Bitten by an eel!

This week has been filled with a lot of activities and strange things have happened as well. When I went with James, Michelle and Graham's son, he asked me if I wanted to feed an eel in a small creek. Guess what happened? It went for my pinky instead of the piece of bread in my hand! I pulled my hand up out of the water quickly by reflex and the eel landed on the ground. I didn't expect that at all. It was funny and I think I'm gonna remember it for the rest of my life. James is a very nice guy, I have worked with him a couple of times now. We have done some lawn mowing, wood splitting and he has a kiwi orchard into which we smacked a few golf shots.

Last weekend we had a Christmas party here on the farm. We played badminton and ate some really good food. The temperature was over 20 degrees, and it's getting warmer every day. It feels weird that Christmas is coming up when it's this hot outside.

On Saturday we went to Hobbiton, where they filmed Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. It was a very beautiful landscape with hobbit holes all over the place. The tour guide told us some crazy stories about the director Peter Jackson. He wanted a scene where some hobbit children picked plums so he planted a plum tree. That wasn't good enough apparently, so he planted an apple tree and made it look like a plum tree with real plums and everything. One other thing was that he didn't make the pathways in Hobbiton with machines, he hired a bunch of people just to walk back and forth to make the trails look like they have been there for a long time.

The other day, James drove us to this amazing waterfall called Hunua falls, where you could climb up a bit and jump into the water. It wasn't until we were up there and had no choice but jumping that James told us 18 people had died there and no bodies were found. Also that there are 20 kg eels swimming around in the water. Apart from that it was peaceful, and a very nice place to spend the evening too.

That's all I've got for now, hope you enjoyed reading it!
Simon