Building Homes

May 24, 2011

The Habitat home construction continues here in New Zealand.  Before I continue with that here are a couple more entries from grandma Ritzman's diary.

May 23, 1914 - Saturday, done saturdays work, churned butter, baked fourteen pies, hoed in garden, set out six early tomato plants, some peas and lettice, Ervin Cramer was here for breakfast and dinner.
May 24, 1914 - Sunday, went to Sunday school, read six chapters of Jeremiah, had seven callers in the evening.
May 25, 1914 - Monday, done washing and ironing, mended.

We've been working on the Habitat houses for six days now but decided to go back and put in a couple of pictures of Napier and maybe Rotorua.

Napier is a beautiful small city on Hawks Bay on the lower east coast of the north island.  There was an earthquake there in 1931 which pretty much leveled the city.  Art Deco was the architectural style at the time of the rebuild and that was the style of about all the buildings that were rebuilt.  Many years later as renovation was being done once again to update the buildings it became apparent that much of the tourism to the area was to see the Art Deco buildings.  From then on the effort was to maintain the beautiful Art Deco buildings.  Below are a couple of pictures around downtown.

If you have bought a New Zealand wine and the bottle said it was from Hawk's Bay then it was from around here.  Hawk's Bay below.....

The campground in Napier had a "Guest Chiller".  I didn't think that I needed chilled out so I didn't go in.

Below are a couple of the Art Deco Buildings -

On the way to the Tamaki Experience in Rotorua we are picked up by a bus from Tamaki at the campground.  The driver informs us that the bus is really a Maori canoe which in the Maori language is a waka.  The waka with us warriors on board needs a chief and the driver at times will take a suggestion on who the chief should be.  Our team member Jon was selected to be the buses chief.  This was fitting as this was also Jon's birthday.  This is a highly honored position and we treated Jon with the upmost respect from this day on.  He did a great job of leading the waka passengers through the evening functions.  On the way back he also led us in song.  What a guy! 

By the way our waka was named weka after the NZ bird.  Therefore we were on waka weka.

A laid back sheep at the Agrodome Farm Show.

A Maori warrior at the Tamaki Feast.