We were invited to spend Thanksgiving Day at Temple View on Tuhikaramea Rd with the other 21 senior Hamilton Mission couples. Only 3 couples are not American. We had turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, pumpkin pie, and other delights. Elder Rooks and I stopped on the way to Hamilton to spend time touring Hamilton Gardens with Elder and Sister Welsh, but those pictures will be in the next blog post, except for a couple of pictures I stole from the Welshes and the Smiths for this blog post.
There wasn't room for us to stay in the Temple View apartments, so we rented a room at the Rua Resort Bed and Breakfast. It was fabulous.
For the District Council Meeting, I brought a pumpkin pie made with canned pumpkin ordered from Martha's Back Yard website. The Aussies (not all pictured here) did ok with the pie, but Sister Ufagalilo would only eat the leftover apple turnovers I brought. More pie for the Americans.
After our tour of Hamilton Gardens and unloading the washer-dryer that had been taking up room in our garage, we attended a session at the Hamilton New Zealand Temple with the other senior missionaries. It was wonderful to be in the temple again.
The David O. McKay Stake and Cultural Events Centre was the venue for our long-anticipated Thanksgiving Dinner. A lot of stairs were involved.
It was good to meet people whose names we had only seen on the senior missionary directory. Several couples had family visiting from the U.S.
The food was wonderful, plentiful, and much appreciated
A picture of all of us in the stairwell. Elder Rooks and I are in the lower right-hand corner.
The Smiths made these turkeys out of seashells gathered, I believe, at Raglan Beach in Waikato and/or the Firth of Thames. There were probably five dozen of them, one for everyone, plus extras. That's a lot of seashells.
Out in the parking lot, a rainbow as we left the McKay Centre to head to our Bed and Breakfast
After being misdirected for the third time that day by Google Maps GPS, we finally found the driveway to the Rua Resort, owned and operated by Colleen and Clive, with a family feeling and homemade breakfast. There were three other rooms on our floor, and we all shared two bathrooms. It was quiet all night, though, and the bed was comfortable.
Rua Resort from the website photo
Our room with arching windows overlooking a courtyard. Here Elder Rooks is staying warm in his robe. It was rainy and windy and fairly chilly and he thinks he is getting the cold I had for about three weeks
The views were magnificent
The side courtyard
We had the perfect breakfast cooked by Colleen and Clive's son, who is a drummer in a band by night and a chef by day. The Eggs Benedict with Salmon was delicious.
I had heard of Marmite, "a British savory food spread based on yeast extract, invented by the German scientist Justus von Liebig. It is made from by-products of beer brewing and produced by the British company Unilever." (Wikipedia)
Clive set it on the table in front of us to see who would be brave enough to try it. Being familiar with brewer's yeast, I gave it a taste while everyone watched. Pretty strong and salty, with a fishy undercurrent of too much nutrition in too little space, and a blackstrap-molasses-like texture. Not my first choice for a savory food spread.
Everyone's shoes by the front door. We had a very pleasant stay but had to get back on the road to Rotorua.
There seemed to be a lot of traffic today. It takes about 90 minutes to get to Rotorua from Hamilton. We ended up following several tour buses traveling from Matamata, where Hobbiton is located, to Rotorua, where it is still cold and rainy.
Wispy clouds above the fields of grass hay
Hobbiton-like hills
Fitzgerald Glade, the tree tunnel
Rather interesting hillock formations
The town of Tirau, about halfway between Hamilton and Rotorua
Cow pastures along Highway 5. There was a two-lane expressway from Cambridge to Hamilton, but otherwise it was the usual one narrow, winding lane with wildly varying speed limits, the bane of missionaries trying to avoid traffic tickets.
Turning towards Ngongotaha. We were strangely happy to be back in Rotorua, which has been our home all this time
No Pukeko photos this week, sadly. Here is my finished kete whakairo, patterned woven bag of New Zealand flax. It still isn't perfect but a lot better than my first one. The roses in the vase were cut from the bush growing at the corner of our house. They smell wonderful, now that my sense of smell has returned after being gone during my cold. I can smell the thermal sulfur, too. Lucky me.
