Friday
Today our Stray trip ended, we woke up and departed Rangitata around 7
and drove into Christchurch. We were dropped off at the airport, picked up our
rental car and headed into the city.
The ocean - 15 minute drive from the city
We didn’t know what to do in Christchurch
or even that much about the city except for the two earthquakes that occurred
in September 2010 and February 2011. The earthquake was the most powerful
natural event to have ever happened in New Zealand and (the second one in
February) it killed 185 people.
In September there was a 7.1M earthquake that did not take any lives but
when the 6.3M earthquake hit in February it took many lives in the second mist
populous city in NZ.
When you drive through the city now it is so sad, buildings are
condemned, houses have huge cracks in them, the huge cathedral is in ruins, and
the construction has just began. When we
walked past some of the shops nothing has been touched since that day because
people cannot go into the buildings because hey could collapse at any moment.
We walked through Christchurch with a heavy heart, just walking through
the city is somber but there is a feeling of hope as well.
After walking through the city we headed into a new part of town that
was made of freight containers! There were shops and restaurants that have
moved into really neat freight containers. We had a nice late lunch/dinner
there and then headed to our hostel.
Since there isn’t much to do we watched a movie (I fell asleep within 10
minutes) with some of our friends from the bus. It was nice spending some more
time with them even though our bus trip was over.
Saturday:
Today we all graduated from Indiana
University! It was a bitter sweet day – we wanted to be back participating in
the ceremonies but we were happy and lucky to be in NZ.
We each bought a bottle of champagne and went
to one of the beautiful parks and took some cheesy “graduation” pictures
holding champagne and a fake diploma.
The girls
and I then headed downtown to get a massage! We definitely needed one especially after canyoning, being on a bus, and sleeping on horrible
mattresses! It was sooo relaxing!
We then went to a delicious Greek resturuant
that I read about in a magazine – boy this was one of the best meals I have had
in NZ! It was soooo yummy!
After dinner we headed back to the hostel and
celebrated graduating with some of our friends and our new Irish roommate. I
headed to bed around midnight because we had a 6am flight in the morning and
had to return our rental car beforehand, 3:30am wake up calls are not fun at
all!
Sunday we had it safe and sound back into
Auckland with the whole day to relax, sleep, do tons of laundry and enjoy the
day!
School started the following day (last
Monday)! Back at it!
I now only have 8 official days of teaching left (I go on a field trip
next Sun-Tuesday) and then I wait for Jeff to arrive!
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