Wednesday, April 02, 2008

As a matter of fact...I'm BACK!

What a trip. It has been exhausting and great fun. Good ol' blogger has of course put the photos in the order THEY wanted them and not the order I wanted them. So. Here we are, sort of backwards! Above is a fireplace at the Homestead that we held one of our training courses this week. Isn't it grand?
Here is some of the finer detail, very ornate and must have taken ages to complete. It was a fantastic place and also doubles as a tea house. Now, if I had gotten round to doing the 7 odd things about me blog you would know that I lOVE tea. From plain ol' gumboot tea to Chinese Gunpowder tea, I'm in! They had even gone to the trouble of using old china tea cups and saucers such as we would find in second hand shops, luxury for the tea-vibe within me. So dainty and gives a better taste to the tea, in my humble opinion. As luck would have it, Peter and Dianne had the tea for me. Go to the site and have a browse.
This here is what greeted me at 8am on a Wednesday morning in Balclutha. Very foggy and chilly but soooo beautiful. In the photo below you can just make out the bridge that I took this photo (above) of.
Above is a (bad) photo of Balclutha from the air. Small town NZ doesn't get more genunine than this. Great people, down to earth and genuine. We had a great start to our training in this place.
This is the facade of the hotel I stayed at in Dunedin. Very pretty place and they left a note in my room ready for my arrival, saying how pleased they were to have me stay. How sweet. I was almost expecting a note saying how pleased they were that I was moving on, but thats another story!!

Now this photo is of one of the ceilings in the abovementioned homestead. Just breathtaking. Under all this of course, we delivered world class training on Drugs and Alcohol in the workplace, on bullying and harassment and general disciplinary issues. It's been hard being away from home, the girls seemed to miss me and I am sure I have put on too much weight from all the meals cooked by chefs! I have been pampered beyond what I should and I don't regret it at all. I have really missed the access to all your lovely blogs and send my apologies to those I usaully frequent (ok, so you didn't notice I was gone....)
Next blog, well I may have to babble on about the lack of information about the Free Trade Agreement our Government is signing next week with China. How come we don't know what's in the agreement? WTF?


5 comments:

Rol said...

Welcome back, glad you had a good time. Nice photos.

Steve said...

Nice to see you back - love the mouldings. Karen and I are currently watching Brideshead Revisited... your photos kind of fit the mood!

Mike said...

Welcome back.

Great photos, but I am really more interested in knowing why you thought they should have left a note telling you how pleased they were that you were moving on. Sounds like there might be another story in there somewhere.

meggie said...

Great to see you back! You were missed.
Beautiful photographs. I really want to go to NZ & do the full tourist bit! Even though I am a native, I never did make it to Dunedin, or ever Queenstown!

Yes, do tell what you got up to in that Hotel!

The Sagittarian said...

Hi there, well I kinda led the barmaid astray apparently...introduced her to a drink that she hadn't tried before and before yu know it, the bar was having them adn so was she. Like everything, it's all good fun until someone looses an eye!