Day 3 - Hawaii

Day 3:

Today was another very full filming day.
I am too tired, burnt and exhusted to tell you about it.
Here are a couple of photos from the 2 spots we filmed at. I have lots of great photos, but as I said I need to go to bed, so you will have to wait to see them.

I will say this though - the students white filming uniforms will NEVER be the same again.

Day 2 - Hawaii Filming

Day 2: Today we had a few setbacks. We woke to find that the cube van (which carries all the gear) had a flat tyre. This is a big U-Haul truck, so it didn't have a spare. We were delayed nearly and hour in leaving - And today was the day we had to leave extra early and drive the hour long trip to the filming site. So they decided to change locations and instead of filming in the mountains we went to the beach.

It was beautiful spot. It reminds me soooo much of NZ.

The filming spot was bit of hike up over a hill, so all the stuff had to carried by hand to the site. The students are great and all help out, but it is still quite the job carting it all and setting it all up. As you can see - here is the grand piano being lowered down the cliff into position. This was really steep, the photos don't really show that.



After lugging the piano up the hill then down the cliff and into position, right as they were about to start filming they realized the piano wasn't used in that song!! All that effort for nothing.

They did use it in the next song though




Getting down the cliff with their instruments was a challenge.


Jordan had to do some 'repairs' on some of the guys - the rocks weren't too forgiving on their feet - this is Nolan's foot - he was ok.



The waves kept coming higher and higher.




The spot was great withe the sand caves up behind them.



You can see the filming boom - or jib as they call it - in this shot. He can reach really high with this thing - it has a camera on the end.


Don't they look sweet - our babies!


A wave caught them a bit off guard as they were trying to get into position - but they kept the cello's out of the water! Good on them.


It was incredibly hot - poor kids. They all got very burnt as they sat out in the direct sun, with no cloud cover ALL day. So you can imagine what they looked like. We kept making them put sunscreen on, but the doesn't stop it all. In the end I handed out umbrella's to keep the sun off them while they waited to begin filming.



This is the spot for the second song they filmed. It is in the same place but they moved from one side of the canyon to the other.

It was a good day - a bit hot - I got burnt too. We only got 2 songs done instead of the 3 they had hoped to do. We are going up to the mountains tomorrow - if all goes to plan. Please pray that the rain stays away so we don't fall further behind in the filming.

Hawaii

Our first day in Hawaii has come to a close.

I best back up..... we all arrived at Seattle airport at 3am to beginning checking in our 110 strong group - only to find out that the check-in people don't start checking passengers in till 4.30am!! This didn't turn out to be such a back thing as it took us that long to get unloaded and sort out the luggage as to which student was taking which extra peices of luggage for the trip.

Everything went pretty smoothly really - which was great. Everyone had a ticket, so that was a huge weight off my mind. Once I was on the plane I felt like I could start looking forward to the trip.

The kids sang a couple of songs on the plane to this very lovely negro hostess - she was moved to tears by it. The other passengers clapped.

We arrived to a warm humid day. Hawaii reminds me VERY much of New Zealand - has made me quite homesick actually, seeing all the green grass and tress - it is all so lush - something Lillooet is lacking in.

Today we had our first day of filming. We woke to rain pouring down, but praise the Lord, by the time we got to our filming location 15 minutes away, the sun was beating down on us. A bit to much actually - tonight we have a number of quite burnt students - and yes we kept telling them to apply lots of suntan lotion.

The place we filmed at was lovely. Right by the ocean on what use to be a sugar plantation years ago. They have converted it to holiday accomodations now and do weddings etc. It is like park and gardens. They also feed us all a fantastic meal. They did all this for no charge - just amazing. We are doing a benefit concert there on Saturday night.


I took heaps of photos, but it seems the camera card is having a melt down and won't let me down load them - which I am very unhappy about. I will have to see if I can sort it out tomorrow, so for the time being these two will have to do - sorry.

Tomorrow we are off filming again. We have an early start tomorrow, I think we have to be up dressed, breakfasted, worshiped and ready to go by 7.30. It is now after 11pm so I best go to bed............ I just heard the gecko on the wall make his 'gecko' noise.............. goodnight.

Getting Ready

We have been busy getting ready for Hawaii. On Friday Tamzin spent most of the day helping sort the uniforms they will be wearing for the filming. It has been a huge job organizing the uniforms - Elizabeth has done a great job.



The 'sea' of girls uniforms that they were sorting.


Sorting the guys uniforms.


The girls have uniforms which can be mixed and matched - which is nice.


They had both the brown and white skirts made for each girl - just can't find anything suitable in the shops these days.



You can see what Kyle thinks of this whole process - yarning away..........

The is one of the guys uniforms - they also have white shirts and dark jeans which they can mix and match with.

I think they will all look very swish in their uniforms.

Earthquake

The world just seems to keep heaving with some sort of pains - I think it might be end of time pains! I am sure you have all heard about the massive earthquake that has hit off Japan. These disasters just seem to keep coming. I guess the Lord does say this will happen as the world draws to a close!

I see that they have issued a tsuanmi warning for Hawaii and a lot of the South Pacific. We are due to leave for Hawaii on Monday! We will be praying that the people of these countries are safe and that this doesn't impact our filming trip too greatly.

Well here I am sitting here all alone - Alistair has found his way back to New Zealand!
The kids are still here so I shouldn't say I am all alone now should I.

Alistair left on Monday to go and help get the new owner of Greenways underway with the grape harvest. He will be there 2 weeks and then he will join us in Hawaii for a few days - which will be nice.

The school leaves on Sunday for Hawaii for the filming trip for the new DVD series they are doing. It has been a lot of work preparing for it. My number one jobs were to oversee the fundraising of funds the students had to raise, and the booking of the tickets. These were far bigger (and more stressful) jobs than I thought they would have been, but I am happy to say that the Lord really blessed and all the tickets are booked and all the funds are in from the students! This was no small feat as each student had to raise either $1350 or $1650 (depending on what grade they are in), and there are 85 students - so it was quite a large amount of money we have been working on raising.
It is such a relief to know that we hit the target.

I would never have guessed as to the planning and work that goes into such a production - it is huge - right down to making sure we have bug repellent for the kids, as there are quite a few mozzies in Hawaii.

So we are almost there, only a handful more sleeps till we head out to that tropical island - to oversee 85 students for 3 weeks - yee ha
Please remember to pray for us - I think we will need it.

If any of you want to follow along on our happenings in hawaii, they have a blog for the project which is:
www.helpindailyliving.blogspot.com - it is Help In Daily Living - which is what this project is called, as it is based on that book.
Anyway, check it out and you might even spot us on there sometime. It doesn't have anything much on it right now, as we haven't gotten to Hawaii yet! But watch this space..........................

Tamzin's "Pre" Birthday Bash

Today we had a little 'pre' birthday celebration for Tamzin. Her birthday is on Sunday but since we had to go down to Chilliwack today (a 2.5 hour drive) for a dentist appointment for Alistair, we decided we would do it today.

We took Jo-Ann and Rebecca with us and they went to a placed called 'Color Me Mine'. It is a ceramic type place that you can pick a piece to paint. When you have painted it, the place fires it and you go collect it in 6 days time.



One of the hardest jobs for them was choosing what they were going to paint! But once they had decided they were underway.


Jo-Ann chose a trinket box shaped like a slice of cake, Tamzin did a rainbow plate and Rececca did a vase. Kyle also painted a plate with the silver fern on it (since I broke the last one he did at Splashy Fish in NZ!)







After they had finished making their creations we headed to the food court for a bite of lunch. They choose chinese. Then it was off to Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream. This place was really cool. You choose your ice cream and then you could add things to it like nut, marshmello, berries, lollies. Tamzin had a cheese cake one which had graham crackers, strawberries and blueberries mixed into it - it was yum. Kyle got one with Reeces Pieces mixed into chocolate ice cream - Reeces are peanut butter flavoured chocolate bars, it was pretty good too. It wasn't really the day for ice cream as it was quite cool, but it still tasted good.

We did a spot of shopping - the 3 girls all got matching t-shirts. I must get a picture of them all wearing them.

It was a great day.

On Sunday we are having some of the girls from the dorm over for cake and nibbles and have Tamzin blow out her candles then.