Hamilton Zoo

Yesterday was a fun day! We were able to FaceTime with Joel in the morning. After we FaceTimed with him, we helped clean the chapel. Then we headed to Temple View to pick up a few things at the church distribution center.  (Thank heaven we were able to acquire a car this week!)

We are not in Mormonland any more, but Hamilton is pretty close. We laugh at the number of stakes in the city.  Temple View is a borough of Hamilton and its residents are demographically 98% Mormon. . .or so we hear from some of the residents. 

The high population of LDS members in the city is the result of Church College which closed in 2009. (Here a college is a high school.) LDS members from all over New Zealand would relocate to Hamilton so their children could attend Church College. Over time, Hamilton has become the Mormon Mecca of New Zealand. We can get anything here we could get in the States when it comes to church material. Pretty interesting.

Once we finished at the temple, we decided went to the Hamilton Zoo to participate in Family day. 

They had a sausage sizzle. We've noticed lots of event include a sausage sizzle. We could not figure out what it meant until yesterday when we actually participated in one. It's kind of like a hot dog fry but they aren't hot dogs, they are HUGE sausages on white bread. 

We also had ice blocks. For the life of me, I could not figure out why they were giving out ice blocks at the Family Day event, until I realized that an ice block is a Popsicle. They have 3 flavors: pinapple, orange, lemonade. 

Eric was determined to have his picture taken with a cheetah! 

Although, I can't really see them in this picture :)

The part of the zoo were the number of animals we had NEVER seen before. Only a quarter of the animals were animals we had seen at Hoogle zoo.