April 10 - Brook - This morning we were driven very early back to Auckland for a group vocational morning at the St. John's Ambulance Headquarters. This was a very interesting morning for me especially. The organization itself is actually a charity and relies on fundraising and partial government funding to provide all of the services including the emergency services. The also do quite a bit more than the standard emergency services, including education and first aid training, prime nurses and doctor training, phone call support for isolated elders, and many more. We also toured their telecom centre where the "111" emergency calls are received (like our 911). This is an extremely elaborate and high tech system especially when compared to my emergency phone ringing at 2:00am and me sleepily waking to answer "Carcross emergency Line ......."

After this we did a presentation to the Otahuhu Rotary club. Then we were treated to a visit to the Auckland Museum to watch a Maori cultural presentation. I have placed some video clips of this presentation on this blog. After this it was back to meet our new home hosts for the week and get settled back into Auckland and the last half of our exchange.