Roller Hockey, Flying Foxes and fun!

Some pictures!

The above picture was taken somewhere close to the Golden Bay. I can't remember the actual place, but it was supposed to be a lord of the rings filming location. I guess we expected a sign or something that told us where and what part of the films it was used for. Nothing. Nothing except a few dead sheep in the middle of the road, which were lying not too far from what looked like some sort of ritual grounds. There was an archway made of sticks that were lashed together and further in were more mysterious wooden... things. Anyway, it looked like we had stepped into a horror film, so naturally we continued on. The above picture is of Ryan, a friend we work with, and his girlfriend Char. They're both really nice.

This is called a Flying Fox. Do we have these in the states? It's basically a zipline that you stand on. And coming myself from a family of foxes, I had to try it out.

I love this picture because it looks like I'm about to make a goal during my first ever game of hockey. I guess we'll never know if I did or not.

Here's me again. Playing hockey. It's kind of blurry because I'm going so very fast.

hobbit news.

So I'm not allowed to show you guys pictures from Hobbiton, but Peter Jackson is! Just pretend that the following picture is me walking through the door of Bag End, and not PJ. And when I come home, I'll be able to show you the actual pictures. And to be clear, we weren't allowed to actually go inside the hobbit hole, but it WAS totally done up from the outside, just like it looked in the lord of the rings. It really was incredible.

Anyway, I got these pictures for "liking" the new Peter Jackson page, after hearing on NATIONAL NEWS that he had just made the page on facebook.

In Bag End

And just for a bit of fun, compare the picture below with the picture that follows. It would appear as though a recreation of the scene in 1999 was done here in 2011.

In 2011

In 1999 (same shoes)

On the news they also said that filming has officially begun. No turning back now! And I'll be here during most of the shoot! Here's hoping casting calls for extras will be somewhat accessible to me.

Richmond

Well, here I am, watching the "Fill The Basin" cricket game. It's a benefit game played by a bunch of ex-stars to raise money for Christchurch. They keep flashing to Ian McKellan, who is sitting in a lawn chair on the inner boundary line. But what I'm watching is less important than WHERE I'm watching it.

Amalia and I decided to look for flats, since Nelson is now kind of a permanent home for us. Oh, and it's a permanent home for us because we got jobs. Oh, and we pick apples for our jobs. At first I thought it would be miserable because of how much I hated picking cherries, but it's actually not bad. I can listen to music or This American Life while I gather apples. The problem is that it's not paid by wage, but rather how many you pick. So sometimes I'll get distracted by something I'm listening to and slow way down.

Anyway, we got a flat in Richmond, a suburb of Nelson. Super cheap, super close, and surprisingly awesome. It's actually a house, run by this guy Tony. Tony's great. He's super into sports and likes UFC almost as much as rugby. We have another guy living here named Andrew, who has been best friends with Tony since High School. Andrew's a little more reserved but also is a cool cat.

It's also nice that I don't have to buy internet all the time... I mean, I guess I'm still paying for it since it's included in the bill, but not so much. Also, there is a table in the house. It sounds silly to make special mention of a flat surface, but you have no idea how frustrating it's been traveling around and not having a table to put a mouse on - it makes writing music exponentially harder. Anyway, here are some pictures.

Kitchen

Front of House

Backyard

In other news, I completed a project for a film student in Wellington and she loved it. I labeled the song "Birds and the Tees", because she said the film was about a golfer who gets really frustrated that this bird keeps stealing his golf balls to make a nest. She didn't have a working title at the time, but said she liked mine and decided to name it that. I think that's funny. I'll post the finished product when I have it.

Great blog, Jaron. I support Gregan's idea of a calendar. Keep it up!

And always remember...

Arrival in the South Island/Nelson

Well, thought I'd give an update. DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING POST INCLUDES NO PICTURES. DO NOT READ IF YOU EXPECT THERE TO BE. I ACTUALLY DON'T BLAME YOU.

(plus, mom said it would be okay... plus, I'm on a computer which belongs to someone in Nelson, whose house we're staying at, so I can't access new pictures anyway.)

Just wanted to tell you what's happened for the past week. First, I need to tell you about the Smiths. The Smiths live in Seatoun, a suburb of Wellington. We went to some activity after church which was for the young single adults. Just kind of introduced ourselves, since no one knew anyone. The person's house we stayed at worked for Weta as a digital lighting technician. Really nice guy. Something Ostler... After the activity, Amalia and I didn't want to worry about finding a place to stay, so we just turned the corner and found a park with some bathrooms, and we slept across the street in the car. It worked out great.

So in the morning, I was awoken by some lady tapping on the glass. I thought something like "Oh, great, an uptight neighbor who looks for reasons to perform her 'civic duties'..." Turns out she was the opposite. She asked if we were from Christchurch; victims of the earthquake. We said we were Americans and she got kind of disappointed. She later said how she secretly hoped she'd have had the chance to harbor earthquake victims... even so, she invited us in for breakfast and even offered her home for the night.

As it turns out, Anna Smith was her name, and her husband owned a respectable post production company called Sauce. She gave me the hookups, and I was talking with one of the creative directors of the company within a couple of hours. He didn't really have anything to offer me jobwise or internship wise, but he gave me some really valuable contacts. So afterwards, Amalia and I go back to the house and her son has made us homemade nachos. He is 13 years old and one of the funniest people I've met here. I think his name was Alex... There was a minor incident with one of the ferries in Wellington that's responsible for transporting a fair amount of people to school. One of Alex's friends was on the ferry video taping when the boat started to flood. Apparently he started swearing out of panic. Anna, Alex's mom, was saying "Oh, he'll be forever known as the profane kid on that ferry," since the video was posted online. Alex said "Well, mom, I guess I can understand. You're on a boat, people are screaming, and water is climbing up to your knee. I don't think I'd be saying 'Oh, bloomin'! Bloomin'!!" I was constantly impressed by how mature his humor was.

So the next day I met with a film student, Tasha, who asked me to write music for a short she is filming. That happened as a result of me leaving my information at the reception desk at the Film School. Within a day she called me. That was kind of a cool feeling. Sure, she might be a desperate film student panicking to find music... but I'm a desperate musician panicking to find projects. It works out.

Then on Friday I met Stephen Gallagher again. This time, Nigel Scott joined us. In case you don't know who that is, he is an oscar winner for his sound editing on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We talked for a while, maybe an hour or so, about different avenues I could try. They both seemed really impressed at the fact I had travelled across the country to pursue this, and that may be why they threw tons and tons of great advice/contact information at me.

So, after collecting all of this information and finishing up some contacting, we decided to go the south island and try to find a job. I know that Amalia is doing the whole job-hunting thing with me for my benefit, since she's leaving soon and I think she just wants to see the south island before she leaves, even if that means settling for a while. And the place we're trying to settle in is Nelson, a cool little place on the north western part of the south island. We've already met a lot of nice people (in consistency with the nature of the whole darn country) and we're going to stay at a mirai tomorrow.

A Mirai is sort of like a sacred Maori meetinghouse, which has been opened up for Christchurch victims and homeless travellers. One of the people in the Nelson ward runs it and invited us in for a night or two. So tomorrow morning we're going to the Mirai to be greeted properly, which apparently is a bit of a ritual, where they pause to acknoweledge their ancestors who have gone before, and then welcome us who are just arriving. Cool.

Well that should about bring you up to now. I'll post again soon, with pictures, hopefully, and with news about a job. (hopefully.)

The road goes ever on!

Te Papa Museum

Sign on the "Possum Tree"

Te Papa is a great big museum. Amalia and I spent a few hours on one floor alone. It was actually really impressive. I have commented before to Amalia and to others on this trip how cool it is that New Zealand has embraced the culture of the native people. The Maori language is written with English side by side in the whole museum. It's actually an official language of New Zealand, which is awesome. It made me wonder how it might be if the United States had a second language of Cherokee or Navajo or something. Anyway, unlike most places that have been overtaken by white settlers, New Zealand has really learned to coexist with the native people. The museum showed that in a really informative and fun way.

Also, Te Papa is the only place in the world you can see a giant squid. At least, it's the only museum that has one. There's this super freaky 3-D video that you can watch, which shows giant squids (animated giant squids) catching fish and eating them.

The top picture is attached to a giant fake tree that houses various possums. I don't know why I don't have a picture of the tree, I swear that I took one... but the sign was cute.

Primates = Our Mates. Forever and ever.

Windy Welly

I'm in Wellington! Yesterday we decided to drive to Miramar, (which is in Wellington) and see The Weta Cave, which is basically a museum with different Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and District 9 props and prosthetics. It was so cool! Pretty small, but cool.

I asked the guy who worked there where the actual workshop was, and he said it was just behind the Weta Cave. I guess I expected Weta Workshop to be this huge massive complex, but it's really just a series of pushed together garage-looking places. And it's in an area of Wellington where there's not a lot of people. It kind of looks like Spanish Fork or something, which is strange because you'd think people would be buzzing around Weta all the time. At least I would.

Further down the road is Park Road Post Production Studios, which Jaron knows a thing or two about. After seeing if I could connive a way into Weta Workshop and then deciding against it, Amalia asked me if I "had a plan this time" for getting into Park Road. I didn't, really... but I did want to take a look around the lobby, at least. So we went in, and after a few minutes I walked up to reception and asked about Stephen Gallagher, the music editor guy I was supposed to meet the next day. She said "Ah, you know Steve! He's here right now actually, do you want me to call him?" And I said "Suuuuuuurrree...." So she did. He came down a few minutes later and got us some orange juice (the extra pulpy delicious kind) and walked us around the studio. Really nice guy. And I'm meeting him for lunch next week to talk more!

On our way around the studio we ran into Mike Hedges. He's a giant in the film music world. He is an oscar winner for his work on Lord of the Rings. He was super nice and super gigantic. I'm going to say 6'5". The whole time it was kind of like that, running into really talented, friendly chaps. I don't think a single person ever walked by without Stephen saying "Hey, so-and-so, how goes it today?" Just great.

So I decided to be bold and ask about job openings at Park Road. The lady at reception gave me a top secret e-mail address and said to mention that I knew Stephen. So that's what I did. I'll be sure to keep you posted on that.

And sorry about not getting out the news about me being okay... I guess it's strange when you don't really have television anywhere, and internet only sometime... we had heard about the earthquake but didn't know how big it was until later. We'll probably steer clear of Christchurch for a while.

Hobbits, Lion Turtles, and fun!

A Lionturtle we discovered in Mission Bay

It's been quite a while! I haven't really been in a place where I could use internet for long enough to blog. But McDonald's has free wifi, so here I am. I've been traveling with Amalia Smith since her friend had an emergency and left to go back to the states. As it turns out it was a real life saver as far as expenses go, since she has a car and a tent and stuff. Being a vegetarian, she introduced me to soy milk. It's not the first time I've had soy milk, but... I sure have had a lot of soy milk... just sayin'...

So after I left National Park we decided to head up north again to see some stuff. Namely HOBBITON. Hobbiton is in Matamata, which is the coolest little town ever. Not only does it look like the Shire, but the people there are oddly hobbit-like too. Never in a hurry, and they take from slow. (I wish now more than ever that that movie Tressa and I made still existed...) Anyway, I took so many pictures. The sad part about this is that I can't post them or I'll get sued. This is why: We were fortunate enough to be there while it's still an actual movie set, getting ready for The Hobbit. Because it's under production, any photos we took are not allowed to be posted on the internet because of copyright issues.

I expected it to look sort of half finished, but when we got there, all the hobbit holes were painted again, the gardens were being maintained, (real apple and pear trees) the stone pathways were there, the Green Dragon was rebuilt, and the coolest part was the tree on top of the Baggins' home. It had only been there a week since we arrived! Manually constructed to look like an old tree. They imported 250,000 leaves from trees native to Taiwan and manually wired them on the branches. This is where I wish I could show you the picture I took. I was sort of in a state of nirvana as I walked around the place. And whenever the guide asked a question, I said the answer before he finished. It was the perfect day to be a lord of the rings nerd. And what better way to finish the tour, than feeding a Hobbiton sheep.

They told us that they actually flew over English sheep to be more true to the film, much to the chagrin of the local sheep farmers. Which is hilarious because that made me think of sheep on a plane. But it's enough that these sheep live on the farm for me. Way more authentic, in my opinion.

So we went to a branch in a small town close to Taupo called Waiouru. I noticed a piano but they didn't use it for the first song, so I offered to play for the following songs. Everyone looked at me as though I had been sent from heaven, and the chorister literally danced in place with a HUGE smile on her face. So that's how we became friends with every single person in that branch! Afterwards the branch president, Jason Fellingham, invited us over for dinner and to stay the night. At dinner he was talking about this trip he had organized for the school he teaches at and how he needed another couple adults to supervise since a couple had backed out. Then he lit up and said "Hey... you guys are just kind of traveling around, yeah?" and we said we were, and that we'd be happy to come with him. So we went to a camp with a bunch of 14 year olds and a had a fantastic time! It was sort of a team building camp. Learning to trust each other and that kind of thing. We were kind of just known as The Americans to the kids, but by the end I was being called Captain America, which was just fine. Here's a picture of me playing ninja with the last remaining competitor who was actually super good!

Ninja at Green Pastures

We stopped in Taupo on our way to Matamata. It's a really awesome town. The lake which is of veritable size is heated by volcanic activity. And as it turns out, there are tons of places like that. Luckily Amalia already knows some of the local secret places and we stopped at this totally boss hot spring waterfall place near Rainbow Mountain between Rotorua and Taupo. She's got a picture but I don't, so maybe I'll post that picture next time. In regards to the picture at the beginning, I mentioned that that foresty mound in the middle of the lake looked JUST like a Lionturtle. She's a huge Avatar: The Last Airbender fan so she freaked out in a way that told me she agreed.

Amalia also said that someone told her at the beginning of her travels that if you see a brown sign pointing to some attraction, whether it be a cave, a waterfall, a lookout point, or something like that, she should take the detour. So we saw a brown sign pointing to Wairere falls. Within ten minutes of parking, we were hiking through a jungle on a path that led to a fantastic view of an enormous waterfall. It really is so funny how everything in New Zealand is pretty awesome. So we've taken a lot of detours, and each one has been something spectacular that in Utah you'd have to drive a million hours and miles to see.

Wairere Falls

Jaron, I know that tickets are super expensive, but I think this time of year is the most expensive time to buy them as well. So maybe check for around August? It's definitely worth it! That goes for all of you!

Just to give you an idea of what's next, I think we're going to head down to Wellington today. I'm going to try and meet with that music guy, and Amalia has a family friend she wanted to see, so we might be around there for a little while. Also, for some reason I haven't been able to open my hotmail account here. So if you have stuff to say, please write to my gmail account.

The road goes ever on!

prologue to National Park...

Where I live

Kia Ora!

Well here I am in National Park, New Zealand. Not a very creative name, seeing how Tongariro National Park is here. I would say there are only a hundred or so people that live here. Mostly just cafes and convenience stores.

My job changes everyday. Yesterday, it was picking up trash, cleaning door moldings, delivering mail... (that was an adventure. My first experience driving on the opposite side of the road.) Today, it was landscaping duty. And my fingers did in fact hurt. Weeding, weeding, weeding... I also learned how to clean the spas, which actually was kind of interesting.

Anyways, those are all jobs they just kind of threw at me since they didn't have me into the official schedule yet. Tomorrow I start work for reals, and I think it's just more mundane cleaning stuff... I'll be in the kitchen washing dishes, I think. But you know... it's all worth it in the end, because people are so nice here, and always inviting me to go do stuff. Last night I went to a birthday party for one of the managers and one of the Canadians that works here (there are like 5) said she was impressed that I wasn't reserved at all about going out with strangers. Truthfully I just couldn't take it being inside any more.

But there are lots of perks. Free travel packages, (I'm planning on going to Gollum's pool next week to jump off the waterfall there) free bike rental, free use of the lodge's facilities... and of course, having Mt. Doom in my backyard.

Pretty neat! Yesterday I went to see some glow worms. It was crazy. It looked like Space Mountain! They covered the outsides of two cliff walls which formed a little alley way for us to drive through. I couldn't get a picture because my camera didn't see them for some reason, but if you want to know what they look like, check out Waitomo Caves. The Waitomo Caves are a lot cooler, and have a lot more glow worms, but I had never seen glow worms before so I was actually laughing as we drove by, it made me so happy.

Well, better go clean some dishes, or something...

Keaton's Kiwi Kwests! (not KKK...) Day one, but really day two.

Auckland from the ferry to Devonport

So this is my first blog entry about New Zealand. As it is my first entry I will give you my first impressions. Never, ever go to New Zealand on a schedule that will have you arriving at five in the morning, because you'll be jet-lagged, tired, sore, and mostly just plain ticked off. It's a bad time to have first impressions. But at the same time, you might appreciate the next day all the more, as was the case with me. It was even bright and sunny as opposed to yesterday's cloudy and grey, mood wise and weather wise. Also, yesterday I was supposed to go to an orientation by BUNAC, but it was, unbeknownst to me, a public holiday. That meant that everything was closed. As they only have orientations on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays, I had to wait two days before I'm able to leave the city and explore a little. Don't get me wrong, I love Auckland. It's a big city without the big city feel. It's relaxed and spaced out, and everyone just seems happy to be there. But what excites me more is getting to leave and spend time in some town only a handful of people live in.

So since I had the day to just do whatever, I decided to try to get Devon's package to Devon's neighbor's son, who is serving a mission in Auckland. I looked up the address online and it told me to go to Devonport. So much Devons! Coincidence? Absolutely. Even more so since Devonport isn't where the mission office is at all. I went exactly where it told me and asked this nice man with a beard if I was in the right place. He said he'd lived there for 22 years and had never heard of the place. He actually lived right where the address said the mission office should be, so he was just as confused. So I came home, but not before taking a picture of this Devonport tree, which was awesome.



My journey to Devonport also led me to the top of Mt. Victoria, which is a volcanically formed hill and was used as a gun-station for world war 2. Here's a picture. Wikipedia did a better job than me taking a picture of Auckland from the top of the hill...
For being New Zealand, there sure aren't a lot of Kiwis in the hostel I'm staying in. The ratio probably goes as follows... English: 40 percent. Kiwi: 30 percent. German: 10 percent. American: 10 percent. Misc: 10 percent. I have a roommate from Chicago, one from England, and one from Sweden. The Swedish girl HATES Sweden. That's one of the first things I learned about her. I tried to kind of say something nice about Sweden in case she was fishing for compliments, and ended up saying something like "Well I like that Sweden teaches kids to speak foreign languages at a very young age..." And she said "That's because nobody likes Swedish." And she must really believe that, because she hardly has any accent at all. I assume that came from years of speaking english like each word drew out a spoonful of Swedish dialect.

I didn't ever think that coming here with no idea how to live or work would be easy, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not easy. I kind of feel like I did the first week in the MTC. But I expected that, so I've just been dealing with it. Tomorrow I'm going to re-try to find Devon's package recipient, and then make my way to Wellington. It's already been such an adventure. I can hardly wait to discover what the future has in store. In the meantime, keep me updated on stuff.

And now, a picture of a trash can. As I was taking it, somebody who worked at the food court I had just finished eating at asked me if I take a lot of pictures... of stuff. It sounded like he was super weirded out. I explained that I just thought it was funny, and that trash cans in America were labeled differently. As soon as he realized I was American he was suddenly my friend. He said "Serious? Funny as, bro!" Everything is "____ as" here. Sweet as, cool as, strange as...

Neat as!