Latest news with #Taya
NZ Herald
11-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- NZ Herald
It was just a stopover – 18 months later, they call it home
This is part of a series of sponsored stories by ZB's Kerre Woodham in which she examines life in Metlifecare villages through the eyes of residents – how they came to be there, what shaped their choice of village and their life in residence. Today:Kerre meets John and Taya, a fit and adventurous couple whose year-and-a-half tour of the North Island ended with a fresh start – and a balcony view – they never saw coming. Should the quiz show Mastermind ever come back on to our screens, John and Taya Schoutens' speciality topic would be retirement villages. Their 18-month quest to find the perfect village has taken them all over the North Island but they couldn't be happier to call Metlifecare Somervale home. John and Taya loved living in Matarangi but circumstances meant the beautiful seaside village wasn't going to be their forever home. As John explains it, 'We had some events in the Coromandel with roading and weather and so on and you start thinking, especially when you are getting older and it's a three-hour drive from the hospital, we need to sort something out. I said to Taya when I'm 75 I'd like to be organised, so we started travelling round in our motorhome looking at different retirement villages and different options.' John and Taya had a checklist of what they wanted. Their ideal village needed to be somewhere warm and sunny. They wanted care facilities established, not the promise of a hospital one day and there needed to be loads of facilities and things to do for this fit and active couple – a gym, a pool, proximity to golf courses and the like. Over 18 months, they travelled from Hawkes Bay to Kerikeri and all points in between, visiting a range of villages and staying in each town and city for a few days at a time to get the feel of a place. None were quite right until some friends who were camping at the Mount suggested John and Taya travel over and stay alongside them and check out the Bay of Plenty. John and Taya fell in love with the area. Now they had to find a village that suited them. Again, they did their homework. They considered Metlifecare The Avenues and they liked the village but it was situated in the bustling metropolis of Tauranga, not the Mount. They visited Metlifecare Bayswater and stayed a couple of nights in the guest suite at the village but it was a bit too big for them. And then they came to Somervale. It's fair to say it wasn't love at first sight. 'We drove past it in the motorhome the day before,' John says, 'and I said to Taya, I'm not going in there! It's old! But we'd made an appointment so I said, we'll have to go and have a look. And then we saw this building and it's all new and we think about how's it's going to be in the future. It will be so nice to grow with the village.' Somervale is undergoing a massive transformation with new living options and facilities being constructed. Far from being a disincentive, John and Taya are enjoying being a part of the village's rejuvenation. 'I think it's really exciting,' John enthuses. 'There are new apartments ready now, new buildings going up, there are new people coming in the door all the time. It's really vibrant.' Taya said she knew she'd found the right village the moment she walked in. 'I thought, oooh. This is a resort. This is lovely. I think that's really important. If you go somewhere and it will be your future, it really needs to feel right.' Initially, John and Taya were looking at villa options at the villages they visited but when they visited Somervale they embraced the idea of apartment living. They love the expansive views from the balcony of their apartment, they love having the option of privacy but knowing their neighbours are close by, they love the streamlined ease of apartment living. While some people hesitate at the idea of apartment living, it can be quieter, more private and more spacious than they expect. Purpose-built for retirees, the apartments at Somervale offer natural light, different outlooks and clever layouts that balance independence with connection. For John and Taya, it's meant less upkeep, more freedom, and a home that feels like a haven. 'We had a big house and a big garden in Matarangi,' says Taya. 'It was a lot of work – a LOT of work!' John chimes in. 'You're looking at an easier life when you get older. Like now, instead of doing the garden, you can go and have a swim in the pool or you can play a game of snooker or go for a bike ride or a walk on the beach.' John and Taya were concerned about leaving the friends they'd made in Matarangi but they have a cunning plan – luring their friends to Somervale to come and live in the village with them. 'We have a couple who came here – they only looked at this place – and they signed up straight away. They said we don't need to do any looking around and research. John and Taya have done it all!' John laughs. John and Taya don't look old enough to be eligible for retirement living. The two of them are fit, fun and proactive – wanting to make the most of their time together in their beautiful new home and looking forward to being part of an exciting new development. 'Straight away we had a good feeling about this village' says John. Because we'd done so much research, we knew we'd found the right place. With retirement villages, you can't just say it's for old people. It can also be a lifechanging opportunity. You can have a really good life here. You just don't want to leave it too late.'
West Australian
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Inuit throat singing in Arctic Bay (real-life North Of North)
Inuit women Lois Suluk and Taya Tootoo face one another and start to throat sing. Lois leads, Taya must follow. 'We use the voice for a game — if the other one stops, they lose,' Lois says. 'There's always a leader and a follower, and the leader tries to trip the other by taking her from song to song to song. The follower has to imitate her exactly. The follower has to listen carefully and imitate.' In a more serious competition between two women, the leader will change the songs many, many times, waiting for the follower to trip up and lose. The voyage I am on through the Northwest Passage, through Arctic Canada and Greenland, is laced with stories and themes of Inuit culture. For, unlike polar voyages in Antarctica, at the other end of the planet, the Arctic polar regions have long been inhabited by Indigenous people, living in remote communities, in an extreme climate, living off the land. Throat singing imitates the sounds of nature and animals, says Lois who, like Taya, was born and raised in the remote north of Nunavut. 'Throat singing for me is part of identity — I am an Inuit woman. Each song has its own energy,' Lois says. 'Throat singing is dying out. The art is slowly disappearing. There's an urgent need to get this recorded.' It is mostly a woman's skill. 'Because the back and neck vibrate when you throat sing, it is also used to lull a baby to sleep' — for they are carried on women's backs, under a great hood. Girls might start learning at the age of four or six, says Lois. 'If there is a passion for throat singing, it does not take long to learn. It took me six months to learn all the songs but a year to get the voicing,' she says. Throat singing has been passed on orally for generations and never written down. 'Everything is by hand sign,' Lois says. 'It is impossible to write it down — it is an oral tradition. 'You can't change the song — I would like to think they have been like this for thousands of years. There is one particular song that the ladies sing — they whisper it, and it is about a dog chewing on a lemming.' Lois then sings her favourite, The Wind Song. Songs tend to be short (perhaps just a minute or so), and then they loop them, repeating them, trying to outlast their throat singing partner. 'It almost always turns into a competition. Sometimes one will laugh or get out of breath. The longest competition I have ever seen is three or four minutes,' Lois says. Lois started throat singing in 2005, and it has since taken her to other places. She was a cultural performer at the winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010, and sang to Queen Elizabeth II to celebrate her diamond jubilee in 2012. 'It is done by a tone with a throat sound attached to it,' she says. 'The throat sound has to come from the diaphragm.' For example, in many songs, an 'h' sound, brought down low to the diaphragm — 'imagine you are trying to cough up something'. The singer breathes in short snatches of breath between notes. In other songs, there is the combination of a high 'e' sound and a low 'h' sound, with the breath intakes. 'Throat singing varies between regions and the most common now is from the Baffin region,' Lois says. This is precisely where we are now — off Baffin Island in Arctic Canada. Arctic Bay is a place of Ski-Doos and quad bikes, big GMC and Ford pick-ups, a toddler being pulled in a milk crate on a homemade sled, and bicycles, tricycles and outboard motors abandoned in the snow. In the Northern Store, flour is $US45 ($60) a bag, and a packet of biscuits is $US12. About 800 people live in this mostly Inuit community which is iced in, isolated and sunless through winter. Inuit people have been here for more than 5000 years and call it Ikpiarjuk — 'in the pocket', which aptly describes the hamlet clinging to the bay and the lowest slopes of the surrounding steep hills. The whaling ship Arctic came through in 1872, and the English name stuck, as did that of King George V Mountain, which dominates the skyline. It is a walrus hunting hamlet, and in the store a woman is also selling a spiralling narwhal tusk more than 2m long. I see a group of children stone a bird, and others stand around watching two dogs fight. A grey timber church stands under a monochrome sky. A school is bejewelled with icicles as long as my arm. And then a young guy stops me in the street. 'Do you want to buy my music?' he asks. He has it recorded on CDs to sell, but I can listen to some of it on his iPod first. It's sort of hip-hop — rhythmic beats and loops. Each song has its own energy.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Piedmont Triad student raising money for families in need in India
ASHEBORO, N.C. (WGHP) — Eshika Taya doesn't take getting an education for granted. Although the Asheboro High School junior has been raised in America, she also considers North India home and visits there often. 'Seeing a lot of impoverished kids and families in my community, especially where I live, it's kind of hard to see,' she said. Taya wasn't satisfied with just being aware of the problem, she wanted to do something about it and thought her school clubs, DECA, and the mental health club she founded, would be good places to start. 'I decided that I could work together with both organizations, DECA and mental health, and create something that I could raise funds for a charity,' Taya said. Taya decided to sell treats. She did the baking, and two classmates helped with the packaging. 'The two desserts that we chose were India's most popular,' she said. 'One of them is the national dessert, so Jalebi, which kind of resembles funnel cake and the other one is called Gulab Jamun, which is donuts covered in rose syrup, and we decided to sell both of them and raise all of the funds and hopefully donate it to the organization.' Taya wanted the funds to go to the Akshaya Patra Foundation. 'Their main goal is to cook hot meals and package them around their area, so where they're headquartered is also near where I live,' she said. After going to houses and organizations in the Asheboro community to sell the desserts, around $1,020 was raised. Taya appreciates that fundraising was not the only valuable aspect that came out of the experience. 'While we were going door-to-door, friend-to-friend, we were also able to talk on the issue while selling it,' she said. 'We had a lot of fliers around downtown, the school, but through social media, a lot of our friends wanted to support that cause, and they felt very heartfelt doing it, so just buying the desserts, also having a good snack to feed on, they just felt very proud of their classmate.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Top of the Morning, March 12, 2025
Mar. 12—On Wednesdays, we'll introduce the students who make up Year 9 of High School Confidential, powered by Danville Area Community College. Today: Iroquois West's Traeh Kissack. Traeh is following the journalistic lead of her "lifelong role models," siblings Taya and Tristen. Taya was our High School Confidential reporter for Cissna Park in 2018-19, and Tristen studied journalism at the University of Illinois. "My brother and sister are my two best friends," Traeh said. A junior from tiny Crescent CIty — part of a five-student eighth-grade graduation class — Traeh has time before making a college decision. In addition to her role with us, she's involved in cheerleader, FCCLA, student council, Math Team, Scholastic Bowl and Rifle Club. "I would say I'm a pretty good shot," she said. Rifle Club has been around 53 years at Iroquois West, open to all students. "We shoot air rifles from 10 meters away in three different positions: kneeling, prone and standing," said Traeh, who finished second at this year's Raider Classic. She's a straight-shooter when it comes to High School Confidential, too. "My favorite part is the fact that I've gotten to highlight and give recognition to organizations that can often be overlooked or simply not known about," she said. "Being involved has been my favorite part of high school thus far, so being able to give back in this way has truly been so gratifying."
