Take the scissors to the head...

"Staring at a computer screen can be hazardous to your hair. I did it all day, got really antsy, then decided to give myself a haircut. This might end very very badly. On the bright side, I can always resort to a buzz if this becomes a failure of epic proportions."

--The Facebook Status Update

Excuses excuses.

Days 26-28, in journal pages

Click for mildly larger images...

A house in the Lake Tekapo neighborhood was selling massive pinecones as big as my head (or so it seemed). They were quite hefty and almost as prickly as a durian. Ouch. A hardcore kayaker we met in Tailor-made-Tekapo Backpackers bought one for his mate who laughed at him and refused to take it. So they made the above impromptu sculpture and were contemplating lighting the dang candle. Crazy kayakers.

A seismograph of sorts. Lake Tekapo en route to Christchurch. These were attempts at straight lines. Buses are bumpy.

Went to the Christchurch Art Gallery. Terrible gallery tour left me drained so I refueled with a mocha (which they pronounce more as mok-ka than mow-ka). This old man was sitting there, mildly glum and entirely uninteractive with the woman across from him.

A rubbing of a plaque on a bench in the rose gardens. "This place you came to reflects the beauty of your soul." It makes my heart happy!

I sat in the Botanic Gardens today, basking in glorious sunlight and laughing at the ducks splashing in the large puddle lakes left over from the morning's downpour. They move far too much to be captured in more than gesture.


Nuf said.

Hobbiton!, In pictures

Cousin Ben was our driver from Rotorua to Matamata/Hobbiton. He was an extra in LotR as an orc! And he made it into the LotR location guidebook too. He's on the left and his brother is on the right.

He told us that they were paid crap wages at first. $40 a day, no breaks. Then someone had the bright idea to call up the local union. They all signed up (or however that works) and lo and behold their pay jumped to a decent $140 (or something) per day with breaks. It was interesting to hear how unglorified the job was, especially when Scott and I would gladly jump at the chance to be extras in the Hobbit for no pay at all.

Hobbiton! In the toilet. HAH.

Hobbiton is located in the middle of a large sheep farm.

I'm a huge fan of SHEEPIES!


At the beginning of FotR, Frodo's reading under a tree... this does not show that tree. However, when Frodo jumps up after reading and runs to Gandalf riding along in his cart... yes, it was in this grove of trees...

Wheee!

Sheepies like Hobbiton too.

 

Potential hobbit holes for The Hobbit? (Click for larger view!)

Our tour guide Benji with a lazy storytelling voice told us his boss has revealed nada.

Remember the field where Bilbo had his massive birthday party?

Benji: Would anyone like to dance on the party field?
Group: (awkward silence)
Fern: (chortling) I do!!!

Another girl, there with her sister and mother, decided she wouldn't mind making a fool of herself either, so we walked out into the party field and stood there holding hands while we tried to figure out what dance or dance pose to do. The result is as follows:

Dancing beneath the party tree with the lovely gal Lily. =)

Moments later...

Benji: Would anyone like to hug the party tree?
Group: (awkward silence)
Scott: Wanna?
Fern: (pause) Yeah!

Hugging the party tree. We likes the party tree.

Next we see locations of former sets that only have colored posts to hint at their existence:

The red marks the bridge, the blue the mill and the yellow the town. It's crazy how these locations seem so real and permanent in the films but in real life, they're polystyrene and quickly dismantled. Apparently they never completed the "stone" work on the back side of the bridge since they weren't filming from the other side. Smart move.

The left side of the above lake:

When Sam and Frodo journey out of the Shire, Sam halts in the middle of a corn field and says "If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been." Well, that was filmed at the red line in this picture. Sam really didn't travel far did he?

I'm in Bag End!

I'm not in Bag End!

The red post is where the oak tree stood that Bilbo and Gandalf smoked next to overlooking the party field...

Peter Jackson went and found his desired oak tree on another farm and had it brought over to this farm. No big deal right? Well, not really. They took a picture of the tree, cut a branch off, numbered it, took a picture of it, took a picture of the tree again, and repeated the entire process until the entire tree was cut down. They reassembled said tree at the location of the red pole but since the tree was now dead, they had to import leaves from Taiwan to individually attach to the tree. And after all this tedious work and money, how much time did this tree get in the movie? 20 seconds. 20 whole seconds. 15 in The Fellowship, 5 in Return of the King. Does the good the Lord of the Rings movie does for humanity really justify the cost of creating those movies? I don't know.

SHEEPIES! Did you know that lambs have rather long tails? (Just hit the end of lambing season so there are oodles of them around!)

Sheep shearing time. How awkward does this look? Poor sheepy.

Naked sheepy =(

Feeding little lamblets!!

It's still hungry... Sucking on my finger!

Aww...

Then they gave us this deelicious snack at The Shire's Rest.

Scott has more detail: http://theyearofthehalfautumn.blogspot.com/

I must get ready for Mitai, a Maori cultural show and hangi dinner, hence this very brief post!

(edit: Two days later brings a lazy night so I've gone back and added stuff. It probably isn't good blog etiquette to not indicate what has been changed, but whatever. I rebel.)

Bone Carving, In Pictures

My initial design in my journal copied over to the bone. It's a Fern! It only seems appropriate since my name is Fern and I'm in New Zealand where ferns are everywhere: in nature, in culture, in history, in logos..

Practice drilling. Which I turned into a semi-smiley face!

Cutting out the design with the drill in the background. This hurts the hands, greatly.

Done cutting!

Thinned and rounded...

No pictures of the filing and sanding and filing and sanding which took forever. I accidentally filed down several fingernails into odd shapes while filing my pendent.

This is Marisol from Chile doing the final sanding. She's a lovely quirky lady whom I really enjoyed. I'm glad we got to see her off and on over four ish days.

 
Thankfully, Jim drilled the hole into my fern. It was a delicate step which required hands far more skilled than mine. Here's a picture of him tying the cord into a necklace.

Final product!

I have to say, this ranks as my top NZ experience thus far. Jim picked us up from our hostel (Globetrekkers, also my favorite hostel thus far) and brought us to his home a few minutes away. Opononi (the tiny town we were in) just had a Country Music Festival (which I found oddly amusing) so Jim and his wife Charlotte had lots of their extended family wandering in and out of their home. They were completely natural and at home even with three complete strangers siting in their living room hunched over a piece of bone for 6+ hours. For lunch, Charlotte cooked us an insanely delicious meal of pumpkin soup and the best biscuits I've ever eaten. She sat and ate with us and shared their Maori culture, life, stories, beliefs, etc, with us.

I'm falling in love with Maori culture. It's poetic and beautiful and I can't do their stories justice with my poor memory. Granted, I've only had a taste of it and I haven't been exposed to any negative aspects, but still! Charlotte can recite her family history back 67 generations. Family history is held in high regard. It is respected so much that they only recite their family history when it holds meaning for those who listen. For us bone carvers, the names she would say would hold no meaning for us so Charlotte would never recite her history for us. For other Maori people she would, because a single recognized name in the recitation could be enough to link their histories together, thus connecting their webs of life.

As for the bone carving, Jim told us that as we wear the necklace, the bone pendant absorbs our body oil so that you become a part of it. When you pass it on to the next generation, they will have a part of you with them. Their body oil also becomes a part of the pendant so that both generations (or both people, whomever they may be) have a shared story and are connected through the pendant.

Day 4, In Pictures

Our AwesomeNZ (read: Awesome en-zet) tour to Cape Reinga (the farthest north you can go in New Zealand!) departed at a cheery 7:10 AM. Scott and I both woke up around 5:40 AM. Couldn't sleep. =( On the bright side, that gave us time to sit at the beach down the street from our hostel in Paihia and watch the morning light grow. Beautiful no?

Our tour guide was socially awkward and cracked lots of punny jokes that elicit internal groans. He also said to another tour bus driver: "You got the American bunch? YA'LL have a great time!" Then he reverted back to his Kiwi speech peppered with "Sweet as." Likened to the American "Sweet" as far as I know. I still can't help but think, "Sweet as WHAT?!" everytime I hear the expression.

Along the way, we see loads of farm animals (the sheep never fail to crack me up), oodles of gorgeous landscapes aaand... a cow crossing. Cows are funny when they run.

Cape Reinga. Mimi (my finger, or how I started taking pictures of myself at places as a solo traveler) quite enjoyed the view of the Tasman Sea crashing into the Pacific Ocean. The white waves are where they meet over the tippy top of New Zealand! There's an incredibly beautiful Maori legend that pertains to this place. Too tired to retell it now.

The lighthouse at Cape Reinga is good for smooshing...

and eating...

We headed to this gorgeous beach for lunch. I eschewed chewing food in favor of exploring.

The water was ridiculously clear. So clear that while I was exploring, I jumped off a rock onto what I assumed was a dry spot and ended up with my entire left shoe and sock soaking in ridiculously clear water.

Then... SANDBOARDING!! Or duneboarding. Not sure which. You have to hike up a painfully tall dune... I'd be out of breath even if it wasn't completely sand where your foot keeps sinking and sliding and you're never really sure if you're making upward progress or not.

Then throw yourself down on the board and careeeeeen down the sand! It was rather steep and scary when you look down from the top. Once you're going though? It's exhilirating! I got 4 turns in before we had to head back.

Me and my purple board... (When I picked purple I said, my sister would be proud! That's for you Ershee!)

And then to the 90-mile beach, which isn't really 90 miles, and to see the hole in the rock which is attached to another Maori legend which I'm too tired to recall.

But but but, we picked clams! It was much fun. I got progressively more drenched after each activity. The beach got my shoe/sock/foot soaked. The sandboarding got the bottom half of my pants and spots of my shirt soaked. Clam digging got my entire body from my chest down soaked. The dip between the beach and the sand bar was unexpectedly deep. And I leaned down to clam-dig with my back to the waves. Surprise soak!

This is me eating our clams. We picked much more but gave it to our tour guide instead. And I'm paying for the internet by the MB, hence my refusal to rotate this picture and re-upload it.

Twas a very packed (and expensive) day but it was incredible! Time permitting, we shall return to the regular "On _____" posts tomorrow... But for now, pictures and basic words, since the busy day left little room for my creative juices to flow into a cohesive creative story!

8 AM pickup tomorrow. It's off to bed we go!

(And Scott's blog here for a different perspective: http://theyearofthehalfautumn.blogspot.com/ Between the two of us you just might get a fuller picture of our adventures in the grand ol' en-zet!)