Santa Claus makes another appearance

This time it was the Yacht club on Friday evening. Chaos reigned with kids everywhere but all left happy after an excellent performance by the man in red. Iman as usual was happy to meet her idol and to our surprise, Jack was also very keen. Ayden - well, he didn't enjoy the experience but we're confident that next year, he'll get the picture. 

Iman got in to Santa's grotto in advance to try out the chair - plenty of space for the big man !

Due to the nautical nature of the location, Santa gave Rudolph the night off and arrived by boat - screams and roars all round and not all from the kids ! 

Almost the real deal, but after a stomach staple ! His friendly elf had strange facial hair but an excellent sense of humor.

Jack 'I am brave' McCarthy - surprising us by not crying ! 

Iman of course, happy, as usual to catch up with Santa - hope she managed to tell him what she wants.

Ayden happy to have an ice pop even though it was getting late.

Kindy trip to Kampong Ayer

Yesterday Jack's kindy year went to the water village for a walk around. The highlight of the trip for the children was climbing a really high bridge to see the boats going past and the ice-cream at the end of the trip. For me the highlight was getting up close to the SOAS mosque. This is Brunei's most well known landmark and I have probably driven past it thousands of times but yesterday was only my second time up close, my first visit over twenty years ago.

Dear Fatin...

Our niece Fatin is on a trip to Paris and Geneva with my parents and this post is to her.

Tin, when you are jalan-jalan in Geneva can you please look out for this chocolate. It has to be Lindt and Chilli - please can you get about 10 pieces. Please tell 'Mah you can get it in Metro or Carrefour and we know we already agreed with her no chocolate but we really love this stuff. And don't forget Iman's socks. By the way we loved the photos on the blog - keep it up!

Weekend away with the girls

Hanna, Tina and I are going away together this weekend. In fact Hanna and Tina left this evening and I go in the morning. Its been more than 10 years since the we all did a trip together so looking forward to it. No updates till next week as I won't be taking the mac - just to maximise use of baggage space for the shopping :-)  will take lots of pics and will post next week!  

Happy Birthday Grannie Liz

Have a nice day Grannie!! With love from all of us xxx

Monday Morning walk @ Morleys

Pictures from Monday's walk. For some reason there are a lot of thorny palms in this area so not one of my favourite jungle walks but it was beautiful once we got to the stream and waterfall. 

Space Hashers

It was our hash end of year party last night known as "Founders Day". Basically a lovely big meal and plenty of fun. Of course dressing up was involved and I underestimated how much people would get into it. Most of the ladies had costumes on and there are some very creative women out there.

Like myself, Claire is not really into dressing up so we went as ourselves. Yes we are boring!

Santa comes to Kids Hash

With Christmas slowly creeping up on us, Santa dropped by at the kids hash yesterday. Iman was very, very excited to meet him. Poor Jack was terrified and couldn't even look. Sadly my camera was on the wrong setting and all the pictures came out blurred - I blame it on all the excitement!

Th run itself was a fab one and a special one for us as it was Ayden's first, and we took Sitty so it was her first too - think we have a hasher there. Donncha carried Ayden all the way and it was a pretty tough run with plenty of water including a swamp and plenty of hills - his arms are still feeling it today! In total it took about 45 mins and the little guy was so tired from all the excitement that he fell asleep 20 minutes before the end. Iman as usual did very well and getting better at handling the jungle - she didn't need any help yesterday. And Jack, he's our super hasher. He loved the water bits and walked more that he has ever done before - still I had to carry him up the steepest hill! 

Spot Iman's boots and socks - muddiest kids hash we've experienced so far

Super hasher turns Power Ranger!

Our little first timer after his nap - he had a great day

And Sitty - think she will be back but with not with the same trainers

Santa gets time out from his grotto-tent

And has a light refreshment!

Le Loop

Yesterday I joined three French mums from school for a walk at Bukit Shahbandar. We went to do the long loop which turned out to be a fantastic walk with great trails. The walk took us 3 hours in total which is probably one of the longest walks I have done in a while.  Highly recommended and I look forward to doing it again.

Two Sisters

Here's a special picture of my two grand-aunts from my Dad's side of the family, sisters of my late grandmother. There were altogether six of them - two brothers and four sisters. The eldest sister the late Nini Sangol passed away in 1982 and my own grandmother, fourth in the family passed away in 1994. The two surviving sisters live at the opposite ends of Brunei rarely see each other and it is even rarer for me to catch them together so I was delighted to see them both at a cousin's wedding last weekend. On the left is Hajah Norati or as we know her Nini Tengah, literally the middle grandma and on the right Hajah Maimunah or Nini Amit, literally the youngest grandma - two women who mean a lot to me.

Monday Morning walk @ Mata-Mata

Our walk this week was at a new location for me and it was spectacular. The trail was along a meandering stream which we crossed it at least a dozen times, voluntarily getting our muddy feet wet to enjoy the cool water. One lady enjoyed it so much that she stayed walking in the stream and only getting out when it got too deep. 

The jungle is most beautiful with the morning sun and never fails to disappoint me.

JIS International Day 08

As like most other international schools all over the world, the annual International Day is a large feature on the JIS social calender. Last year Iman was not well on the day so this year was our first formal International Day and with both Iman and Jack taking part we were proud to be there with them. Most students came into school wearing their national costumes/colours or dressed up as a famous person from their country. Parents are encouraged to participate by dressing up and also if wish talk to their child's class about their respected countries and cultures. For the Kindy kids only, parents were asked to have displays in the kindy playground. All the kids were given "passports" and as they visited each booth we put stamps in their passports. Most of what was displayed was wasted on them except if it had food. We displayed Irish books and hurleys and a slither which went down well with the boys. It was otherwise a fun day for us to chat with other parents that we don't usually get to chat to.

The day for the whole Junior school started with a parade and each class came onto the stage to introduce themselves and their different nationalities. With the exception of the kindy classes which are much smaller, most classes had on average between 8-12 nationalities in each class.

Iman made up her mind that because she would be carrying a mini Brunei flag, she would go in a baju kurung.

Jack was more than happy to have his Irish colours on

Iman and Natasha

Waiting for the parade to start

Iman's class

Iman and her girlfriends

Jack with his mates. Cody made a great James Bond!

Hajer from Tunisia with her son Abes looked great in their national dress

Jack at our Irish table

Donncha did great pasting with the stamps!

Kindy snake

This little guy made an appearance at the kindy snack area just as Jack and his friends were sitting down for lunch. Luckily he bolted into the empty class room when the kids started screaming and the maintenance boys promptly picked him up.

A bit of Prince Charles

Prince Charles and Camilla are in Brunei for a 24 hour visit. For the last couple of weeks the British Community here has been abuzz with talk of who been invited, who's going and who's not to the reception hosted by the High Commission. Opinions have been expressed in national newspapers and for sure it's not pretty behind the scenes. And as for the ladies, the decision "to hat or not to hat" must be agonizingly painful!

We actually always have a bit of Charlie in our house all the time in the form of strawberry jam! For us it is simply the best and the same goes for the marmalade. In Supasave a jar of jam retails for B$8.95. Interestingly we saw a Duchy shop in Singapore and the same jar went for S$16! We don't know how it retails for in the UK and we would appreciate if any of our friends could let us know now much it is wherever they live.

On a final note, it's International Day at school next Friday. One lady who is helping to organize the day in Kindy asked us if we would do an Ireland table to "join" up with Great Britain. We're more than proud to be Ireland but the second request went down like a lead balloon. Now I really wonder why we didn't get an invite to the reception of the year?