Sunday of course we went to church. LilliAnn had spent the night with Knotts. She and Gabrielle were waiting in front of the building when we arrived. LilliAnn has gotten so tall that from a distance I was wondering who the lady and her kid was. Wow. Mom taught the kids class. She brought in a computer with slides they could advance. The kids got really excited during class and participated a lot. Mom of course did a great job.
Dad taught the adult class and preached. I took pictures. :) That's my job I guess. This was the first Sunday that the church met in their temporary location.
After church we went home to the Woodrows and had lunch. Sandra, one of the ladies from church came too. She and Mom started making plans for the next time she comes to the States. It was big fun. Then we had to start on packing. That was not big fun. :) Mom and I did take a break to go visit one of the ladies from church who now lives in a nursing home (or rest home as they say in NZ). She is quite a character and I was glad to get to spend some time with her again. In the evening, we went to church again, Dad got to preach again.
Monday, for our last day in New Zealand, we did some more sightseeing. Nikki came with us. She was a teenager the last time I went to New Zealand... You know all those teenagers from before are now adults... its weird... I'm not old enough for them to be adults. :)
The first thing we did was go to Baldwin Street, the Steepest Street in the World. We even decided to walk up it. We had to talk LilliAnn into it... but she got in the mood before we reached the top.
 |
| Getting started. |
 |
| Dad and Nikki. At the steepest (which is about where this was taken) the slope is 1 in 2.86. |
 |
| We stopped to wait for Mom and LilliAnn... Then LilliAnn powered past us all of a sudden and was the first to the top. |
After climbing, Baldwin and walking back down. We did a bit of souvenir shopping and got lunch and headed out to the end of the Otago Peninsula to see the Albatross colony. The Royal Albatross is the bird with the biggest wing span. In the colony we got to see several baby albatrosses sitting in their nests. (We had to climb another hill.)
 |
| A baby albatross. |
|
 |
| Which is about this big and weighs 9 KG (about 20 lbs). They also put weights in this doll so we could see how heavy they were. |
 |
| The white hands are LilliAnn's wing span versus that of a royal albatross. (One of LilliAnn's arms isn't shorter than the other... she was standing slightly off center.) |
Because the babies didn't do much, we had big fun watching Southland Shags. Especially because they were defending their nests from the seagulls. They actually post guards to watch for the seagulls. The shags drove the seagulls away a couple times while we were there.
 |
| Shags defending their nests. The nests are mounds. |
After the end of tour, we headed down to Pilot Beach next to the colony to look for seals. We didn't see any... but we finally saw an adult albatross fly overhead. (It hadn't been windy enough before.) I would show you a picture, but I had the settings on my camera wrong whoops... OH and we had to climb another hill. (Dunedin is a city on a bunch of hills... when I used to come as a student we did a lot of letter boxing, so we climbed lots of hills back in the day.)
 |
| On the way back into town, we stopped by to see a Mauri (natives of New Zealand) community center. |
We then had to go home and work on packing some more. That night, a Chinese couple from church, took the Woodrows, the Knoxes, and our family to dinner at a restaurant called The Asian Restaurant. It was really good and a great way to spend our last evening in New Zealand.
 |
| Shirley, Dave, Aaron, Vanessa, me, LilliAnn, Mom, Dad, Wing, and Rebecca... taken by a slightly intoxicated guy. |
We then went home and finished up packing. In the blog tomorrow... The long trip home.
No comments:
Post a Comment