24DEC2019 – DAY 11: THE RESPONSIBILITY

I woke up early and again navigated my way through a large foreign city on a small but important journey to buy a simple travel phone that would be used for emergencies and checking flight info for when the inevitable return home would happen. This time, I had a set destination and in mind and was given rough directions on how to get the closest superstore about 10 blocks away from the hotel. I arrived at the store an hour too early at 6:00AM and decided to wander around a bit more before the store would open an hour later. While walking around the downtown streets of Wellington, I stopped by a convenience store and grabbed a few small snacks to share during our beach party set the next day. I made my way back to the store, bought a cheap travel phone and went back to the hotel to wait to be picked up for my first activity of the day: a tour of several nearby LOTR scene locations and the Weta Workshop production studio. There were only two other group members who also attended this activity. On the tour of the filming locations, many details of the movie magic were explained how and why they came to be. It honestly felt so unreal to be right there in the little nook on the side of the hill where the hobbits hid from the Nazgul. Although, without the same conditions, both natural and artificial as seen in the movie, that unreal feeling wore off a bit too quickly. At the end of the tour, we were brought to the Weta Workshop production studio where we were shown some original props and explained how costume design, make-up, and having the right props are critical in the success of making a movie. Some of the of the movies that Weta Workshop had a hand in helping with have been Alien, Planet Of The Apes, Warcraft, and LOTR/The Hobbit (of course). After we finished at Weta Workshop, we were brought back to the hotel to prepare for a night out on Christmas Eve. After stopping by a few bars, we finally settled on one that would take us well into the morning. It was mentioned that Christmas is much a bigger deal in many places aside from the US as we have several other large holidays to fill with festivities towards the end of the year such as Halloween and Thanksgiving that other places don’t typically celebrate. At the bar, we spent a lot of time talking and enjoying our last night with another 2 group members. We played a lot of billiards, did some karaoke, and had a blast! By the end of the night, after only having 1 shot of vodka around midnight when Christmas officially started, I was kind of glad I decided to be the responsible one. I ended up having to guide 5 people of varying drunkenness back to the hotel safely at 1:30AM. Fortunately, I already memorized the route back as I had walked it several times earlier that day when I went to get my travel phone. It took us about 20 minutes to walk 4 blocks back to the hotel, but everyone made it back safe and sound. The only real mishap was when one of the guys decided to jump into a fountain and got soaked and then proceeded to charge across the street coming dangerously closed to getting clipped by a passing car. Once back at the hotel, we called an Uber for the two members leaving us and I walked them down to the street with one other member. As the Uber pulled up, the guy that had jumped into the fountain came outside in his underwear and socks and tried to climb into the Uber. We pulled him out and told him to go back to the room and put some clothes on so he wouldn’t get hypothermia. After that, we said our goodbyes and just like that we were down 2 more members. The rest of us settled in for the remainder of the night.