Posts by Isabel Hitchings
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
For most of my high school years my best friend was a girl whose family had moved to Nelson from India to help in her uncle's restaurant. I spent many happy evenings hanging out in their kitchen, sampling the food and helping out where I could. On busy nights they would dress me in a sari and send me out to help my friend wait tables. Invariably a customer would say "But you're not Indian." To which I would reply "No, but I'm family.‘
-
Hard News: What Hekia Parata actually said, in reply to Yamis,
And when kids do get funding for extra help it only lasts until the end of the school year and then has to be re-applied for in a process that often takes the whole first term.
-
Capture: One picture of you, and no more, in reply to Lilith __,
What a gorgeous smile. We can't see your parents but the love is so apparent.
-
What makes performance or added value impossible to judge is the amount of stuff that needs to be in place before results can start to show up. Kids can’t learn until they feel safe to take risks and often need to interact with ideas quietly and internally before they can show what they have learned. If a child does well in a test, it is not the result of just six months of teaching but of all the groundwork put in by parents, teachers, teacher aides, coaches, tutors….over the course of years.
-
I guess I am around three in this photo. I don't remember it being taken but I know it was in our garden in Nelson and the grapes were almost certainly off the vine that grew there. I was often serious in photos though I recall being a happy child as well as a thoughtful one.
-
If it wasn't likely to cause hardship to other people, I could find myself hoping for enough rain to flood our house again. We're not planning on going back and I can't help wondering if a few more floods would help council and insurance hurry that along.
-
Thanks for your offers of help. It is unbelievably reassuring to know that I have troops I can call in if need be.
We don't really need a great deal at the moment. We have a warm, dry place to stay for the next few weeks and we've gotten a goodly amount of clothes and personal items out of the house. We're letting things lie for a bit while insurance assesses the damage ( which, according to today's initial inspection is major) and we gather information and assess our options.
-
Up Front: Floodland, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
With the proposed electoral boundary changes, pretty much all of the Flockton Basin is set to become part of the Christchurch East electorate. I don't know what, if any, practical effect that might have but we really can't wait until after the election to have our issues addressed.
-
Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts. Even when there isn't a lot that can be done it helps to know that people are coming to understand the complexity of the situations we, and many other Christchurch residents, are facing.
Steven Raising houses is definitely something which has been discussed. I'm not sure how feasible it is as replacing piles on TC3 land, such as ours, means using special, extra deep foundations so is an even costlier undertaking than it might be. Raising houses also doesn't address the damage and contamination that flood waters cause to gardens, garages and fences.
-
Don't most laws (with the exception of things like murder which is challenging to do just a little of) have an end where it's not worth prosecuting and discretion is required? Why should this law be any different than the laws around speeding, or theft, or other forms of assault?
How would we go about quantifying in law how much hitting is too much? Should we go by how hard or how often or by the tool used or bruises left?
