Somewhere out there someone knows how to spell that word.

Tonight/Last night Fiona and Kalisitoni unwrapped a special evening they’ve been preparing with the Petersham youth.

Which begins with the ever present feeding, in the Ozzie style BBQ (no puaka? where’s Tonga gone when we can’t even get puaka for a get together?) Thanks to the fire tending by Rose and ‘Anau.

The kids were having a blast playing around outside, while the final touches were being put up on the stage with Ilavalu and ‘Ita putting up the ‘star’ and getting some lights up for the outdoor, evening show.

Soon enough, there was enough food not yet eaten to invite all the adults and the invited Petersham neighborhood guests to the table to share in the frivolity.

Hey, some of those people look like they’ve gone back for seconds already!!

The youth band started us the formal program for the evening with some Christmas music, hymns, and popular tunes (well, as popular as some of the Tongan music can be.) Sisitoutai got up during the band session and did a shimmy disco that endeared him to the crowd (ma’u he tangata ee mafana ‘a Ngalo’afe)

But soon enough it was time to get off the mats and get ready for tonights performance.

The children replayed the nativity scene in a very well presented play. And the prize for the weary is more work. The parents agreed they wanted to see it all over again, so everyone has to dust off the dirt from tonights performance and we can go through it all again tomorrow noon for the regular church service.

I didn’t know that the Americanism of exuberant celebration of all things to extravagance has extended in Australia to having a semi-formal graduation process for pre-school kids?

Sisitoutai’s school, Bankstown Montessori Childcare held an afternoon farewell to their elder students which put together their Christmas singing play etc.

It was obviously a very small, quick thing since we’re talking about kids from the age of 2 to 5 and Lord knows it’s difficult to maintain their attention (let alone some of the parents.)

Sisitoutai was having a ball for most of the event with a big smile most of the time which super cool to watch. I took off early from work (3:00 pm) so I could do the train/hitch to get their for their 4:00pm start.

Great to see that the pulou’s are as bad as FOBs in keeping time. Probably FOBs themselves? At 4:00 pm the room was half-empty (full) but the show rolled on and within 5 minutes we were packed to overfilling. Like the FOBs, so many had no problems of pushing the children aside so they could get the ‘good seats’ for seeing their own kids.

I thought the worse of parental behaviour was something reserved for football games, parents here were shoving each other around to push their kids ahead of queues and literally walking on little kids. It’s a good thing I was calmed down, ‘cause there could have been an incident. Especially if the automatic mouthing some of people are prone to were to start.

It’s a poor example we emphasise to kids that aggressive, me first behaviour is highly desirable. And then we wonder why kids ignore parents as they grow older?

Love the school itself though.

Montessori Bankstown Childcare has the right atmosphere, care, security that we wish for our children and Sesilia is already booked in for next year and we’re wondering how many days a week she’s going to want once she gets started.

Montessori Bankstown Childcare has worked out really well for Sisitoutai and has built a great foundation for Sisitoutai. On top of Sisitoutai’s general development as a child the centre has really helped to give him greater confidence in himself (a lot of positive re-enforcement) and confidence in his abilities to pursue things (his writing, colouring, drawing, etc.) on top of enjoying learning.

We have a number of childcare places a lot closer and cheaper, some of which we’ve visited, but definitely not with the same secured facilities and overt care for the child whilst they are in and out of school.

Sisitoutai is prepared and ready for ‘big school,’ all we need to find out is whether mum and aunty are prepared for having him at home 24/7 until school starts.

Merry Christmas to all.

The Olympic Park complex has an adjoining park, whose name I have no clue of, but we took off this week-end to get down there to give the kids a little time to play.

The park has a wonderful game environment and the coolest of them is this inter-twined rope complex where kids climb up and around. The whole area reminds me of when Taholo started implementing a children’s area at the Tungi Arcade in Tonga.

It was a fun afternoon out with the kids which we completed by visiting grandma’s grave yard where the kids

performed their impromptu Tick-Tock song.

Funny I was listening to this old Rock n Roll piece about getting into trouble and not believing what was taught in Sunday School, but that’s another story.

We’re doing the Sunday School thang with the kids, and they absolutely love going to Sunday School. So much so, that they get up in the morning prepped to go, and as soon as Sunday School is over there’s a million reasons why we have to come home.

Funny to see how far we have come, not, when it comes to the Sunday School and the Tongan congregations.

The farthest I recall back with the Tongan community church services, is back to when services were held at the Pitt St. Chapel (hmmm, I’ll have to visit there some lunch time next time I’m in the city.) and at the 5 Rogers Avenue, Haberfield, Mission Centre (long since sold to the heathens with better financial management skills. (smiling)

The thing I recall is that we didn’t really have Sunday School for the Tongan Language at the Pitt St. church, and Sunday School at 5 Rogers Avenue was on a Monday evening.

On Monday evening’s the Sunday School members would gather with our teachers at the 5 Rogers Avenue Chapel (a small room part of the complex.)

Sometime later the Sunday School moved together with the main service to St. David’s Haberfield where they actually had a hall and separate rooms. So Sunday School developed into having separate classes and being in different parts of the hall. There were some material, but I’m not sure they were ours or ‘left-overs’ from the palangi church.

Something or someone did something and the congregation moved again to the Ashfield Uniting Church, and they too had a hall and rooms. Sunday school got bigger as we had more kids and plenty of volunteers to be teachers.

Bill Crews expanded his Exodus Foundation on the premises so Sunday School programs moved to the Minister’s Manse (i.e where the faifekau lived) but again we have plenty of space to spread out the classes.

I went on vacation into la la land and came back 10+ years later to find out that we’re back to using the main chapel for our Sunday School program, with only a single volunteer teacher.

Fiona’s busy being creative with a program that fits everyone, and the youngest children get activities they can do on the seats, or on the floor, while she puts in some more in depth time with the older kids.

Petersham Uniting Church – Tongan Congregation is definitely very fortunate to have Fiona on the team.

Well done Fiona.

Would you believe I got jacked/bumped off my Internet connection today?

I’m on Optus’ Cable Internet service, which isn’t hot but has been mostly stable and functional.

Recently I’ve been noticing some problems with the connection going down arbitrarily (kind of like the Internet back in Tonga.) looking at my tiny little router, it seems that it isn’t picking up the public-ip it normally gets from the ISP.

Looking at the address that I’m given, it looks like the “Surfboard” modem that’s plugged into the ISP suddenly decided that it wanted to give me some other IP through a DHCP server.

Imagine getting kicked off my own Internet by the very modem that’s supposed to be keeping me connected.

It’s scary what’s not configured on this thing (like no attempt at even having a password ?)

The kids are growing bigger and bigger, louder and noisier.

We’ve been attending Sunday School for a couple of weeks (our church’s schedule is kinda on and off whenever the church feels up to it.)

Unfortunately, the timetable is still a little screwed, so the kids decided they wanted to sit down and ‘hiva talitali’ while waiting for the rest of the mob to turn up.

Afterward it was just fun at home …

Yesterday we went to the park and afterwards we dropped by Grandma Fe and sang a few songs before getting back in the car for coming home.

The trip was short because you just can’t keep kids still at such an open space.

If it were only that would walk over the open space, but Sesilia likes to pick things up from other plots and just walk off with it. Must have something to do with her ‘motu’ roots?