to the O’Neills’ for lunch, as did Jessica and Seth. Tim and Allie and Allie’s parents were there, and my mother and a friend. William was working.
Boxing Day is my favourite day of the year, I think. We spent the day setting up our Lego and reading a novel by Georgette Heyer.

I finally got to pasting some more pictures on the wall of my room. I hate to think how many years it is since I started this project. It looks so much better with them stuck down, rather than blutacked.

We went bowling on New Years’ Eve, and played two games. It really is a fun outing for the three of us.

Jonathan got his results from Jazz School. He got an A for Jazz performance and an A+ for major study (piano) and a pass for Improvisation. He was enrolled without assessment for Contextual Studies. We are so pleased with how he has done. He hasn’t touched the piano since the end of term! He certainly doesn’t play for the joy of the music. Who cares – he plays and brings other people a lot of joy.

William got a job at LSG, preparing food for airlines. It is pretty unskilled, but it is a regular job and he has lunch provided. It doesn’t look as if there are many jobs going in his chosen field of film-making, sadly.

Jessica seems to be happy in her role as mother. Seth is pretty demanding, but cute as well.

Mark is enjoying the holidays as much as an Eeyore can. We had a lot of fun on our road trip, so I’m hoping we can do something similar again sometime.

Happy New Year to all
Nicola, Mark, Jonathan, Jessica, Seth and William.

The view from our unit 'The Studio' in Twizel.