USP Open Day

Yesterday was USP’s annual Open Day – another reason why Angela has been so busy recently. There seems to be a lot organise and she has ended up on the Open Day Committee – they seem to have a committee for everything these days!

Anyway, it sounds like it was a successful day. Something that they did differently this year was the cultural performances. Each year they get students from the various countries that make up USP to perform some traditional dance items from their homeland. This has always been done in the afternoon, so those of us at work miss out – although I have been able to experience it second hand thanks to Angela’s movie clips and thousands of photos! This year they held it in the evening, so I took the opportunity to go and watch the performances first hand. For those of you not lucky enough to live here and be able to see the show, Ang will be uploading some photos and video clips soon – but she has plenty to sort through first!

The students did a great job – as always. For us Palagi it is a great reminder of what an important place song and dance has in the culture of the Pacific Islands. And it is a great way to see so many different cultures and compare the similarities and note the differences between them.

I am just grateful that they don't expect this uncoordinated, rhythmically challenged palagai to get up and perform some kind of dance from his homeland!

Weekend Away

Me again - this is what happens when Ang lets me loose on the blog!

In between all of the netball we did managed to fit in a weekend away recently. It was Father’s Day here a couple of weeks ago and in Samoa that means a long weekend! So we headed off around the coast to Le Uaina – this is the same place we went at Easter. At Easter I spent most of the weekend suffering with a bad back (I told you I am getting old), but this time I was fully fit. We enjoyed a very nice few days relaxing and snorkelling.

When I was making our booking I went to their website (yes, they are one on the few places here that have a website) and was surprised to see that some of Angela’s photos from our last visit now appear on the website! Check it our here: Le Uaina That is Angela holding the blue starfish! I think a couple more of her photos are some of the other pages of the site too.

We will be uploading some photos from the weekend to flickr soon.

Netball Update.

Sorry we haven’t posted anything for so long but things have been quite busy recently. All the usual stuff – netball, netball and more netball! So, it has fallen to me to give a quick update.

Angela’s team has been going OK, a bit inconsistent but they are currently vying for a respectable 3^rd or 4^th place finish in the A Grade. There are only a couple of weeks left in the season so they are keen to finish strongly and maybe take out third place.

The USP girls have finished the season undefeated and have taken out the B Grade – thanks largely to ‘Super Coach’. Yes, that’s me! While Angela was away in Toowoomba I had to look after the team. They were all very worried about how they would cope while she was away so insisted that I came down to the games with them. While in charge I helped them to hard fought wins over Hyundai (our club) and St Mary’s, and earned the nickname of Super Coach.

The USP Boys team has been a different story and the cause of a great deal of stress for poor old Angela. They never turn up to training, but then complain that they need more practice. Some weeks they turn up to the courts without enough players to make up their team and other weeks they will arrive with a whole bus load of players. Last week only 1 turned up, the rest of them had been out drinking on Friday night and were still in bed when the van came to take them to netball! I don’t think Ang is keen on having a boys team next season.

And of course Angela is still umpiring. As one of Samoa’s most highly qualified netball umpires she gets put on all the tough games. She is always worried about her performance, but I can see that she is doing a really good job. Last week she had to umpire the top 2 men’s teams. This is a game that has often got out of control in the past, with lots of dirty play, talking back to umpires and even the odd fight or chair being thrown! But last week she was in control of this unruly bunch of fa'afafines and it was a good game to watch. Soon she is off to NZ to umpire a secondary schools tournament in Auckland and after that she will be sitting her next umpiring exam. If only she could but down her Phillipa Gregory and start studying the netball rule book!

As for me, I have only played a few games this season. I have been struggling with a sore knee, or maybe I am just getting old! Not playing doesn’t seem to excuse you from spending all day at the courts though. I still have to watch the games Angela plays and umpires and am expected to give intelligent feedback, and of course someone has to man the club's sausage sizzle while everyone else is busy playing.

Because of my dodgy knee I have only been doing a limited amount of running, but am still planning to take part in the Samoa Perimeter Relay again. This is the 102km relay run that I did last year. There are 3 of us from last years team that are back to do it again, the other 3 have all returned to NZ, but we have rounded up 3 more suckers to join us. The event is next weekend and I promise to post a report as soon as I can.