Halflings homes....

I have edited this one and tried to clean it up since it would not load the other night.  The pictures may not be in very good order and there is not much good information here.  Sorry.  I will post some more and see if I can get it to work better.  I think it was the site since I kept getting error messages.


We found some neat looking habbit holes if you will.  They have 40 homes on the movie set.  When they filmed the first Lord of the Rings they used materials that were not durable.  Plywood and plastics to make it.  After the movie theybegan to dismantled it with the plan to everything away with them. They were just a week into it when the they had several days of terrible weather. When they came back to continue the Alexanders who owned the sheep station said that they had had many requests from people to see what was left.  So they left it as it was but it did not fair very well.  So when they decided that they were going to do the Hobbit here they made plans to rebuild all the houses with materials that would last with the plan to make it into something permament like it is now.

This is how we started the tour.

This is a sheep station after all so it seems logical that there would be a great deal of sheep around.  I thought it was funny to see so many app huddled around the tree under the shade.

This is the first house that we saw.  What a funny little place it is.  There were carvings around the door and windows.  Of course there is only one house that is finished at all on the inside so we were only invited into one of them.

This house has the only thatched roof and they had to bring in someone from England to do the work since now one knew how to do it that lives here.  Not part of their normal construction worker skills.

This is Sam's house below.

This is Bilbo's house below.  It is the only one that has anything inside the front door since it is the only one you see any of them going into.  It is only finished in about 4 feet. 

I can get these to only attach one or two pictures at a time...sorry.  I will keep trying.

Hobbiton

I tried to post about this last night but I could not get anything to attach so I deleted it all and will try again.  These next posts are not ones you want to have without pictures!  Trust me!

We had a nice drive down through low hills and pretty green valleys.  Sheep and cattle and horses spotted the fields.  If it had not been for the road construction that stopped us off and on it would have been an uneventfully drive.

There were so many people there it was hard to get pictures without others in it.  But we were not in the position to take our own pics...we boarded buses and this is what we saw as we drove into the movie set.  They had everything behind hills so that you could not see anything that was happening with the film from the roads.  So, this is what we saw and we knew we were headed to a pretty neat thing!

Have you heard the sound....

For 14 years now the church forms a choir in September that practices all of October and November to put on a combined performance with the Auckland Symphonic Orchestra.  Well it was tonight.  We were not going to go but then we were asked to go in place of Elder and Sister Pearson so we were happy to go.  We were told to be there early, and hour early as we would be seated first.  Well, we were going ok until we crept across the bridge with all the other thousands of cars that were headed that way.  They we got lost.  I know it is not much of an excuse but it really is the truth.  We finally got there and they took us up and told us, good luck, take any seat you can find.  Then he said:  A VIP come early!  Well, guess that means we are not very important people!  

It was a funny evening.  The orchestra had some really good numbers and some not so good.  We have not figured out yet if they are a full-time group or not.  I know that the conductor is part-time as he is director of music at a private school.  But they did some nice things.  They did several arrangements by Leroy Anderson.  Those were fun.  Then they would put up the words and everyone would sing with them.  Then His Worship the Major, Mr. Len Brown joined the orchestra on stage.  He talked about what a wonderful season Christmas is and how grateful he was for the support etc.  Then he said that we needed to join our faith and prayers for those affected by the tornado yesterday and especially for those who lost fathers.  Then the orchestra played, the audiance joined and the major used a microphone and sang: O Come All Ye Faithful.  No, he was not a vocalist but he was ok.  It was a nice  thing to do I thought.  

They sang some other songs and the choir sang and it was weird.  The numbers performed:  Once in Royal David's City, We Three Kings, It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Snoopy's Christmas, Angels Carol, Away in a Manger, Ding Dong Merrily on High, Have yourself A Merry and then the choir sang two songs that i had never heard of.  When the conductor came back out he was dressed in a Christmas red tuxedo.  He looked so funny.  And all the orchestra members had hats or something on.  The bass players had hats and beards.  

The best part was the last number.  Reverand Ron Lau'ese sang O Holy Night with the orchestra, the organ and the choir.  It was so good. He had a lovely voice and really shook the place.  Then they did an extra number.  The conductor said:  This song is never appropriate for here but it is a lovely piece:  White Christmas.  

Most of the other seniors had taken the ferry over and then walked.  We just drove and were home in not time at all.  As I was putting our soup and toast on the table the fire alarm rang in the building and we all had to evacuate and so after I reheated dinner and we finally ate about 10:45 p.m.  What an exciting Friday night!

The Nativities of Christmas

They are going all out at the office this season.  Maybe they do it each year but this is our first experience.  We have had a food drive and we have packed hygeine kits and cleaned up trash in Takapuna.  We have a secret santa where all the gifts were due today and they will be given out at the Christmas luncheon on Tuesday which will be after the Christmas devotional on Tuesday morning.  The other thing they did was have a nativity contest for each floor.  We were to either form a committee or just appoint someone to be in charge.  And each floor has a different number of people working on it so they can draw from much more talent.  Our floor has a third of it which is the Area Presidency Office who do not participate of course.  Our floor only has 17 people on it and 12 of them are senior missionaries.  That is just a kind of disclaimer as to why ours maybe is not very good.

So, I am going to post them and tell you about them.

This is the nativity that is in the Area President's Office. It was not part of the contest at the office but is just for those that visit that office to enjoy it.  There are only a few that actually have a swipe card to get in without ringing the bell.

This is the sweet one that we have on our floor.  It is simple and it is lovely.  I love looking at this one.

This is made from cardboard and pieces of fabric. The welfare department made it and they only have seven people in their department and on their floor.  The rest of the floor is the reception area, the lunch room and the big conference room that holds the entire staff.  

This is really lovely.  The characters were drawn by Lincoln who lives in our ward.  They are so well painted that it almost looks like fabric.  There are five windows that open and they represent dates.  You open the corresponding window for the date and there is something to do.  Each time you do know the right answer then you tell someone on the floor and they give you a lolly.  It is really nice to just look at it.

This next one is my favorite and it is the winner of the contest.  

This one is a pop-up card.  The card sat on the table for four days before the contest started.  It was closed.  

And this was the inside.  It is a so cool.  You can see the blue ribbon in the left hand corner.  I just love this one!  

And this carved one is hanging in our office.  I really love it.  It is about the size of a small melon.  We got it at the woodcarver's that I posted about awhile ago.  We have one that is smaller and different in our flat!

I think this is the closest I am going to get to enjoying looking at my own collection.  Hope you enjoy as well!

The Kiss of Youth!

There are many waterfalls that are constant in Milford Sound but some only appear when it rains and then the mountain side is a wash with them!  These next two photos were part of the package we received.

The reason it is so awesome is that Milford gets 270 inches of rain a year and that it rains on 70% of the days.  We were there on one of those 30% days when it was relatively warm and certainly dry.  Everyone said it was a tender mercy to those hard-working mission presidents but especially to their wives!

This waterfall is always here.  The skippers bring the ships right up and as close to under this water fall as they can get.  The spray is soft as it falls upon you.

This last photo is one of mine.  Our skipper explained that just a kiss of the water on the face of a woman would remove ten years from her appearance.  The women began to move forward immediately.  Then he said that just one drop of the water on an old man's bald head would cause that lost hair to be restored.  There was a great deal of jockeying around as the men surged forward with hopes of a full head of thick bushy hair again!  I am sorry to say that although the women were lovely and radiant there did not seem to be any miracles for them and all the men were still combing their hair with great care attempting to cover those strategic areas most sensative to the sun!

Milford Sound

I hate to admit it but Monday I finally got around to really straightening up things in our flat.  When we got back from Queenstown we immediately left for Cebu and so that which I brought back was kind of put in a corner.  We don't have near the number of corners that we have in Provo so it was rather important that I take task in hand and put those things away.  I was surprised when I saw some of the things that I had.  Each tourist place we went they would take our picture and then try to sell it back to us.  We were suckers and bought them.  In the packet with the picture we bought at Milford Sound was a CD of lovely pictures that were intended to be downloaded and printed etc so over the next while I will be including some of those photos.  The ones in this post I took.

It was explained to us that Milford Sound should really be called Milford Fiord.  A sound was created by an ancient river that cut through the land to the ocean and created a V-shaped valley.  A fiord was created by moving ice--glacier--during the ice age that cut a U-shaped valley to the sea.  Therefore, in reality Milford is a fiord but I guess someone long ago misnamed it or they just liked the way sound rolled off of the tongue. It is a water-outlet to the  Tasman Sea which is between New Zealand and Australia.  There is a small island off of the coast of Australia  called Tasmania and that is where the tasmanian devil comes from!

When we finally got to the sound we had been on and off the bus for about 5 hours.  It has been a very pleasant and exciting ride but it was nice to get up and walk about and be in the fresh air.  We boarded a small cruise ship, probably could hold 150 people in all, and set out.

This last photo is coming back into the dock.  In the distance you can see kayaks.  I guess that is another way to see it.

It was such a neat day.  I did not even mind being on a boat! It was warm and the water was calm and we were with great friends!  What more could you ask for?

For the beauty of the earth!

They were talking on the local news last night that there is evey kind of topography here in New Zealand and often times the differences are only a few minutes up the road.  They were talking about why this was such a great place to film the Lord of the Rings and the soon-to-be released the Hobbit.  It is truly Hobbit fever here.  Too bad I am not all that thrilled with the story but we will go to the movie when Nate is visitng here.  It is hard not to.  Anyway, I thought I would just share a few things about the vegetation that you see along the side of the road.  

This pretty yellow flower was growing close to the road.  It reminded me of forsythia that blooms in the early spring in the US.  I really enjoyed looking at it.  

Then the drive/tour guide told us that in the 1850 someone brought them into New Zealand from England so they could use it as a natural fence between properties.  It was great because it was so tight that the sheep were not able to leave the station where they belonged. But the one thing they did not count of was the way it would spread and just take over the land.

When a rancher decides that he is going to clear his property and plant it then he has to burn those pretty yellow flowers and plant otherwise they will just take over the fields and they will not be successful.  It does look nice!

This reddish grass is known by many names. It is chionochloa and is kind of like a taller monkey grass or a small pampas grass.  The locals call it snow grass or snow tussock.  It was all over the land as we got closer to the foothills of the Southern Alps.  It was very pretty and was just like an undulating ocean in the breeze.

By Mirror Lake we saw this big knob on a tree.  I am sure someone knows what these things are called but I don't.  I just thought they looked neat.