Come together

This weekend we finally had our District Convention (remember that for those of you that had it back in June!). In Auckland it is held in the Telstra Clear stadium in South Auckland and despite the closure of the main motorway to the stadium (which seemed to necessitate news reports warning all Aucklanders to spend the weekend indoors - seriously, there is more than one road in Auckland) we managed to make it there without any mishap!

Now going to the District Assembly here is obviously a very different experience from going to the Assembly at Twickenham - for starters, the peak attendance was about 3,600 instead of about 28,000 and it is inside so you don't have to contend with the elements, which is just as well as most of the weekend it seemed to be blowing a gale.

KZ was also slightly horrified when it dawned on her that for the last 10 years she had enjoyed a child free zone at the assemblies, thanks to the brilliant idea of segregating families to the lower tiers, but that in such a small space she could even have children sitting on the same row as her!! This proved more distracting than the planes going overhead at Twickers but fortunately we came through unscathed!

Most importantly, there is no Golden Lion. They've obviously thought it through though and wouldn't want anyone to not have an area to mill around and so look what we discovered instead!

All looking in the same direction for a change!

Assembly lunches are another very important part of the assembly experience and because of the competitive nature of our house we split into twos and had an assembly 'bake-off'. The competition was fierce but I think it was hard to top Mel and Natalie on Sunday bringing Mel's raspberry and chocolate dessert, still in ceramic dish and dishing it up with what looked suspiciously like a wall paper scraper! We had a number of envious (well, perhaps more bemused looks!)

Most of our house volunteered on the News Desk this assembly - which basically involved sitting and taking notes watching the programme on a big tv due to the distinct lack of media - however, it did give us the opportunity to make up a few rogue media stories should anyone so enquire.

The professional face of the News Desk!