heading west

Going on an adventure within an adventure…this has been a loooonggg week with lots of nit picky stuff to do and all of us feeling a wee bit out of place.   Tonight we all watched American Idol which was a touch of home and nice in a funny way, I believe a day behind the rest of you fans, and although the sun still has not set so very late, we wake early tomorrow morning to get to the train station in Christchurch and take a legendary train trip across the country to the west coast.  It is called the Tranzalpine and we will be crossing through the southern alps of the south island.  We had asked Kogen to find some LOTR sights to get us started but most of them are in these desolate spaces hours away you need to helicopter in to see, so this trip takes care of all our wants: we will pass by some film locations for Narnia and the LOTR trilogy movies and when we are west we will have some tramping to do and see some cool geologic sights at panakoiki (?) rocks.  When we were at the school meeting the other day, the principal asked the kids if they had any questions about school, and Kogen asked “do you teach elvish here?”  I think he had some pretty big expectations of New Zealand and the role of Peter Jackson and Tolkien’s influence…

Alex got the film crew together again for some footage this week, and he was in his element.  For the most part he has been the most easygoing about this trip from day one to the whole transition, and I have probably taken that for granted.  If anything when he has felt out of sorts he just gets quieter (possible?), but when Kogen and Mia finally agreed to film some of their old roles on the flip here it was nice to see the energy and excitement that he had for the project.  Check out their whole catalog of films on youtube: quarkstudios is their channel and they would love comments!!!  Paul has worked a good bit this week and I think the bridge back to that part of his world was good for him-he loves doing new and challenging work and is thrilled that it brought us all here.   Have a good weekend!  Cheers mates