Auckland

Auckland greeted us with a lovely 72º day, which we spent visiting the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Auckland Art Gallery. We took the city bus from downtown Auckland out to a large city park called Auckland Domain. The weather really has been delightful today.

The museum does have an exhibit dedicated to the New Zealand men and women who served in various wars, but most of it is devoted to the natural sciences and cultural aspects of the country.

We elected to begin with an optional performance by a Maori troupe of native songs and dances and demonstrations of selected customs and practices.

Some fighting methods were shown with descriptions of selected weapons, and I took a couple videos  of the performances, including the one below.

Afterwards, we had a chance to take photographs with members of the troupe.

This is actually my second trip to New Zealand. Ten years ago or so, I traveled here with a large contingent of government, business, and university leaders to explore possible economic relationships between New Zealand and Iowa. That trip was led by then Governor of Iowa Tom Vilsack (now serving as Obama's Secretary of Agriculture in Washington).

When we arrived for that trip, we were formally greeted by Maori representatives who taught us the proper way for groups to greet each other. These greetings seem counter-intuitive, since they involve sticking out one's tongue and assuming what seem like aggressive stances. Here are many of us attempting those practices after some instruction. You can see that like the others, I had much to learn.

But back to today's visit to the museum! The exhibits of Maori artifacts were quite impressive. I was reminded of the time we spent last year in Arizona with Dick and Rina visiting the Heard Native American museum. Here are a few examples of things we saw today, including a carved house; an amazingly long, decorated, multi-person canoe; and statues showing proper methods for showing one's tongue.

Another exhibit of a different sort was part of an annual show called World of Wearable Art. So to show my sister and our friend Donna, both respected artists, that Kathie and I can immerse ourselves in cultural opportunities, here are some pieces from that exhibit.

This one was all wood!

This one was all plastic!

At some point during the opening of this event, there is a major show where all of these pieces are actually worn by models and presented. We saw some video clips in one part of the exhibit from this year's show.

This year's show included a number of extraordinary bras! I thought these two were especially nice, though not all were made of metal.

Did I mention that the weather was terrific? (We left 12" of pretty new snow behind in Iowa.) The park was filled with attractive gardens and many awesome, old trees.

A winter garden or what we would think of as an enclosed botanical garden is also in the park.

I didn't take many pictures in the Auckland Art Gallery, but for the sake of some of my grandchildren, especially Henry and Anders, I did get this picture of one hands-on exhibit of architectural structures made by children and others, all from white Lego bricks. This young fellow was fully immersed in the exhibit.

What a nice beginning to our trip. Did I mention that the weather here is delightful? 72º and gorgeous views!