It rained so hard last night and was very cloudy and overcast this morning when I took Totty out.
Jon left very early, 6.30, to get a flight to Nelson via Wellington with the Thai delegation. He called me from Wellington airport to say good morning! He is going for a 45 minute presentation and then has to fly back to Auckland and then onto Tauranga in time for dinner.
I rang Les to say I was not going to aquacise as I didn't want to get wet! The teacher usually calls in sick on wet days anyway. She said she would go and we arranged to meet for coffee later. She called back a bit later to say the class was cancelled but we would still meet for coffee.
I picked her up and we went to the Mount and as it was quite cold we found a nice warm cafe to have coffee. Les told me about Noleen who is the manager of the Red Cross processing room, she was due to fly to Oz to look after her grandson for seven weeks while his mum is on a course. She has not been feeling well and had had some blood tests and her doctor called her the day before she was to leave and told her that she has leukemia. She is only 57 and it seems to be very bad as she is already in hospital over in Hamilton and having treatment. Les knows her better than I do as she used to give her a lift before Les bought my car and she was also very good to Bianca, Les's daughter, when she first arrived in NZ. It is very sad.
We sat chatting for ages as I didn't have to rush back for lunch. I then picked up my Lions polo top for the races on Saturday.
I drove out to find the house where we are going tonight. It is in a part of Tauranga that I am not familiar with so thought I would have a recce in the daylight as everywhere looks different in the dark. After a few wrong turns I found the house so feel better now that I know where I am going.
On my way back I went into the supermarket to pick up the things I need to take tonight for cooking with the teenagers. We are making pizza and chocolate truffles. Janice is making chocolate chip cookies so they will have chocolate overload.
I had my dinner early as I needed to leave and left Jon's ready for him.
I picked Janice up and it was cold, wind, and raining - not a nice night to be out. We found the house OK and went to find the teenagers. The house is run by a church charity and they have house parents and at the moment have two girls a 12 and a 15 year old and a 12 year old boy. They come from troubled homes - alcohol abuse or sexual abuse or they can be having trouble at school - we didn't find out what the problems were. They are from the north so family is not on the doorstep and Lions go along once a month and do various things with them, knitting, sewing, beauty night and tonight, cooking. (Now they have a boy not sure how the beauty night is going to go!)
They were very polite and shook hands in a very grown up way. We went across to a room not connected to the main house and where I think they may have lessons but it was not the nicest place. I think they are responsible for it and it was all a bit grubby and I had to get them to was the bowls and things before we started and they did it quite happily. The boy, Tiree, made the pizza and he could talk the hind legs off a donkey so no problems with him. The 12 year old, Ihana, made biscuits with Janice and I did truffles with the 15 year old and her name was so difficult I can't remember it. Anyway, she loves chocolate and loved the recipe and is going to make some for her mum.
All in all we had a really lovely evening and I need not have worried as we all got on very well. They set a table for us and we sat with them and they ate the pizza and drank a 5 lite bottle of juice that Janice had brought and I told Tiree I would rather keep him for a week than a fortnight and he thought that was really funny. He told us one of the things he doesn't like about living in the house is that he has to shower every day. Where he comes from in the north they have a drought and water shortage so he only had a shower every three days! Boys!
They took everything that was left back to the house and I told them not to eat too many truffles or they would be sick and we would get into trouble. I was really glad I went on the visit.
Through the evening it was raining very hard and sooo windy. When we walked back to the car it was standing nearly ankle deep in water and we got very wet. Driving home was a nightmare as the windows were steaming up and I couldn't get them to clear. Of all the dry weather we have had and we had to be out on the wettest night we have had for months! I was very glad to get back in one piece.
WEATHER
Very wet overnight and overcast and cloudy this morning with very heavy rain at night
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