Otaio Gorge

Ah school...our first day back after a very loooong holiday. All things considered it was not too bad - the boys had forgotten how to write some of their letters, had forgotten almost all their maths facts, weren't too keen on working at all, really - but we got through the whole morning and my voice even made it through almost to the end. We shifted our location to the church, in the Sunday School classroom so there is place for them to sit and no one to hear me sternly admonishing them to hold their pencils properly, sit up, concentrate, stop talking, blow their noses, stop rocking...nothing's really changed!In the afternoon we did some more house-hunting with Rachel, finding two potentials, and then in the late afternoon we took our first drive out of Timaru to Otaio Gorge, a half hour away. It was super to drive through some NZ countryside which is very pretty with gentle rolling hills, yellowing grassland, plenty of trees and hedges, flocks of sheep (one of which had wandered into the road), cows, and so on.Carl and Miriam had organized a BBQ for tea; while that was going we paddled in the shallow river, collecting rocks and trying to make a dam.

Nick did the dishes, boy-scout style with a wetwipe. We were home by around 8 pm, and found this spectacular sunset in the back yard a little later.