Still alive

For those of you who have been checking our blog every now and then: we will try and get this blog up and running again with UP TO DATE news from the Gathercole family! I don't even start to tell you about what had happened in the last few months, because then I might as well start writing a novel ... a very uneventful novel though ... . You didn't miss much!

Just a few infos: In july we went on a well needed holiday - whether it was well deserved, I dont'know ... . We packed our car with dog, baby and camping equipment and started our trip to Bordeaux / France. We underestimated the distance and it was 2 very long days in the car until we finally reached Carcans on the Atlantic Ocean. The first five days we spent orienteering (French 5-days). The terrain was very interesting but quite hard to run (sandy ground). I was surprised that I actually managed to compete quite well for 4 days in the row - after not training / running in the last months, except for the austrian orienteering events. However on the last day it was just to hot for me and I guess 4 days of running in sand doesn't really make you fresh and ready ...

The week after we just stayed on the camp site and enjoyed the luxury of being lazy. We made a one-day-trip into the wine-growing-area. It was nice to visit all these "chateaux" but Hanna didn't enjoy the cheese we had for our picnic lunch and repeated it our into her car seat on the way back. I have to say that it was dutch cheese - that was the punishment for eating dutch cheese in France :-). Well, that was our last try of sightseeing on our holiday!

On the way back we stayed 2 nights in a mountain village close to Mont Blanc. The Hotel was situated right next to a very small lake. The scenery there was wonderful - a great end to our holiday!

Here is one of our most favourite photos from the trip:
Have a great day! Check again soon, we will try and update on a more regular basis :-)!
Christine

Easter Holidays – Family time!

Richard, Hanna, Aisha and I have been really busy in the last two weeks. Richard and Aisha have been to Hungary on a training camp with the Austrian National Team and Hanna and I were busy preparing the flat and organising a family visit! On Thursday before Easter Alison, John, Claire and Gavin arrived and a day later Michelle and George joined us as well. By that time Richard and Aisha were back from the Training camp and we had a big Gathercole family meeting here in Henndorf – only Michael was missing. We had quite a program over the Easter weekend and as far as we can judge it was enjoyed by everybody.

On Friday we went up to Gut Aiderbichl a local farm with a nice Easter Market. Hanna loved the animals, the ice-cream granny was feeding her and she fell in a love with Barney the Bear. Now Barney the Bear sits in our lounge!

On Saturday we went to Salzburg to walk around the old city. Needless to say it was crowded with tourists! We finished the afternoon with a beer on the brewery terrace where we had a great view over the roofs of Salzburg.

Sunday was a lazy Easter Sunday – just the way it should be. However we “tortured” our South African visitors with Austrian tradition and made them look for their Easter eggs in the garden – which had been well hidden by Edith!

Unfortunately Claire, Gavin, Michelle and George already left on Monday. Before they did, they invited us all to a really nice breakfast at a nearby Hotel. Thanks again!

The last view days we took it a bit easier. We went walking in Hellbrunn, had a look at and had a coffee in Red Bull’s Hangar 7, took Hanna to her most favourite swings in the park and did a bit of shopping.

We wanted to thank you all for making the effort to come and visit us on Easter and for all the wonderful presents we received! Hopefully you had a nice time and enjoyed your stay!

We are looking forward to seeing you all again – rather sooner than later!

Have a great day!
Richard, Hanna, Christine and Aisha

Growing up with two languages ...

... is what Hanna is experiencing right now.
... is a book written by Una Cunningham-Andersson and her husband Staffan Andersson, which I can recommend to anybody who is in a similar situation as we are. It was recommended to me by a Brasilian friend who lives here in Henndorf with her Austrian husband and her two children (3 1/2 years and 2 months). For us it is immensely important that Hanna will be able to understand and speak English very well. Firstly obvious because we want her to be able to communicate with her grandparents, aunts and uncles etc. who are English-speakers and secondly because we hope it will give her an advantage in our society where it is almost necessary to speak English fluently.
As you can probably guess from their names, the authors are a couple living in Sweden, he is Swedish and his wife from Ireland. They have collected many reports from parents who are trying to bring up their children with 2 or more languages. And it seems like there is no perfect solution. The solutions we came up with is that we are trying to give Hanna as much English input as possible and as there is mainly German input as we leave the house we only speak English to her when we are at home and of course no other non-English-speaker is around. We are not worried that she will not learn how to speak German, she will pick it up in kindergarden, school, from her grandparents and while playing with her friends. To learn English will be the challange but I don't think we have to be worried. Of course it might be the case that she will understand English perfectly however won't speak it until she is 4 or 5 years old, which is often reported with kids in a similar situation as Hanna.
Hanna proves to us every day that she already understands a lot - doesn't matter whether we talk English or German!
I wish you a great day!
Christine

Being Hanna’s parents

Time has flown, and with Hanna’s first birthday come and gone we slowly started to realize that we already have been parents for one year. Time went quicker than ever before and yet so many things happend and changed, that sometimes it seems that not only one but a couple of years have pasted.Hanna’a birthday was great. We had a little family celebration on the Saturday before her birthday. We had cake, Hanna opened her presents (with Richard’s help) and some dinner. After all that excitement Hanna was buggered and had a very good night’s sleep! On her actual birthday we organized a little birthday party and invited all her friends. Again she received many presents. We all had a great time – even though it was a bit hectic and loud with 4 kids between 8 and 15 months and 2 children at the age of 3 (sorry Claire!). Also Hanna received presents from her granny and granddad from South Africa, Michelle and Claire and many, many good wishes per email and sms! Thank you all so much – it was really nice of you all to think about Hanna’s birthday!

The family run

Well today we finally did it! Although we are in the middle of January, we are having daytime temperatures of around 10 - 12 degrees (as comparison, at this time last year we had -25 degrees), so I suggested to Christine that we go for a family run, and she was really for it!

So we got our kit out, got Hanna all kitted up, saddled up the pram and went of on our little loop round the back of the Golf course. When we hit the hills, I attached Aishas' lead to the pram and she helped me with the pulling work, which is not actually so easy - I had started to struggled by the time we hit the top of the hill.

Once we hit the flat again, we let Aisha run free and had a beautiful run back home. It was a great idea and was enjoyed by all of us, even Hanna who slept almost the entire way round. And just to cap it off, we were able to overtake a tractor pulling a trailer on the uphills!

Here you can see the route!

Here you can see the photos!

Me, my marmite roll and aija

Well hallo folks,

Can you believe it, my first Christmas has come and gone - wow! I got so many gifts from Mom and Dad and Omi and Opi - it was really great. Mom and Dad had to help me with the unwrapping of them, but by the time Dad's birthday came round I was getting really good at it and even helped him unwrap his present (which I helped mom choose).

So what has been happening? Well the days are just packed :) I normally get mom up at around 6 am for a little drink and then she always brings me to back to bed with her for a little cuddle, which I really love. I like to get up then about 8, when we take Aija for a walk. Afterwards is breakfast - this is a picture with me and my marmite roll - and then its walking and playing time. Sometimes a around mid morning I take a little nap (and sometimes not). Lunch at about 1, with lots of walking playing time in between :)

The afternoons are a lot of fun. Sometimes we take Aija for a walk, sometimes we visit with my friends (like Simon, who was 1 last week) or Omi and sometimes we just stay at home and play with Mom (Dad is always sitting at his computer).

We have a little bit to eat around half past 4 and then it's time for a little tele, more playing, Aija walk, chatting to the girls from next door. We hit the bath around half past 7 and then mom gives us some milk to drink and bed time seems to drift in at about 8pm. I'm getting very good now, I tend to sleep right through these days. Not bad for 10 months hey!

Oh yes, and not to forget - all I wanted for Christmas was my two front teeth and it seems that Father Christmas was very generous and I currently have 4 (four) coming out at the same time, which can be quite painful at times. Mom and Dad are so happy!

Other things that Mom and Dad get excited about are the fact that I am standing (and almost) walking on my own now! I get 3 or 4 steps before I fall over, but somebody always seems to catch me, but I still seem to hit my head a lot and have many small bruises all over. Additionally I am growing and growing - wow - in the last 2 months I have shot up by almost 10 cm and put on more than 1,5 kg! And I eat lots these days :)

And I'm starting to say things - I can call my sister with the big tongue (Aija) and although she never comes, Mom and Dad seem to know what I'm talking about. Mama and Dada are coming more regularly now, but I just haven't got to grips with that yet - I'm working on it. Anyway, I wanted to wish everybody a very nice New Year and good luck for 2007 (whatever that is) - I'll keep in touch.

Back to work again ...

Actually, Richard has been back to work since the 2nd of January again - however now it is also time for me to start again. Today was the last day of the 2 weeks school holidays. I had a great time and recovered well from all the Christmas stress.

Although we had quite a bit of free time we didn't do anything special in the last 2 weeks. The first week went past pretty fast. In our family most of the years' celebrations are done in this week: Austrian Christmas on the 24th, South African Christmans on the 25th, wedding anniversary on the 28th, Richard's Birthday on the 31st and of course new years' eve! I think that is almost too much celebration for 8 days! To recover from that Richard went back to work on the 2nd :-) and I took it easy - just playing and walking with Hanna. The highlight of the week from my point of view was today. Edith and I hiked up to the "Stoawandl", which is a hill just behind our village and the peak is about 1000 m. Afterwards we ran along the ridge past the "Grosse Plaike" to the "Heimkehrerkreuz". The run back to the car was mainly downhill and we were back after 75 minutes of good exercise which we both enjoyed extremely. The rest of the day was spent having a big lunch, watching biathlon, skiing, cross country skiing and ski jumping on TV and running around the house with Hanna :-).

Tomorrow I am back at school and I must say I am looking forward to the girls.
I wish you all a great week!
Christine

Best Photo 2006

Hi,

I've put up my favourite photo's for 2006 here! Please vote for your best one by adding a comment here (or in the album) - I'll publish the best voted (or commented photo) in 2 or 3 weeks! It's a hard choice but this was my fav:

Xmas 2006

Well Christmas has come and gone again - man time really does fly, just the other day I was saying to Dion how much fun it would be to go overseas, and now I've been here for 10 years. Hard to believe isn't it.

We celebrated family Christmas with Leo and Gitte and the rest of the Müller / Gathercole / Gattinger (called GaGaMo) on the 24th at 33 hausstattstr. A great time was had by all, there were huge amounts of presents - mainly for Hanna though - but even Christine and I walked away with some lovely gifts - thank you to all.

On the 25th we celebrated at home, just the 4 of us. We had some gifts under the tree and then we had Christmas lunch (Roast Beef) which was really good. After lunch we went for a long walk with Aisha and Hanna in pram and then Oma and Opa came round for a quick visit. In the evening Christine and I watched "Superman Returns" which was excellent.

And that was Christmas for the Euro Gathers. We hope you all had a fantastic Christmas with lots of eating and drinking and family. I have included the link to my NEW online web album here which I am using with Google. Enjoy.

Merry Christmas

So it has been quite a while since I posted, but now is a perfect oppertunity to do so. Not much to report really. Work is going well for both Christine and I, and I am slowly recovering from my really heavy bout of "the dreaded lurgy"! Only thing was poor Hanna had to be rushed to the hospital yesterday because she took her "first" fall, and we thought so was going to get her "first" stitches. Luckily the doc said it wasn't that bad and gave us a special plaster to cover the wound and help it heal quicker. She'll have a little scar, but hopefully that will disappear before long :)

So, just to finish,

We

wish you

a very Merry

Christmas and a

Happy New Year with

much Love from Aisha Hanna

Richard

Christine

X-Mas Preparation

Christmas will be here in only a couple of days and I am almost ready for it ... This hasn't happened very often in the last couple of years! Most of the presents have been bought and although there is no snow here in Salzburg I am slowly getting the christmas feeling - thank god for "Last Christmas" on the radio again and again and a light chain on our balcony! We will celebrate christmas on the 24th in the evening with my parents (including my sister, Oma, aunt, uncle and cousin), however we decided to have a 2nd christmas on the 25th - to celebrate also a bit in the "british way". The christmas tree still has to be bought though!

However not only the christmas preparations keept me very busy but also 2 written tests I had to prepare and correct in the last 2 weeks. The correction work took much longer than I expected but the outcome was quite satisfying. Last friday afternoon parents could come and talk to all the teachers. It certainly was a very interesting experience for me!

Friday this week we will have a christmas party for teachers at the school, and Saturday will be filled with the last minute christmas preparations. I am looking forward to the 2 weeks school holidays to come! It's a good life ...

Have a great day!
Christine

It's a dogs life

So I just had to share this video :) Man it is so funny I couldn't stop laughing! Enjoy!

Days fly past ...

... yes they really do at the moment. And that is why we only found time this weekend to fulfill dad's birthday present - his birthday was already one month ago ...
Our (Edith, Richard and mine) present for him was that we would go to Linz and see the exhebitions of the world's best photographs 2006. Linz is only about 1 hour drive east of Salzburg and we left on late morning on Saturday. The exhibition was good, we all enjoyed having a look at the pictures. Some were really amazing and some of course I didn't like at all, especially those that were obviously edited. After visiting the exhibition we went for a nice Austrian lunch and a coffee and cake in one of the best coffee-houses in Austria I know of. In the late afternoon we visited the Botanical garden - well, the glass house of the botanical garden, where they had lots of exotic butterflies flying free. It was beautiful and a great end to a really nice day!

I also want to post a few pictures today of Hanna and her friends. Since last June we are having a "Babyclub" here in Henndorf. 5 mums with kids between 6 months and 1 year and 3 older siblings (between 2 and 3 years) are meeting every 2 weeks at somebody elses place. Obviously that is always a very loud and messy ocasion however it's great fun - not only for the kids!
Also Hanna and I go to an organised Babyclub. Part of that Babyclub is a 1 year old girl called Julia. Julia was born without hands. She is an amazing girl. She crawls, picks up balls and books as well as chains just as well as any other Baby in that group. She is quite an inspiration concerning will and determination!

Have a great day!
Christine

Venice

Late last night we returned from a weekend in Venice. As usual we had a great time and also Hanna seemed to have enjoyed herself. We left Henndorf on Friday early afternoon and arrived in Mestre just in time to have a nice italian dinner. Mestre is an industrial town on the mainland just opposite Venice. After a late breakfast on Saturday we took the train to Venice. It took us about 10 minutes and as trains are leaving every couple of minutes it is very convinient. We spent the day in the old city, just walking around, having coffees and enjoying the relatively warm weather.

Yesterday was the orienteering event and just in time for the start the sun came out. Richard and I both had relatively early start times and still the narrow roads where very crouded in some places and we had to slow down quite a lot. Nevertheless I had a good run and even after studying the map again and again I think I made the correct route choices. I even managed to run quite fast in the beginning - well at least it felt fast - however it felt like I was slowing down the longer the race took. However that was also a result of the way the course was set - the beginning was technically easy and the last 2/3 were very tricky! Of course I was very pleased to learn that I actually won! My first win in Venice! The drive back was not as long as expected but meeting the snow north of the Alps was a bit of a shock after having drunk our coffee in the sun at 4 o'clock in the afternoon :-).

I hope you guys also had a great weekend!
Christine

The last o-event of this season?

... well not quite ... but the second last was run last weekend on the grounds of the sport university of salzburg. To be precise we ran the Salzburg Sprint championships. This event is normally run in 2 races: a first race and a second race which is started only 1 hour later and runners start in chasing start. This sort of sprint race is held since a couple of years now and it is great fun. Additionally there are only 4 categories: men and women up to 16 years and over 16 years. Therefore there are many starters in the "senior" category and also gives the old and young orienteerers an oportunity to compare with the elite. And often the elite runners have to make sure not to be behind the youngsters ....
Results and maps can be seen on the website of the Salzburg Orienteering federation (sorry only in German) - note also the Route Gadged.

However definitely the last o-event of the year for us will be the traditional street o-event in Venice / Italy on the 12th of November. We are hoping for great weather and are sure that we will enjoy the usual delicous italian food and coffee ... However it will be quite a challange to carry Hanna and her pram over all the bridges.

I hate computers

I'm writing this in an effort to stop me from taking my frustrations out on my bloody laptop. I mean it has really given good service over the years, and I honestly cannot complain when it starts to give grief, but man is it frustrating. For about 2 or 3 weeks now I have been having small problems with it, first with the hard drive, and since last week, the network.

To explain, we have 2 computers at home running a network that goes over the router to the internet. Since Christine has started work again, she has moved into Hanna's room for the moment to use as her office, and I have put my desktop there for her to use. However, she doesn't want cables lying all over the place, so I bought a new high speed wireless card for the desktop.

As I said, I have been having intermittent hard disk problems, mainly because I'm running out of disk space. For work I have been installing some new software, and downloading lots of files to read and go through, and it has slowly started to cause problems, so I thought I would do a major clean up before mucking about with the network. Man what a mission, and a huge mistake. This is one of the things I hate about windows - software is so easy to install, but so darned hard to get rid of it.

I had to get a special program to help me clean up the mess. So I de-installed a huge amount of programs, deleted loads of data and did a disk defrag - and what did this accomplish? Well I have about 9 GB free space, but the harddrive has been reduced in size by 10 GB and I will need to replace it soon - I have done a back up, and I hope it doesn't crash on me soon as I don't have the cash to buy a new HD just at the moment.

So got the HD more or less working, and installed the wireless card. Now before doing this, every thing in the network worked, be it over cable, but it worked. Once the card was installed on the DESKTOP computer, nothing more worked on either PC. I couldn't even get to the internet. At first I thought it was because my provider had banned me for being over the limit (and I am way over the limit this month) but then I discovered that the laptop kept dropping the wireless signal.

On the other side, I re-installed the wireless card on the desktop without problems, and it could connect to the web without problem. So the problem lay with the laptop. Back to the drawing boards. After major frustrations I got the same advice from a friend and a work colleague, de-install Norton Anti Virus. So back to de-installing. Nortons - gone! Still no work. Install new virus program. Now I was able to at least get to the internet and have a stable connection, but I couldn't get the computers to talk to each other.

So back to the drawing book. In the end I had to re-install all the IBM software, and this took forever, especially since all the software had to be downloaded first. Download a new version, install, reboot (this takes between 5 and 8 minutes each time on my laptop) and so on! And then it was finished, yesterday afternoon, every thing was working perfect, I could get internet, the computers were talking to each other, the network printer was working....ah bliss...

Until today that is! I should never have turned the darned things off! So Thursday dawns bright and early and we (eager to get to work) sit down at the PC's and start working. Screams Christine, "can I print?" Answers Richard, "of course :)" What I meant was.. of course NOT. So another morning spent trying to fix network problems. This time it was the Windows firewall and the browser function. Oh well, now it all works, and I'm almost smiling again.

What did I learn? Well, a huge amount about Networks, how they hang together and how to fix them. How much I enjoy working from home, but how difficult it can be when you have a computer problem and there is no specialist or technician to run to for help. How this can all go on your time. I have been living breathing and eating networks and PC problems since Monday morning. Additionally this has caused me to neglect work and so I guess I'll be working on the weekends again to catch up - ho hum!

I hope all are well and NOT having computer problems - sorry Mike for my mistake - sorry the rest for the boring post - keep well!

Teaching and Orienteering

Well, since a week I am back at work. Although I have been working for a while before Hanna was born, work now is something quite new for me, as I started to teach. As I have a half time position I am at school only twice a week - on Mondays and Wednesdays. I think it is great - preparation and correction work I can do at home and therefore can still spend a lot of time with Hanna. I teach accounting and business administration in form 1 and 2, which means 15 and 16 year olds. The one class has 35 pupils and teaching such a big croud of 15 year old teenagers is quite a challange but so far they have been great.

Last weekend we have been to Tirol to run the Austrian Relay Championships in Imst and an Austrian Ranking competiontion in Haiming. Both maps were great and both physically and technically very demanding. At the relay champs I ran in the 2nd womens team for Henndorf together with 2 juniors. I ran the first leg and handed over in 2nd position quite a while behind our first team. The 2 girls, Anna and Elisa, did a great job and we ended up in 3rd place. Congratulation to them on running so well in that demanding area.
On Sunday the Austrian Ranking event was run in Haiming another very technical area. I started in W21 short and rolled up the field from behind :-) as lots of the competitiors had big problems. I had a good run with only a few minor mistakes. With only 2 more ranking events to come at the beginning of October I lead the ranking with only 7 points ahead of my clubmate Julia. It will be an exciting finish - especially as one of the last events is a night event, which I really dont' like ...

I just had to post this

To All of you who believe Hanna doesn't do her own posting :)

Here you go, caught in the act!

Dad.

Aren't I cute ?

hugs and kisses to all,
Hanna.

Where does the time go...

Things have been moving along very quickly over the last 2 weeks. My "unofficial" job has been largely about reading and trying software out, which I am beginning to get to grips with. The job itself is quite interesting and I was in Germany last week to meet up with one or two colleagues and to get to grips with the new project we will be doing. It seems very ambious and I'm looking forward to it.

At the same time I was in Germany, Christine was finding out that she has got a new job. It all happened very quickly and I'll leave her to tell you about it :) Now the hard part starts - handling Hanna while Mom is working, although she only has 7 lessons a week, and on 3 days only - so all in all a great deal.

Hanna has been her normal self. Although Christine thinks she does a normal amount of screaming, I'm not so sure. She screams an awful lot, she starts immediately once left alone, or getting tired, so she really needs 24/7 looking after, which can get VERY stressful. Other than that she's a joy, seems to be growing every day, not only in size, but also in intelligence and cuteness.

So what else have we been up to? Well we decided that we would skip the OL this weekend as it was just too far to travel. I mean 4 to 5 hours driving on Sat and Sun for two races, without family OK, but with Hanna - FORGET it! However as it turned out we still ended up driving half way across Austria.

Our good friend Eva, who has just finished her 2nd degree, was celebrating her 30th birthday and we had decided to go to Wien (Vienna) earlier in the week. Added to this, during the last week, and thru LinkedIn, I have re-established contact with Björn Weindorfer, who now lives with his wife Sally and kids Ingrid and Eric in Mödling (close to Wien). Björn is an old school friend and Uni buddy who I haven't seen probably since those times. We were able to arrange a time for us to meet up again and we were really looking forward to it.

So I arrived back in Salzburg at lunch on Friday from Germany, however we were not able to leave immediately as Christine had to go to the teachers conference at 16h00. We ended up leaving at 18h00 and although I tried to push the pace, my navigational skills left me completely in Wien and we droaroundund for almost 60 minutes before we found the party location. It was great to see Alex and Eva and all our Wien friends again, and the party was great. We managed to get into bed at around 1 o'clock.

We were awake quite late on Saturday and after saying good bye to Alex and Eva, found out that my OL skills were still in Salzburg as we drove around trying to get out of Wien. AND THEN we got lost on the way to Björn as well, so we ended up being really late :( It was great to meet up with him again and meet his family. We had a fantastic brunch up in the hills around Mödling and spent quite a few hours just catching up - we look forward to their visit, hopefully later this year.

We then headed back to Henndorf and had a quite evening at home. Today I was out at the Wallerseelauf to support the boys and Veronika (see report sportblog) and afterwards we had a great braai with Gitte and Arthur. The weather was fantastic!!

And so that my family and friends, is my news,
Richard.