Good Morning New Zealand!

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Thursday:

Started the day off right with a temple trip. The temple in Hamilton is beautiful, set on a hill in the middle of the countryside. The celestial room is so unique- the walls have murals painted on them in different shades of white, all depicting New Zealand-type scenery. Beautiful. I hope that is what heaven is like.

We rushed off from the temple to sing at a high school. The majority of the tour was school visits, so I’ll describe the basic idea and add any particular details per school as necessary. We would go into the gym/auditorium, be welcomed by the school, introduce ourselves, and sing a few songs. We tended to sing our Polynesian and comic songs- big hits with the kids. With that in mind, we were performing almost constantly. Just that Thursday we sang at two schools, and from there we went to our concert venue to prepare for our first major concert. Again, we did a lot of these so I’ll give the basic outline:

The concert was about 2 hours long. The general theme was “music from around the world,” emphasizing that we’re a world community and we can all get along if we work at it. Really neat idea, especially when you look at what BYUH represents. Our choir had people from 6 countries and about 11 languages spoken, so we were living what we sang about. Awesome. The first half of the concert had songs from all over, particularly Europe and America, but with some random ones like Latin (I know that’s European, but it’s different!) and Indonesia. The second half was mostly Polynesian, with one African piece. The whole show was lots of fun, with choreography and full-on dancing in some parts- hula, Tahitian, clogging, poi balls, etc. In New Zealand we sang two Maori songs, and in Australia we sang two Australian folk songs. The audiences’ reaction to those was the best!

Well, our first concert started us off with a bang. A loud but very engaged audience of 1000+ people welcomed us and we gave it our best. Sister Williams was very impressed and everyone went home happy. We had a cup of hot chocolate (probably our fifth in two days- we couldn’t turn around without her offering us a ‘hot drink’) and went to bed in preparation for an early morning…

Friday:

4:30 am the alarm goes off. Yep. See, we had to meet at 5:15 as part of a special group that was selected to sing on TV (Good Morning New Zealand). That’s what happens when you’re married to the best soprano in the choir… we bid the Williams family a very fond farewell and left for Auckland. We got to sing on TV! Fun little experience. The rest of the choir met up with us shortly after and we were welcomed at a Marae. For those of you who don’t know what a Marae is (like me two weeks ago), they are Maori ancestral homes that are traditionally the center of the community. Marriages and funerals take place there; you take off your shoes before entering… they’re important. They welcomed us in and sang to us, then we sang to them. Awesome experience, even if right outside there was a YMCA promo going on booming that dumb song through the streets… a little distracting, but we drowned them out when we sang. They fed us a hearty snack, but we soon left to do a ‘flash mob’ at a nearby university. I say ‘flash mob’ sarcastically because whoever planned on us doing that didn’t seem to understand the definition. A flash mob is when a bunch of people who are blending into crowds suddenly come together to start dancing. It builds and builds as more people join… really cool. Anyways, it was a good idea, but pretty hard to pull off when we all arrive in a group wearing matching clothes. No real element of surprise. From here on out, I shall call them ‘impromptu performances.’ It’s a far more fitting description.

From that mini performance we went across the street to have lunch at the local institute. Notice how little time elapsed between our snack and lunch? Yeah. Probably twenty-five minutes, at most. This will be a common theme- everywhere we went we were welcomed with food. I don’t know if I ever felt hungry at all while we were there; we were called upon to eat almost constantly. If we weren’t singing, we were most likely eating. You’ll see… after lunch we visited two more high schools. At the second one, they fed us a ‘snack.’ New Zealand snacks would pass for light meals in any other country. Of course, we left there so that we could go eat dinner before another youth fireside. When we returned home with our new family, the Lolesi family (Samoan/Maori), they had dinner waiting for us. Ugh… two lunches, three dinners… not to mention, on the bus our chaperones were constantly stuffing us with fruit and everyone was passing out candy. Let’s just say I’m surprised I still fit into my pants at the end of our trip. Some girls busted open the zippers on their performance clothes, haha…

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Photos

I love the temple!
By the way, that is a non-alcoholic Ginger Beer in Jarek's hand.

Show Time!
Our first venue.

Good Morning New Zealand!
Waking up at 4:30 was rough, but it was well worth it! We're famous! Hahaha.

Heaven.
Ever had New Zealand ice cream?? It is like heaven! Sugary clouds spotted with crunchy bits of toffee that call for seconds and thirds...and fourths.