This week’s picture of the week is the third in a three part series (part 1, part 2) and is of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Lake Tekapo, New Zealand (near the Mt. Cook region of the south island).  Holly and I had seen pictures of the little church prior to leaving and decided we had to stop there to check it out.  It was really quite stunning.  The church is self is a beautiful stone building and the landscape surrounding it is as breath-taking as any New Zealand landscape.  Directly behind the church is Lake Tekapo which is an amazing emerald green color from the sediment carried in the rivers from the glaciers on and below Mt. Cook.  Absolutely amazing… you should definitely check it out if you find yourself on the south island of New Zealand!

–Dan Thompson

    Don’t ask me why, but when Holly and I started planning our trip to New Zealand, at the top of Holly’s ‘things to do’ list was shearing a sheep.  Where she comes up with these things I have no idea… but she definitely wanted to do it (and I’ll admit I thought it sounded entertaining).  Turns out if you’d like to shear a sheep, New Zealand is a great place to do it.  Holly and I met up with John from ‘The Shearing Shed’ in a little town called Glenorchy (south of Queenstown) and headed over to his farm where we got to round up the mob, sort them out, and then shear a couple of them! Very cool experience.  John took us through the process from start to finish and got to see everything from a video on the sheep industry in New Zealand, to how the wool is bailed and sent off to be turned in to all sorts of stuff.  This week’s picture of the week is of Holly getting her hands dirty and shearing away with John’s assistance.

    John and his trusty sheep dog ‘Glen’ were a total blast to hang out with and our day on the farm was WAY more awesome than we could anticipated.  If you ever make it down to New Zealand, you should definitely look them up.

–Dan Thompson

    This week’s picture of the week was taken on the road leading away from the Mt Cook region of the island.  I had had my eyes open the entire trip for sheep to be in the road because I thought it would make a funny picture, and that morning we were blessed with just that.  The herd was moving along, heading who knows where, and seemingly oblivious to the fact that we were creeping up behind them in our car.  After snapping a couple pictures we let them have the right-of-way and changed lanes to go around (yes, they drive on the “wrong” side of the road down there). 

     March 21 – 23 of this year, bloggers from all over the world are dedicating their blogs to supporting New Zealand and promoting tourism there in an effort to help the country recover from the earth quake that hit Christchurch in February.  If you’ve ever considered going there, now would be a great time to go.  Not only would you get to experience the beauty of this island nation first hand, but you would be helping local businesses get back on their feet by spending your tourism dollars there.  Another thing you can do to help is by following links you see posted this week with Blog4NZ tags and sharing them with your friends.  It is a very simple and potentially far reaching way to help out.

–Dan Thompson