Dallas on Ferry to Vancouver Island
Empire Hotel-Victoria-Vancouver Island
NZ Team at the conference dinner
Bourchardt Gardens- Vancouver Island
Wione and Cheese Evening at the Alumni Club
Alumni Club - University of British Columbia- nice to have rich benefactors

16 July

Two days back at school and Vancouver is already becoming a distant memory!

The Conference (Leading for Learning Short-Course) was great. Around 250 BC Principals and Vice-Principals and Superintendents plus the Kiwi contingent of 5. The programme was very full, starting at 8.00am each day and finishing after 5.00pm.

We started the Monday with a welcome from a Muscquean woman, and our group was asked to reply to this welcome. Somehow this fell on me but the group supported me well with an impressive waiata.

On Tuesday we presented two 90 minute workshops that were very well appreciated and created a lot of discussions and conversations throughout the rest of the week.

On Friday the conference closed around 12.30pm and Elizabeth Forgie gave a very good review of the week for our team (requested by the organisers)and we rounded up with another stunning waiata -but don't you hate it when it is lead by someone in a few keys higher than is comfportable for anyone.

Dallas, Violet Pelham and I headed for Vancouver for two nights and the others headed off to the Rockies. On the Saturday Dallas and I headed for Vancouver Island for the day and visited the Bourchardt Gardens and Victoria city -very obvious English influence in the architecture, the gardens (not usually my thing) were stunning.

Sunday we had a leisurely start and spent a good part of the day at Granville Island markets before heading back to hotel and then off to the airport. Great place Vancouver - I could swap cities for a few years. But great to be home with family and the kids.

Noticed comments Maurie, Leigh and Matt:

My gondolier (gondolesse?) on the gondola was Dallas Leigh -thank you for pointing out the error of my ways.
Had to maintain standards here maurie, so we adopted the local pub on the campus. We just about went through their menu over the week and they had these great beer tasting platters, and usually forced to have a few just to check out the taste of the local ales. About to read your blog-I hope a lot of professional learning happened and you engaged in many conversations with your NZ colleagues?!!