Diaspora, sun, and multicultural sushi

Just various things I have been meaning to write about:

Yesterday a poster went up in the tea room. They're having an International Diaspora conference--for the Scottish and Irish. Do you suppose we are part of the American diaspora? Is is possible to have an American Diaspora? Second-order diaspora? The more you say or write "diaspora," the more odd it sounds.

We went to the beach yesterday afternoon, joining some friends who'd rented a house there for a week--we're testing out various beaches. This one is an East Coast beach (white sands, supposed to be less rough than West) about an hour and a half from here, through rolling hills and road construction, in Papamoa, just south of Mount Manganui, where we had our first beach trip months ago. Mid-afternoon, mid-summer, this strip of beach initially had maybe half a dozen people in sight--later a few more, but none within a shell's throw. We played in the water a while--Emily loves the beach, and boogie boarded (that's a verb) until she had sand everywhere. Joseph, being 14, stayed home. We have learned our lesson this week about the New Zealand sun, though: A couple of days ago, Emily got a bit too much while sliding on her slippery-slide (whatever it's called--you hook it up to the sprinkler and slide on it in the yard), having applied her own suncreen. Yesterday I was more meticulous with her, but seem to have neglected half of one leg of my own...unfortunately that's the side I sleep on. We will learn. The kids here wear swimming "togs" that go from knee to elbow, and I think I'll go out and see if I can find some for Emily before our trip this weekend to the Coromandel Penninsula.

My enthusiasm for sea kayaking has been muted slightly since a series of stories this week in the paper about sharks cruising various beaches. No one has been attacked, but one did take a bite out of the lifeguard's boat that was trying to chase it away, and there was a picture in the paper from the air of about 20 sharks in the water just a couple of hundred meters from the beach just north of where we're going...

We are thinking of going in a glass bottomed boat (seems sharkworthy) tour, where you are apparently likely to see at least sea birds, possibly penguins and dolphins. Someone on the beach at Papamoa the day before we were there had found a little blue (fairy) penguin, apparently exhausted (we hear they do wash up there not infrequently, but usually dead...); they took it to the animal rescue. Emily would be enchanted to see a fairy penguin, if it was alive...

Finally, sushi. I have been meaning to write about sushi for months. I like the sushi here, though I'm not sure that real sushi die-hards would approve. You can get sushi in lots of little places--I haven't seen a sushi drive-through, but it is practically fast food. Some of it is fairly normal sushi--salmon, various raw fish. But they also have teriyaki chicken, smoked chicken, and fried chicken (kid you not) sushi. And Barbeque beef. And sometimes they just take the whole thing and deep fry it, and god knows what's in it (this, even I do not approve of).

Next week, maybe we will have tales of adventure...
Carrie