Christchurch

So it’s Monday, 5pm in Christchurch - God only knows what time that makes it in the UK - I think 6am Monday - and we’ve just got back from an afternoon at the cinema - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (kowabunga)! We’ve spent the last 2 days with Leif & Ruckmini and their 3 delightful children, Lucas (14), Orissa (10) and Cyrus (5).

Arrival
We arrived at lunchtime on Saturday - Leif was at the airport to meet us. After a few insults shared between him and Dan (“specky tw*t“ was one) I was convinced they did know each other of old. They reckoned that they hadn’t seen each other for 8 1/2 years! A long long time! So to cut a long story short, we then followed Leif to a school where he was doing the AV support for a conference (yes all of Dan’s mates are geeks!) where we sat and chatted to him in-between his AV responsibilities. We then wandered a bit into the nearest part of Christchurch for some NZ $$$$s and some coffee to keep us going. NZ is 2 hours ahead of Sydney, so in theory, no jet lag at all, but given the previous 2 days of partying, with the wedding and Dan’s birthday, we were completely wasted!

Welcome
We got back to their place after the conference and met all the kids - the 2 littlies were going ack to the conference’s evening entertainments with Ruc lmini, and we hung out at home with Lucas and got a take-away. Lucas is going to be some form of IT engineer - at 14 years old he’s rewriting a games engine for a game which has goine out of copyright. Dan and I vaguely understood what he was going on about but basically he’s more intelligent than the 2 of us put together!

Our Pad
Leif showed us our new residence for the next 11 days - they have a ‘granny flat’ set up at the back of the garage - we have a little bedroom and a sitting room! Fresh fruit, tea and coffee, jazzy wall hangings and an iMac! A warmer welcome couldn’t possibly be imagined!

Sunday
After a mega lovely sleep (8:45pm to 11:20am!!!) we staggered out of bed and got ourselves washed and decent. The guys came home from the lat 1/2 day of the conference and we sat in the garden, chatting, drinking killer coffee (yes guys I’m hooked again!) and eating dips, some lovely rice & seaweed crackers, olives and some muffins & cake! Brilliant! Leif then took us for a swift tour up the nearest ‘hill’ (hill=big F.O. mountain) so look at the spectacular view down over the city. WOW!
The evening was spent then eating our dinner, chatting and drinking wine. Discussing such subects as ‘Joey Deacon’, movies we have seen, and house prices in the UK.

So that brings us up to Monday - some eating drinking and cinema activity!
More to come as and when it happens!