The Sheep Has Landed...Upside Down.

So here we are again.  Blog time. New look.  New trip.  Sheep. Rugby....Richard Simmons????

We had a rather inauspicious start to the trip, but things only improved from there.  We had a layover in L.A. for five hours, so we weren't panicking in Seattle when an apologetic flight attendant (<--that's still PC right?) came on to say, "I'm afraid we have some bad news."  Basically what happened is the plane got a new windshield recently and the interior caulking was not coping with it's new covering very well.  "Purely cosmetic, but it will take a few hours for the new caulking to dry."  Everybody out!

After about an hour of napping near the gate to hear any more news (clearly I was paying rapt attention), we were instructed to meet our new plane at a different terminal, and that was the end of that.

Our short layover in Auckland provided us with a show.  Apparently Santa has a day job before the 25th:

There were film crews around, so it must have been a promotion for New Zealand Air, which, by the way, has good food and free NZ wine, not to mention your own TV set with way more viewing choices than you'd need for even the lengthy 12 hour flight.  Two thumbs up to that.   My only real "anthropological experience" on the two Air New Zealand flights of the trip were the safety videos.  Let's just say that everyone is just a little bit "Rugby Happy" down here right now.  They teamed up with the All Blacks to do the safety video. Trond hid behind a book and pretended not to notice.  I don't know. I thought it was amusing and heard several people laugh throughout.  Point being: You actually watch the safety video!

Oh alright!  Here's the link!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ_kMrDmlQY

and if THAT wasn't bad enough, watch what we had for our SECOND flight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgpYtJMQQjc

Yes, that is indeed Richard Simmons.  I'm pretty sure Trond wanted to die at this point.  But he watched the safety video!

Unfortunately, the day was cloudy, so my dream of once again seeing the Southern Alps poke up through the morning light was dashed.  Still haven't seen them actually...

Both Trond's parents met us at the Christchurch airport.  I got a hug from Trond's mother Svanaug (she's from Norway) and a friendly greeting from his (more quiet) father, Alan.

Driving through town from the airport did not reveal much in the way of earthquake damage from February 22nd of this year.  I saw a few "bendy" tiled roofs and some stone fences that had been propped up with stabilizing wooden frames.  Svanaug kept saying that the roads were damaged and all bumpy now.  I can honestly say that despite their "disrepair" I thought they were still doing a better job of being roughly flat than, say, Seattle.  I guess the roads are usually incredibly smooth.  There were patches around and the occasional sinking dip, but everything was filled in and repaired.  Getting the infrastructure back together seemed to be the first thing that was fixed (though some roads are still closed).

I actually don't want to dwell on the earthquake damage much.  I may do so on a later date, but everything I've seen in the past few days has merely been glimpsed through the windows of a moving car.  I think their fleeting aspect makes things appear more harsh than they actually are.  I can say that life is continuing on in a more or less normal way for the residents of Christchurch.  The government did an amazing job in not only responding, but in taking care of people long-term.  People who have been forced to vacate their homes, for example, have been given the funds to purchase new ones.  This is all organized and carried out by the Earthquake Commission (EQC).  Those who lost their livelihoods are also compensated with unemployment.  The more I read the paper the more I am amazed at how well organized this all is.  I keep thinking: Wow.  This would not work in the States at all.

I know LOTS about the earthquake and recovery efforts now, in fact.  I've made it a habit since arriving to read the local newspaper every morning.  Some of you may have heard that I plan to write a more serious travel blog on the side.  The point of that blog will be to promote the return of tourism to the area.  Many good things on the horizon for that.

In this first week, however, I have spent many leisurely hours reading and getting myself ready to write LOTS while I'm here.  Preparing the start a serious travel blog is no easy business.  There's a lot of research involved.  I've been keeping my ears open, brainstorming, and asking questions.  There's so much information to sift through.  So far, I've been reading ABOUT travel writing, which has been very interesting.  We'll see where it takes me.

In the meantime, Trond has been taking me around his hometown.  I've been able to meet a lot of his friends just in the first few days, with us out almost every night since I've been here.  I really like his friends.  They are each their own very unique person, but they are linked through that.  It's a little strange how often "Dr. Who" has come up in conversations.  And by strange, I of course mean "awesome."  Also, one of them has a fabulous ragdoll cat named Ted.  Apparently they named him that (it's a declension of the name he originally had, which now escapes me) just so they could use the, "Haaaaaave you met Ted?" quote.  Trond is allergic to Ted, so he's been sneezing a bit the past couple of days.

Daihatsu up and up to the top of a viewpoint called, "Sign of the Bellbird."  If you take a gander at googlemaps of Christchurch, head south to the Cashmere hills, then up the side of them to the southwest.  Sign of the Bellbird is just south of something called, "Kennedy's Bush" (a campsite) along the road up there.  You'll have to really zoom into the Kennedy's Bush section of the map if you want the Sign of the Bellbird to even appear on the map.  If you see the positioning of the viewpoint, you can imagine the view.  Well, actually, you don't have to:

Looking east toward Lyttelton Harbour from the Sign of the Bellbird viewpoint.

We spent a few hours up there one afternoon.  After we had bought some delicious meat pies (Steak and mushroom?  Yes, please!) I sat there and read a book while he did some work on the laptop.  We both slipped in and out of consciousness a few times.  Also, at one point, I got out to walk around the nearby trails and take pictures.  I love that I can walk through long grass and not worry about anything living in them.  No poisonous spiders, no ticks, no snakes.  At all.  Anywhere in the country.  Here are a few more pics from up there.  We were on the top of a ridge, so it was nice to hope across the road to get views of the plains below.

An old scenic post from 1906 overlooking the Canterbury Plains.  Broom's a' bloomin'!

The ridge-top trails to all the way to the tip of the point past Lyttelton Harbour.  I'm pretty sure that the birds I was hearing all around me were, in fact, the Bellbirds.

I love how covered with green, growing things New Zealand is.  Even in the city, there are trees EVERYWHERE.  Weeping Willows adorn the streams and rivers and Birch swivel their leaves in the ever-present wind.

A convenient spot to hop the fence.  After all, it's to keep the sheep in their pens, not people.  I believe these are called, "stiles" and are very reminiscent of Scotland, at least for me.  I, of course, hopped right over to see where THIS trail led.

And this is what I found.  A very closed-in, green tunnel of mystery.  It would have been very easy to follow the many-branching trails within the forest, but it would also have been easy to lose my way on the way back, so I only poked in for a few hundred yards before returning to the open air. 

I look forward to more journeys up into the hills that are expressly for hiking.  I'm even hoping to traverse the incredibly long ridge-trail that (allegedly) takes about 5 hours each way.  (Pretty sure we'd have someone pick us up on the end side, though.  ^_^").  But that will have to wait, unfortunately, until health improves.

Trond has been recovering from a coughing cold that we think he developed over Thanksgiving.  It appears that I have been carrying around the sickness just under the surface these past two weeks.  After the immunity-battering plane trips, I have finally succumbed.  It's annoying, but not debilitating.  No arduous tasks!  Well, okay if you insist...twist my arm...

In fact, Trond and I are about to head south tomorrow for a leisurely road trip for the rest of the week.  We will stop in Timaru where his sister, brother-in-law, and two little nieces live.  After that, it's down to the Catlins National Park to visit cruising friends at their holiday park.  Unfortunately, we are missing the owners in their own pre-Christmas travels, but their daughter Nicole will be there.  The next couple of days will be spent wandering around Lake Te Anau and Milford Sound.  I'm really looking forward to taking TONS of pictures.  Hopefully the weather will change for the better. It has been really windy and a bit cold here since my arrival.  Overcast, too.  I'm ready for sunshine!

Speaking of sunshine, there was a bit of it the other morning.  I immediately found myself dragging a plastic chair from the back porch (relieving it of it's 8-legged residents) to a spot in the garden under a tree.  I read there quite blissfully for over an hour.  It's nice for the sun to be out and actually producing HEAT.

Trond's house has an amazing garden in the back.  It easily takes up more square footage than the first story of the house.  Huge roses, red, pink, and white are blooming near the house.  A vibrant kiwifruit plant is winding its way up a frame that covers the back porch, which gives the underside a leafy, cave-like ambiance.  Various pear trees abound, as well as myriad fruits and vegetables.  We've been sampling much of them since our arrival.  The strawberries are ripening!  I'm waiting to take pictures until the sun comes out again.

That's something that's been a bit weird; the climactic change and the same date thing going on.  It's December 11th and it's supposed to be in the 70s tomorrow.  Not that I'm complaining. It's just weird for "winter."  No!  It's summer!  But it's December!  Gah!  I'm sure I'll settle down eventually.

I doodled this the other day, much to local amusement.