Ethne's New Calling in Life

So after day five I think it is time for a short little post about Ethne's new calling in life. She found it on our trip.
Some of you will remember that from the time she was able to wave Ethne had mastered the Miss America wave or the traditional Rodeo Queen wave elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist. She is really quite talented, and this trip gave her lots of opportunities to use it. Everywhere we went and I do mean EVERYWHERE-Ethne was the apple of every Asians eye and the star of every show. Camilla says she was the "white elephant" in India.

Ethne go so used to being looked at, petted, touched and photographed that she just came to expect it and to love it. She would pose for all the pictures, shake hands, say hello and blow kisses. It made all of us laugh so hard to see her.

There were buses unloading every where we went full of tourist from all over Asia. As soon as they would pull up and unload we would all look at each other and start laughing anticipating what was to come. Ethne would pull out her Miss America wave and lay on the charm. She had become a pro. She knew just what they wanted and she would lay it on thick. They would ask her her name and how old she was. They would touch her blond hair and blow kisses back.

It has now gotten so bad that she walks up to them first. She will go up to every Asian that we meet and pat them on the knee if they are sitting and wave and say hello. The other day I had to quickly remove her while she was anticipating a photo shoot. It is almost embarrassing now.

What to do with my little model?? I will let you know when I figure it out.

Trip Day 5 Rotorua-"Te Puia"

overview: This day we go up and went tot he information center to get discount tickets to Te Puia-a fun place in Rotorua with geysers and cultural performances etc... Garrett ran in to get them and we waited for him in the car. When he got back he and I were turned around in the front seat discussing things with Camilla and the kids and there was a huge crash that scared us all really badly. When we turned around we expected the whole windshield to be smashed in but it wasn't. It took us several minutes to figure out what had happened. It was so odd that the whole windshield was covered in broken glass but the actual windshield appeared intact.

What we discovered was that the sign we were parked under was a really large section of broken glass with very little of the sign still intact. The largest part of what was left just decided to fall while we were parked there. It hit the top of our car first and then all the glass slid down to the windshield. It was a MESS!!! I was in sandals and got glass all in them and cuts on my feet when another chunk fell down while we were assessing the situation. We had to move the car. We couldn't run the windshield wipers and because of all the glass and it was pouring rain and we couldn't move the car until we could clean enough off so we could see. Long story short we got it cleaned off and went to a car wash (in the rain) and we both had cuts and glass all over. We also had to hunt down the phone # of the owner and take pictures of the whole thing for insurance purposes. It delayed the start of our day by probably 2 hours. SAD :( The funny part was that at the petrol station where we cleaned up the car we got a good laugh about what the attendant must be thinking. (This crazy guy is vacuuming the rain off his car and then giving it a car wash while it is raining. Who does that?) There are little scratches and tiny nicks in the car now from all the glass. This made us really sad.

Here are the Maori dancers at Te Puia. They were really great but we were really disappointed that the show was so short. It was supposed to be 1 hour when we bought tickets. Then 45 min. when we got there and as it turned out it was only 30 min or less. But it was fantastic.

Here they are singing and tossing sticks back and forth. This takes a lot of practice I would imagine. It got quite complected. The sticks are also musical instruments as well.

This Maori show was BY FAR Ethne's favorite part of the vacation. She sang and she danced through the whole thing and she loved it. She wanted to make sure everyone was dancing with her. Since we sat on the front row all the performers could see her and they would smile every time they looked at her. She was almost as big a part of the show (to the Asian tourists) as the performers themselves. They took as many pictures of her as they did the show probably.

This was the love song. A little slower paced and told the story of an ancient Maori legend.

This was the first part that started to scare Ethne. The men did the war haka or peruperu. The traditional Maori war dance. These guys are quite intimidating, but as soon as Garrett told her it was just a dance she was fine and she danced right along with them. That was really comical. We all laughed.

Check out this guys right thigh-this is a traditional type of tattooing for the Maori people. The guys traditionally do both thighs all the way from the groin to the knee. I have also seen women with this tattooing as well but it isn't as common in the women. There is a section in the Te Papa museum on this kind of tattooing and an area where little kids can draw their own patterns on either a male or female figure on the white board. Not something I want to encourage in my kids.

This guy was the most scary looking

This dance is so fun. See the balls on strings that the woman has? Those are called poi. They were traditionally used by men to keep the arms and wrists supple and strong and to quicken the reflexes for fighting. Now they are used by the women as a form of entertainment in dancing. It was really fun to watch and made me want to try it out :) Check out this website for a video and more info on the poi. Ethne loved these and would love to learn too I think.
http://www.homeofpoi.com/articles/History_of_Poi_NewZealand.php

So this is us outside at Te Puia in the pouring rain with no real coat on Ethne and no hat or hood on Garrett or Camilla. We were soaked and cold-especially Ethne and the boys (even though the boys had great coats and hoods they still whined and complained a lot).

This was looking at the big geyser.

I accidentally deleted some of the great pictures that were here so they will come in a miscellaneous post later. It was truly beautiful up here.

At least Ezra is giving a thumbs up here

Camilla and Enoch in front of a great view

Beautiful hot pools with colorful minerals

Day Four of Our Trip Rotorua-Agradome

Overview:
This was by far our favorite activity in Rotorua. We did the farm tour and the sheep show and we had a blast. We looked around the gift shops and then went on the farm tour. Then we had lunch and went to see the sheep show. After that we headed to Kuirau Park and looked around and soaked our feet until it was time to head home for dinner and bed for the kids.


This was a pekeko we saw on the way there. My kids think I am obsessed with these birds since I always take their picture when we see them :) Maybe I am obsessed. I think they are such funny little birds except they aren't so little-they are pretty big. They are also knows as the swamp hen.

These pictures are from the sheep show. He sheared a sheep and taught us about sheering and some of the history of it. The population of sheep is much much larger than the population of people but not as big as it once was. There are now only 10 sheep per person in NZ where there used to be 22 sheep per person in 1982.

You have to be careful around the head and ears- This sheep is the Romney sheep. It is the most common sheep in NZ and it's wool is primarily used for carpets and rugs, because it is too itchy for clothing and it is very durable. I had all kinds of statistics to share with you about the sheep but I lost my paper and only remember some of them :( I think that about 58% of the sheep population in NZ are Romney's but don't quote me on that.

It looks uncomfortable for the sheep but really they need it done so it's all OK. He said that the sheep have a reflex button in their arm/leg pits kind of like when we hit our knee and it pops our leg out. They use this to pop out the sheep's legs to get in the hard spaces there for sheering.

He said that a typical sheerer will do up to 400 sheep in a day. Wow that sounds quite hard and tyring to me. I can't imagine what it does to your back. We saw pictures of the famous record holders for sheep sheering and got to read about them. It was really interesting.

At this stage of the performance they asked for volunteers for milking a cow and although the boys wanted to go up there were really scared and didn't go. But the were disappointed they didn't go so the next time he asked for volunteers both their hands went up and they were both picked. Here they are walking up on stage for who knew what??

they found out it was going to be a competition and that the winner would get a prize. I could see Enoch getting his hopes up and I was worried he might be disappointed if he didn't win. They were told to take a bottle of milk and hold it out and then drink it when he said go.

It turned out that was a joke and they had to feed their lamb the whole bottle and whoever finished first won.

They were really cute up their feeding the lambs. I think they really enjoyed it. They were smiling very big and were quite happy.

Those lambs sure seemed hungry :)

That little girl on the far left won the competition, and everyone else was dismissed from the stage. I could see Enoch's expression change and he came down trying really hard to be brave but with a quivering lip. He was SO disappointed that he didn't win. I knew he was going to need a lot of praise and love when he got back to his seat so Garrett and I both told the boys how wonderful they were and made a REALLY big deal out of it. He felt proud and happy-especially when he found out the prize was only a handful of sheep wool from the Romney that was sheered :)

Here are all of the 19 champion sheep breeds on stage: can you see the sheep dog that is running on the backs of the sheep? The show was entertaining and informative. We really enjoyed learning about the sheep. We got to see the star of the show up in the middle on the top row-the Merino-their wool is worth so much more than the Romney sheep in terms of $$. It is soft and wonderful and used to make expensive and warm clothing. I have heard it is hard to survive a winter in Wellington without merino under-clothing. We are going to buy some so we don't freeze.

After the show we got to go on stage and see all the sheep up close. Ethne and Enoch were a little afraid of being that close the the Dorset's horns, so it was hard to get a good picture.

Here the boys are with Mr. Ezra the comedian riding the big sheep dog out front.

Enoch and Ethne riding the kiwi

This was the farm tour. We got to feed the ostriches, the sheep, the alpacas and others. And we got a tour of the farm-kiwi vines, fijoa trees, olive trees and animals. We tasted the kiwi juice and Manuka honey.

Ethne wanted to but she was afraid at the same time. I had to help the kids keep their hands flat at first and get them warmed up but they did great and enjoyed all the animals.

Riding the trailer around the farm.

Kiwi vines. Did you know that the male kiwi vines don't produce fruit? They plant one male between every 3 females to pollinate.

While the kiwi's weren't yet ripe the fijoas were almost done. We were able to fill our pockets with as many as we could hold from off the ground. This is the pile of peal from all the ones we ate just at lunch. Most of these were eaten by Garrett and Enoch the two HUGE fijoa fans in the family. They were in heaven the next three days eating on them.

Picking fijoa's

Camilla feeding the alpacas-

I thought this was a cute picture of the emu. It wasn't really wild about us touching it's feathers but I did anyway and they weren't as soft as I thought they would be.

These guys were pretty funny-Camilla said they always remind her of Craig (brother-in-law). Could it be their looks??

These cows are only 3 years old and the largest cows I have EVER seen in ALL my life. That is really saying something since I grew up in Texas, and I have seen my share of cows. They are beef cows and they were twice the size of the Scotland-highland cows that were 5 years old. Easy to see why these are used for beef. We weren't aloud off the trailer with these guys around and no problems there :)

Wild turkeys hanging with the sheep

After we were done at the Agradome we went back into town and found a beautiful park. It was a free area with natural hot spots. There were fenced off mud pools and sulfur pools, a playground, a pond, trees, flowers and gorgeous vegetation and to top it all off there were foot pools in several parts of the park.

It was SO beautiful- you just can't tell from the pictures.

Here was our chosen foot pool. It was clean and hot. We took off our shoes and socks and rolled up our pants and soaked our feet for a long time. It was the perfect thing to do at this point in our vacation because we had been walking and walking and walking and it felt so good to soak our feet in all these wonderful minerals and hot water :)

These random people were so cute I just couldn't help including their pictures :)

Here is Camilla-isn't she beautiful? I think she is. Check out those dimples-truly amazing :)