Photographs

Christmas greetings from Napier

The pohutakawa has burst into bloom signalling the start of the kiwi Christmas season. It’s also raining (a rare Napier event) so an e-missive from the Clearys is in order.

The house, drier and more stable after the 2009 re-roofing and re-piling efforts, remains refuge for the whole family. Fiona, working as a local Crown Prosecutor, is in Flat 2, while the boys are upstairs with us; though this hasn’t been the case all year.

Connor left his flat at the beginning of this year when he learnt that the skin cancer that saw him lose 3.5 cm of his lower lip in the middle of 2009 had returned to his lymph system. This necessitated radical surgery (12+ hours) followed by a gruelling six-week course of radiotherapy in Palmerston North. He’s bounced back amazingly, working full time again for Dick Smith and has almost recovered his appetite.

Michael followed his dreams to Copenhagen in August where he had enrolled in a MA course. He’d filled in the first half of the year putting his 2009 teaching diploma to use at Napier Girls’ and Colenso, but neither of these prepared him for the disappointment of having the paper that had attracted him to Denmark cancelled nor the cost of living there. He quickly chose to bail out and spend the next three months travelling around Europe (again). He’s back here now half-heartedly applying for teaching jobs, but having left it so late the chances are he will be doing further study at Vic instead.

Fiona took four weeks off work and joined Michael for part of his travels. They successfully tapped into a combination of their and our friends and spent time in Galway (thanks Keith and Geri), Täuffelen (thanks to their aunt and uncle), Hamburg, Paris, Amsterdam and St Chinian (again thanks Keith and Geri).

In an effort to pay for the warm solid house, Mark, who’d spent 2009 working in local schools (acting Principal for a term a Woodford House and acting DP at Hastings Girls’), had five months from June working in Brunei Darussalam as part of an international consortium introducing educational reforms, and will probably be spending even longer there in 2011 helping the implementation of it all. A good change after spending six weeks in Palmerston North with Connor! Saudi is still a possibility but we’re not holding our breath.

Barbara’s time at school becomes busier and busier. The workload grows as internal assessment and other ‘accountability’ demands increase, though this hasn’t taken the shine off the classroom experience; she loves teaching. A highlight was helping the school’s Amnesty Group put on a very successful Hawkes Bay high schools’ singer songwriter Freedom Fest. 2011 sees her take on Year 13 History as well as a Term 3 sabbatical.

Love to you all and best wishes for a great 2011.

Barbara, Mark, Fiona, Connor and Michael