Penguin Place and Boxing Day

Christmas eve day, we went to visit one of our neighbors, Steph, (who had become friends with Sandy) at her workplace, where she cared for and studied Emperor penguins (in captivity, of course). The weather seemed more appropriate for the day, somehow, even though we had to be indoors in an artificial environment, we finally got our white Christmas. What with being her "American cousins" we were allowed behind the scenes to play with Julio and his male penguin lover, as well as some of the other characters Steph told us about at "Penguin Place", where soap operas are a day-to-day reality. At one point, Steph had to catch and put a tag on a Penguin, but the resto fo the time she was feeding them non-stop (they are quite voracious). We had to keep climbing up the artificial rocks to get out of the way of the tourist trams that came by every few minutes. NZ was clearly not a place where people are ruled by the dictates of paranoid insurance companies! It was up to us to keep our legs in tact, and that was all there was to it!











After Christmas, the whole community celebrated "Boxing Day". No, it has nothing to do with prize fighting as I had always thought,- it's the day after Christmas when wealthy gentry, overwhelmed with new commodities, clothing, etc from all their gifts, recycle the wealth by filling up the empty boxes with give-aways to the servants - at least, that's where then name comes from. But here at Earthsong, everyone wraps up something from their home - ranging from the useless to the inspired, and each person takes a turn at choosing one of the wrapped gifts and opens it (some of the gifts are rediculous and amusing). The next person gets to choose a new wrapped box, or steal someone else's already unwrapped present, and round it goes. It gets rather feisty and brings out the best and worst in each person, making for a day of great personal revelations (not necessarily deliberate). Below you can see Judy's advanced strategy of pretending to be utterly thrilled with her present (a video game) in the hopes that someone would steal it from her and give her a chance at some better pickins. We played a similar game with our Unitarian "extended family" group in Berkeley, not knowing the game's origin at the time. Of course, it being summer, Boxing Day games are traditionally played out on the common green, at least in this hemisphere.