Community

Garden Place on Waitangi Day

So I started 2010 with an attempt to find free entertainment. I love free!! I'm not too cool to take taste testers from the lovely ladies in their stalls at the supermarkets. I love hand me downs. I use the gimmicky free samples you get sent/given randomly. I don't usually buy their products. Let's face it if they can afford to give them away in promotions then they are obviously charging too much. So I'm happy to receive free things.

One thing I miss about Auckland is that in a city that size there was always something happening somewhere. Be it the Chinese lantern festival, pacifika festival, symphony under the stars etc etc.. Now I know that Auckland has the people and the economy to pull that kind of stuff off but I figured there must be more that Hamilton is offering that I just haven't seen yet..

And it turns out there is!!


I started my journey at the free places - the GORGEOUS Hamilton gardens, the Arts Post, Museum, you know the places. It's when you're there you see the advertisements for all the things coming up. No kidding there is more than you could fit it time for. Here is a list of just SOME of the things that we have made it to that has been happening in Hamilton in 2010. I'm struggling to remember them all:

Waitangi Day in garden place with entertainment all day
Children's Day happening in 13! places around the city
Earth Hour festivities
Massive School Gala Day at the Base
Movies in Garden Place
Plunket Funky Monkey Roadshow
Tamahere Markets
Balloons Over Waikato
Agora Goes Live
Delhi Streets Art Exhibition and Auction


Not bad considering there has only been about 14 weekends this year. The cool thing about going to all of these things is you get to have a feel of community spirit. When you've stood in line forever for something and you realise your 50cents short and they let you off. Or when your kid is throwing a tantrum and you didn't realise he lost a shoe 20meters ago and someone comes and returns it. Or when you find a group of people who are into the same weird thing as you and you're encouraged by what they're doing. Or you get to cheer on the kid who's coming last in the race even though you've never met him before but you admire his persistence.

I don't know about you but I was made for community. I was made to need people and be needed by people. To give and to receive. My life feels so much fuller when I feel so connected to the people around me. I guess in a way I have found an appreciation of the Hamilton community. It's a different scale obviously and probably not as good as 'the good old days' but still so valuable.

Poppy at the school fair

Jerk Freaks performing at Agora Goes Live

Noah mesmerised by the Funky Monkeys

Distraction

I've been thinking heaps about this wee blog thing. Had heaps of things I thought about talking about. I hesitate for a couple of reasons..
1) I don't know the rules of blogging.. how often is too often, how long of a post is too long etc
2) I don't want to start at a pace that I can't possibly maintain

I don't know how your head works. To be honest I'm not totally sure how my head works either. But I know that at the moment my head is full of stuff!! With my mind full of things I've been trying to disassemble it all in an effort to reorganise it into something more manageable. I don't know why I bothered trying to do that. I've never been able to organise anything in my whole life!! My undie drawer was quite tidy one week. It was a good week. But that's unfortunately all it was. So as I think through all that's in my head at the moment I get so distracted it's as if even my thinking is in half-sentences. You know when you're in a big group of chatty people and everyone has so much to say, you've got 2.5 seconds to make your point before the next person jumps on in? Well that's happening in my head!! It's making for a very busy rather stressed place at the moment. Problem is if you were to ask me why I'm stressed I couldn't give you an answer.. Or I would try and then the next thought would come out half way through the first one, and so it would continue...

If that makes no sense to you then be relieved that your head space is nothing like mine. If it does make sense.. well done.