Relating to where we took the Kiwi Rail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6acPX_00M9Q&feature=em-share_video_use

Headline in the Manawatu Standard:   Large quake rocks Manawatu
     I was reading in bed, and heard a rumble that I thought was a truck going down the street.  Then the dresser started to jump, and the mirror above it started moving.  I knew then that I was experiencing an earthquake; didn't know that they felt them in Palmy.  Worried about having go outside with pajamas on.  The dogs ran to the front door.  They didn't do anything beforehand; animals reportedly sense disasters ahead of time?  At the office the next morning, Murray said that this was their way of celebrating The 4th of July for me; a shake instead of fireworks.
NZST Tue Jul 3, 2012  10:45
Richter magnitude 4.6
depth 230 km
70 km south of Opunake (drove through there the weekend we went to New Plymouth)
kiwis have web sites on their favorites such as:
geonet.org.nz
christchurchquakemap.co.nz

Newspaper articles regarding last night's earthquake:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/7215017/Large-quake-rocks-Manawatuhttp://www.wanganuichronicle.co.nz/news/quake-wake-up-call-for-city/1442599/

Talking about disasters, last night we watched a movie called Tangiwai (I check out mostly NZ movies).  It is about the train crash where cricket player Bob Blair (who was in South Africa at the time) lost his fiance.  "At 10.21 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1953 the Wellington–Auckland night express plunged into the flooded Whangaehu River at Tangiwai, 10 kilometres west of Waiouru in the central North Island. Of the 285 passengers and crew on board, 151 died in New Zealand's worst railway accident".  The movie is actually about their romance.  We drove through this area on our way to Rotorua.

If you liked the gumboots song, check out another kiwi folk song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYvMeT2GC14

I'm learning more about the 1944 Polish children's camp in Pahiatua.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/wairarapa-news/5239435/Refugee-recounts-invasion-in-book



A wigwam for a goose's bridle means mind your own business/none of your business.

Scotch mist is:

• An idiom which in the United Kingdom means a cold and penetrating mist that verges on rain
• In the United Kingdom an idiom meaning something that is hard to find or doesn't exist (something imagined).
• Scottish term given to a persistent drizzle with poor visibility, especially on moors and out at sea (also called smirr). which poses risks of hypothermia to walkers, and of navigation and collision danger to sailors.
• Humorously, to refer to drunken confusion.

Do we use so many expressions in the US?