Back to the Kingdom of Unexpected Treasures

It's already been a year since the last Biker's Meet here in Brunei, can you believe it!! Gosh, time flies! For the second year in a row, this weekend Jerudong Park hosted the "Ride to the Kingdom of Unexpected Treasures" Biker's Meet. This year, they expected about 2000 bikers to join in!
After Lucas' and my visit last year, I decided we would go again, and this time we brought along Lucas' friend George.



We walked around for a while and checked out all the cool bikes...











Some of the bikers had some special pets:





We also went into the Reptile Tent, where they had lots of different snakes and lizards you could pet and hold:











George was especially brave!



They also had a tent themed "Ghost rider", which was a ghost house - of course we had to see that too... Although, all the way through I had three kids around my legs going "I don't like it! I don't like it!" Ha ha! Not a great success..!

The coolest bike was this one, blowing out fire:



Even though I have no special interest in motorbikes, again I really enjoyed our afternoon. This is such a well organized event. There is a lot to look at, everybody is so friendly and it's definitely a cool excursion for the whole family. (Plus, any change to the normal weekend routine is always welcome!)

Tyre torture

Well, to be honest, it's probably not quite torture if you are participating willingly.., but it sure felt like hard work this morning when we had to lift tyres over our heads and squat, and do lunges..!

This morning we were back at Omar's house for some boxing as today's Super Saturday Session. Together with the boxing we also did cardio, amongst other things - with tyres. Hard work, but different, and fun!



And this is how you look like after having been in close contact with those tyres..!

Dinner Kung Fu Panda style

Last night our 12WBT menu had us eating 'Beef Noodle Soup'. Kids are not all that keen on soup normally but I sold it to them by reminding them that it's Kung Fu Panda's favourite dish!
They actually tried it without to much convincing needed, and ate most of it (bar the herbs) too! Yay!

Junior School Disco

Yesterday the kids had their yearly disco at school. Previous years we've seen "Hollywood-theme" and "Slumber party-theme"; this year they were supposed to dress up as "Your future".
Linnea first wanted to go as a zoo keeper, but it posed a problem when we didn't really have any clothes remotely zoo keeper-looking. Then she wanted to go as a pirate (?), but finally settled on going as a tap-and-jazz teacher..! :)
She had her disco in the afternoon, and I managed to sneak in and watch. All the kids had such a great time, full of energy, dancing like crazy!



The Year 1 and 2 classes had prepared a bit of a flash mob to Katy Perry's 'Firework' song. They did so great! Cool routine! (Linnea is in the front row all in black clothes.)







For Lucas we had to go back to school at night, as his disco wasn't until 6.30pm! He couldn't decide whether to go as a rugby player or a football player so in the end he just went casual.
I didn't stay for that so unfortunately have no photos of the older kids disco. I watched a bit in the end though, and it sure brought back memories from my own school dances, a long, long time ago..!

Muddy waters

I'm feeling very good after having laid another successful hash today!
As I wrote a while back, we had to regroup and do it a bit differently than first planned, since most of the jungle where we wanted to lay our trail, was no more.

So, we planned a road run along the roads where I usually take the dogs and go running. It took us nearly two hours in the scorching sun this afternoon to lay it, since we had to secure every piece of paper with stones (it's rather different on the road than in the jungle where you just drop the paper as you go) and it was close to 6k long.

We had told the hens to wear running shoes, but had planned to include a short water crossing after our last rekkie. On Sunday that crossing was clear and shallow - today (after last nights heavy rain) not so much so... it had turned muddy and deep! So change of plan, again!
We had to make it slightly longer, but no one seemed to mind the "long" run - quite the opposite, everybody had just nice things to say about the run! *Pat on the back* for us!

My fellow hare Nicki managed to fall over though when her feet got stuck in the mud... bless her! She then had to walk all along the main road back home, looking like this:

Hm... which one..?

The other night we had a grown-up goodbye dinner for the Roses (yes I know, we've made sure to see them off properly!) at Li-Gong, the Chinese restaurant at the Empire Hotel and Country Club.
There was 14 of us who enjoyed an all-you-can-eat a la carte dinner; we ordered in a huge selection of very tasty dishes and just kept eating, yum!
As dessert, Misuzu had organized a super delicious white chocolate and passionfruit cake. She had asked for a special greeting on top of it, but I guess they ran out of space...



Ha ha, we spent the rest of the night discussing which one of us would be that friend..! :)

Sushitastic goodbye

Where else to go for our last Brunei lunch together with the Roses but to our favourite sushi place! Such a given!









It was such a nice lunch, and then we spent all afternoon at the hotel where they were staying, having coffee and swimming. A good goodbye.
It's so, so sad that they have now left (I kept pretending until the last day it wasn't really happening...), but at least we know that we will see each other again already in a month, when we are coming to Singapore at the end of March.

We also know that this friendship is one of the lasting kind - no matter the distance between us, or time between when we see each other.
Some people you just keep in your life, and close to your heart, no matter what.

Sport Relief 2012

Today it was time for a special event at school, the Sport Relief Mile Run 2012. The kids could choose themselves if they wanted to take part or not, it was all done for the Pusat Ehsan Charity here in Brunei.
Lucas was more than happy to run, since it wasn't a race - no winners or loosers... Linnea wasn't too keen but in hindsight knowing that she actually wouldn't have to run the full mile, she should've. She would've like it too. Ah well.

First some words from the Head of Junior School, and also from the JIS Principal:





Warm-up was done by some fitness instructors from a local gym. Lucas is in front of the lady in purple, in his yellow shirt and beige cap:





Quite a few parents were taking part too together with their kids. I made Nathan run with Lucas..!



The route:





Rearing to go! Junior School ready:



And they are off!



It was a bit crowded, so it was a slow start for some, which was ok since it wasn't a race but a fun run.



There they go!



Lucas and Nathan did the orange route, twice. (Still not quite a mile, but don't tell him that!) They were on fire! Here they come after the first lap:





Here they are second time around, time to finally pass that finish line!



It was SO hot!



After all that running, it was time for a well deserved soft ice:





Also they had the usual food stalls with pizza, ice cream, drinks and hotdogs; and Beenal was there selling gorgeous cupcakes:

Zumba, zumba, zumba - zumba!

The Year 1 classes are learning about how to be healthy as their IPC topic this last part of this term.
They approach this different ways, for example they've had a visit from a dentist; they have been talking about healthy food to go in their lunch boxes and they are also doing some extra exercise. They do aerobics once a week - and Zumba once a week!

I got asked if I wanted to help out and take all three classes for a mini session of Zumbatomic for this special topic, and sure I did - what fun!
So every Wednesday at the moment, just before school pick-up, I have around 60 (!) Year 1 students for about 15 minutes of Zumbatomic - it's fab! We have been doing fairly easy (and repetitive) routines of course because of the limited time, but the kids love it!



This week we did "El baile del gorila" (=the gorilla dance) and the favourite so far: "Chihuahua", they are all getting down with it!