The Team is Complete!

Well, I’ve gotten my whole team together now and I’m so excited because we have an awesome team! We’ve all got great attitudes and have fun together.

But first, this morning was great – I got some “me” time. I slept in, watched some TV, went for a great run around the small peninsula that juts out into the lake, took some great pics, then I took a bath, checked my email in the awesome office space that Seagate set up, uploaded my pics and then went to meet the last two members of my team that came in, today.

First, was Tommy who recognized me by our team t-shirt I was wearing. We then called up to Joel’s room and got him to come meet us in the lobby. Both guys again are strong and will really help the team. Tommy has a great sense of humor and really makes you feel at ease. Recently, when I asked about t-shirt sizes, Joel asked for an XXL, which frankly worried me just a bit. I thought he might be out of shape. How happy I was to see that he was also very fit and only wanted an XXL so it could shrink to his size. Whew! Well, I hadn’t been able to get Torsten all morning and Shariff was out with some friends so Joel, Tommy and I went into town – me, for some lunch. We had a nice time chatting together. Both of them were very at ease and casual and we got along famously. We also took a walk to the peninsula but didn’t have time to go all around it.

On the way back, we saw a street performer – magician/comedian – very cute. He slowed us down a bit so we were 10 minutes late for our scheduled rendezvous with the rest of the team. When we got back, Torsten and Shariff were both there so we finally had our whole team together – which was very exciting!
Joel and Tommy wanted to check out the Seagate office and call home so Shariff, Torsten and I got a head start. We walked a way up the lake’s shore.

View of the Rydges Hotel where we stayed for Eco as seen from the Queenstown peninsula.

I saw a tree that I noticed yesterday as a great climbing tree so I couldn’t resist a good climb. A few minutes later Torsten joined me and we were able to coax Shariff up – actually, he kind of RAN up the tree – very cool! When Tommy and Joel found us, they joined in on our spontaneous team-building exercise – our childlike romp in the tree.

The 5 of us stayed up in the tree at least an hour and a half just chatting and joking – building that trust that we read about in the “5 Dysfunctions of a Team” book that had been assigned to us. It was great fun. We had a passer-by take our picture and saw several Seagate folks pass by and notice us. It was fun to be noticed as the team in the tree. Finally, it was time to come down and get ready for the evening’s activities.

This evening we went to the Kiwi birdlife park in town. In our teams, we were to go through the park and find answers to questions about the birds and other animals and Maori (pronounced Mowri) culture. Joel took the lead on this and we found all the answers. I don’t know what we’ll get but hopefully it’ll be good.

For this, we all wore our team t-shirts and were one of only 3 or 4 teams that had t-shirts. We’re such a cool team!

We then, all got to ride a skyride up to the Skyline restaurant which is WAY up on the top of a cliff.

It’s a very nice restaurant where Seagate hosted a great dinner for us and introduced all the “Tribes” (several teams in a bigger group). We are in the blue or Tui tribe. A Tui is a kind of bird native to NZ that we saw in the park.

We sat at the same table as another team in our tribe and really enjoyed their company. The meal was great and the entertainment was awesome! They brought in some native New Zealand performers that performed some hakas or warrior chants. We had a high–spirited time cheering for our tribes and our new tribe leaders and trainers. Bill Watkins, our CEO came to each table to welcome us which was very nice of him and the Maori performers gave him a great gift. We took lots of pictures and had a great time.

We ended the evening with a nice walk back to the hotel after the skyride down, through Queenstown which was perfect since we had all eaten a lot. Now, I need to sleep because we’re getting up at 6:00 am to do some stretching before breakfast and our first full day of ECO!

The Race!

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