Views from our accommodation...

View from the balcony of Jo-Ann's room at skating camp

View from the garden of Deco backpackers with downtown Queenstown on your left

Continuing view (my simple camera cannot do panoramic view!) from the above

Thought I'll share with you the beautiful scenery we see from my daughter's motel room and from the garden of my backpackers.  The view from my window is too depressing so I am not even bothered with taking a picture of it!

Friends are precious treasures!

Jo-Ann and Abbey - long distanced friends

I have always considered myself lucky to have a whole lot of close girlfriends from my schoolgirl days in an all girls' catholic school.  I hope my daughter will also get to have such friends, too, but I feel guilty as because of my changes in life and career, she had to go to 3 primary schools and now I hope that she can go through her intermediate and high school in the same school for the rest of her school days.

But having said that, last year in one of her figure skating competitions, she met a little girl in Christchurch, whose parents had recently immigrated from Scotland.  They hit it off and got along great immediately!  It was really interesting for me to watch their part time friendship as we live about 4  1/2 hr drive apart.  Today they met again and are rooming together at her skating camp.  They are just so happy and excited to meet up again  and will probably do so again in for another 2 more competitions in 2 different towns in the next few months.  It is just really fun to follow their relationship through texting and phone calls.  I think part of the reason they get on so well is because my daughter is bossy but her friend Abbey will follow her lead so that friendship works out really well!  I hope she will keep up this skating friendship into the future........

Memorable sign from the past!

On our drive into Lawrence, over 2 years ago, we pass the above sign which caught out eyes and we had always wanted to take a photo of it!  We finally did today!  We think it is 50 cents a bag!

Is horse poo very good manure????

Dunedin to Queenstown - Part 2

The air was so still that Lake Dunstan was like a mirror!  Awesome sight!

We came upon Cromwell and just as we cross Lake Dunstan, it was quite a sight from the Lookout point just before we cross the bridge.  The whole lake was like a mirror.  Our photo did not show this as clearly but it was a really pretty sight!

From Cromwell we drove on and past numerous wineries in the Gibbston valley area (Central Otago is fast developing into an up and coming vineyard area).  Then we drove past the turnoff to another historic gold mining town called Arrowtown.  Then finally got to Queenstown and we started to look for my daughter's motel where they are based for the 5 days 5 nights camp.

I off loaded her and her baggage and then head off to my own backpackers for my stay in Queenstown!  Yeah, she gets the nice place to stay and I'm on a budget!!!

The long drive though very scenic was a bit overcast with light showers along the way.

Journey to Queenstown from Dunedin

Clyde Dam located between Alexandra and Cromwell

Looking back at Clyde Dam from the rest stop

We left Dunedin at 12.15 pm today and arrived just before 4 pm after a few quick photo stops.  We drove through Milton and then through the historic town of Lawrence, an old gold rush town started in 1861.

From Lawrence we continued pass the orchards and nurseries in Central Otago.  It was quite a sight seeing red apples hanging on the trees.  I did not have any photo of them as my photographer (my 11 year old girl) was taking a nap!  Then we drove through Roxburgh and onto Alexandra and then pass along the scenic Clyde Dam.  My photographer woke up just before Alexandra and we stopped for some photos along the dam.

Continue next post.......

Free Rice!

We just found out a website called Free Rice. What it does is let children improve on their vocabulary and at the same time for every question the player gets correct, 10 grain of rice is donated to a poor undeveloped country where the children are fed with the rice the player wins.


My daughter was really happy to find that she can win rice for some poor African children somewhere else in the world. It is a good way to teach children how lucky they are and what they can do to help out other deprived children in poor countries.


The website is created by World Food Program to help feed hungry people in the world. So get your kids to play and improve on their vocab at the same time.

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

My daughter's artistic talent!

Aerial view of Jo-Ann's painted pottery

A couple of Jo-Ann's favourite pots done when she was 9 years old

Jo-Ann's indian ink print of The Palm Beach

Jo-Ann's oil painting of The Green Eye

From time to time, my daughter surprises me with her paintings and the above is an oil painting she did in school when she was 9 years old! This picture of an eye blew me away and I still cannot believe she did it 99% by herself! Her teacher did a little of the yellow colour and the rest is all hers!

I was also told that her pottery using the potter's wheel was the best amongst those in her age group so much so that she was also helping her busy art tutor teach some younger beginners' on the wheel and this was also when she was about 9 years old. Currently she has stopped going to her art tutor but told me that her current art teacher in school gave her Excellence in her shading method. Well.... she did not get her artistic talent from me! I can hardly draw although I appreciate paintings very much and have collected a few paintings! I blame it on my poor art classes when I was in school! Now I do encourage or give my girl all the advantages she can have if she shows any interest in art which included art classes after school which she did so for a couple of years!

I am no art critic but I welcome any commentt from any of you bloggers who are artists, too!