A visit to Agrodome

Sorry for taking so long on this post! It's so easy to get caught up with things here.... I'll try to post more often in the future.
When we got to Auckland International, there were a few clumps of us that had established we were in Australearn together. We wandered, bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived, through an absurdly long customs line, an extensive slew of "bio-security" apparatuses, into the general entrance of the airport. I cannot tell you what a relief it was to find Australearn people, who ushered us over to a couple of stagecoach buses that would take us down to Rotorua.
After a relaxing night at Kiwipaka, our hostel in Rotorua (first two pictures in this album), we were ready for a trip to Agrodome. We had a buffet breakfast at the hostel, then hopped on the buses.
Agrodome is a sort of zoo-esque place meant to showcase rural kiwiana. They apparently have tours of the grounds (tractors & wagons), but we didn't have a lot of time to explore there. Shortly after arriving we gathered into a large auditorium for a show dedicated almost entirely to -- you guessed it -- sheep!
Before it started we had a chance to mingle with the ewes and rams chilling along the sides of the room (yes, that is a live ram smiling for the picture behind me).
The MC for the show was VERY energetic, introducing each type of sheep by having it run up the stage to its appropriate spot. Each place had a little dish of sheep food ready for them, but sometimes the sheep would get distracted on the way up the ramp and start munching on a dish only halfway up; a little tug on their collar got them the rest of the way up.
We got to see a sheep sheared, which is best told in the pictures... the sheep in question didn't seem to mind very much... she just sort of went along with it, but did seem fairly happy to be finished.
I think my favorite part of the show was when they brought out the sheep dogs (my dog Gully would LOVE it there). At first they were just barking at the sheep, but then started jumping up and running along the tops of them. At one point the Merino ram (whose name I recognized because REI socks are made from New Zealand Merino wool) stared down the dog, and it took him a while to hop past... though pretty docile creatures, I think even sheep can get annoyed at a certain point.
They brought out cows to be milked and lambs to be fed by audience members, and finished the show outside with a sheep herding demonstration. This was impressive -- the only things the guy would yell was "left" and "right"; the dogs / sheep figured out the rest.
Later that afternoon we went luging and zorbing... more explanation on that next post.

Cheers,

David