aloooooooha Tokyo

Yes. another Tokyo weekend (well four days to be exact).

Performed at a Polynesian festival. The festival had such a great vibe and the atmosphere was awesome. Great day and weekend chilling out with the whanau, eating, eating and more eating with a bit of singing and shopping blended into the mix.



Te roopu kapa haka o nga hau e wha



hana hands & Maile leis

Hawaiian kisses

kakariki...midori...oma'oma'o

Learnings from the week/end...

• eating curry while wearing a white top quadruples your chance of spilling said curry down the front of said white top.
• believe in yourself, and remember this and remember to praise yourself when you feel you've done good.
• that not trying so hard is usually what works.
• don't be shy or afraid to speak up and say what you want or think. Opportunities come to those who knock, call out and then enter!
• make time for yourself, even if it's only an hour or so. Enjoy that time - it's important for a healthy, balanced lifestyle.
• don't be so hard on yourself...get over it...assess the situation, make a realistic action plan and stick to it.
• that music and exercise are fuel for the soul.
• I possess infinite possibilities and potential.

Things I am doing this week....

Making a finance action plan and sticking to it

Unpacking my bag from my weekend Tokyo trip

Cleaning my house (seriously how often is this on my list?!)

Cleaning my car - ok this has been on my list for some time now... I will do it this week

Turning off the computer earlier and going to bed at a semi reasonable hour to read (one of the million magazines i have) or write or sleep!

Detoxing! After a weekend of indulgence my body and mind need a detox...more details on that to follow!

Going to the gym at least 3 times this week...

A beautiful hula to a beautiful Maori song. Sums up my weekend perfectly.

Poice, mahalos and alohas.

chick, chick, chick...BOOM.

Whereabouts and whatsabouts.

Long weekend in Osaka and Kyoto.

Ate delicious food, drank wine, soy vanilla frappaccinos and too many red bulls, shopped at H&M and saw and did lots. Loved some, day dreamed some about things that could be, laughed lots and enjoyed all of it.



ferris wheel where daydreams are made.

Things I'm doing this week..

Unpacking my bag from my long Osaka weekend, washing my smoke smelling clothes (smoking room at the hotel - booking mistake & it the hotel was fully booked..urgh), detoxing my skin from over air conditioned aforementioned smokey hotel room and then repacking it all for weekend in Tokyo.

Going to the gym and getting butterflies and hugs. Hey boo..

Watching Americas Next Top Model season 14 - in New Zealand.

Trying on outfits for my big Tokyo weekend, beach, shopping and practicing.

Practicing for our performance in 3 weeks.

Trying to be more relaxed and honest to myself, thinking about my actions and reactions and how they affect me and those around me and remembering to do what makes me happy.

Shapeshifter & Ladi 6. When I return.

daydreams and pieces of me.

tide rolls out, tide rolls in...

Let your love inside begin to grow.

Sunday at the beach.

Slip, slop, slap and wrapped (until wore my sunglasses in the ocean and lost them) like nobodies business.

No sunburn, just brown, all day. 34 degrees yo. Hot.

Accidentally wore a great new beach outfit, but there are no pics, next time. Promise.

Karugahama

Lips and earrings

Legs and feet

eyes. and lips. and earrings.

beach.sun.clouds.summer.



home time sunsets from the car.

No plans are usually the best plans. Sunday was supposed to be get out of bed and clean your house, but got a call saying come to the beach we're picking you in in 20...so to the beach I went. Vitamin D is good for the soul.

beach, peach, peace.

すきじゃ...

Random points of things about things.

Cold tea is delicious and fun. I don't mean tea that has gone cold, coz you made a cup and it's been sitting there forgotten and it got cold, I mean tea that is supposed to be brewed with cold water. Say wha'? So this is news to me, a teacher gave me some cold tea bags (citrus flavor) and they were good, so when I went to Muji to buy some pouches of curry for the pies I was making for dinner, I saw a whole display of these teabags...a whole display dedicated to cold teabags. Of course I brought some...in the apple & rosehip variety. There were other flavors like jasmine and earl grey, but they were expensive yo...next time I need curry.

Stickers are like totes the best fun. So as an incentive for my students I've been giving away stickers..this isn't news, but my older students are starting to get into it, which has prompted me to buy more and I'm remembering how much I used to love stickers! I had a little sticker album and I remember begging my dad to buy me "just one" packet of stickers, and how excited I was to go home and carefully transfer them to my album. Even just going though and looking at them was excited, there were furrys, and puffy ones, smelly ones and holograms..gosh so many! Stickers have gotten so much better, granted this is Japan, but I have had so much fun looking for stickers and using them on letters, in my diary and giving them to my students makes me realise that I still get enjoyment from them, so I won't be giving it up again any time soon! I will be looking for my sticker album when I go home at Christmas.

Remembering how much fun it was to mix vanilla ice cream with anything in the cupboard to give it flavor! Me and my cousins always did this, whoever did the shopping always got vanilla - kids don't like vanilla! We wanted chocolate, or neopolitan or hokey pokey, so we would mix the vanilla with coffee, milo, bornvita, milkshake flavor mix, cocoa...anything and it was fun trying to mix it in smooth- putting it in the microwave for 10 seconds if we couldn't wait for it to get soft on its own! What's the point you ask? I made plum cake earlier in the week, and well chocolate ice cream doesn't really go with plum cake, so I brought some vanilla ice cream to eat with it, there was a bit left over and no more plum cake (bad planning on my part) so I thought huuumm what can I mix with this (yeah I still don't like plain vanilla!)? Mixed it up with some coffee granules and I was away!

My desktop background is now a picture of Shibuya. That's how excited I am to go back to Tokyo.

Listening to Marsha Ambrosius's album is music for my soul. I feel like it's just for me.

I need to go to the gym this weekend.

I'm wearing a proper bra (and not my soft with company sleeping bra) for the first time in 4 days. My sunburn is finally healing and I can lift my arms above my head with out any pain. SUNSCREEN!

California pizza for dinner tonight.

California...king bed. If the guy in this video was in my Japanese single bed I'd be content.

poice.

It's over...

Happy Maori language week!

Toi tu te kupu, toi tu te mana, toi to te whanua.

So, I'm totally over the posting a pic everyday series. I feel like it was becoming a pain in posterior and i just haven't really had that much time to do a quality post, I don't wanna post just for postings sake. So quality over quantity wins this time - and hopefully forever.

So following the yellow brick road onwards, things I'm living, loving and doing right now..

i. Making plum cake. Apparently it's the season for plums, I'm not really a fan but a teacher gave me a bag so I made cake. My first attempt was average at best, second attempt however was better - great in fact. It was a classic victoria sponge recipe with plums added. 



Victoria Plum Cake.

ii. I tried a sample of L'Occitane shampoo and conditioner a while back and I fell in love with it, it smelt great and my hair looked really good, so when I went into the shop to find some i was a little surprised with the price, so today I ordered some on strawberrynet. Let's hope it gets here soon...oh and I got a free Stilla lip gloss with my order.

iii. Had a wonderful weekend, Friday night was date night and fried chicken and chips at Memphis oh with a Moscow mule, Saturday was a mini touch scrimmage with three other teams full of Japanese guys with ah.may.zing. legs and then a bbq on the beach just across the road. Drank some beer and some chu-his and some umeshu, cooked meat and yaki soba with the rugby boys, talked about small sausages and other "sexy" talk with them, swam, taught one of the rugby boys how to chat up a chick in English and then proceeded to fall in love with how cute he was at trying, oh and while all of this was going on I managed to get a massive sunburn on my shoulders, chest and neck...that's the last time I forget to wear sunscreen. Probably the worst burn I've ever had, blisters (well bubbles of fluid all over my shoulders), can't wear a bra or my bag on my shoulder coz it hurts so bad...nose has just started peeling - this is the end of day 3 massive sunburn 2011. Aloe vera from the fridge is probably the best thing ever.

iv. I have exactly 3 million itchy bites on my arms.

v. Weeds is back on and I'm loving it, and not like the McDonald's slogan coz I'm not loving that.

vi. Tokyo is two weekends away! and Kyoto is one weekend away! Excitement much?

vii. I've decided more effort is needed to cook (well......make salad) at home.

viii. Working the curly hair. Everyone at school is so surprised that I have curly hair..no I don't have a perm, I wouldn't pay for my hair to look like this!

ix. It's Maori language week, all my facebook statues and updates will be in te reo in some form. I will be posting more about that soon.

Let's have a ladeda day everyday!

Rongo (matane) ki waho.