The bright side of life...

December 30, 2007

Today was a pretty boring day! I had In Port Manning, so I couldn’t leave the ship – so I slept in kinda late, went to the gym, took a shower and didn’t start work until 4 p.m.! But what does suck is that I found out we have to babysit until midnight tomorrow night – so there’s no celebrating with friends AGAIN! Damn…Then, I heard that the one day we’re in Russia, no crew is allowed to get off!! What kinda crap is that??????

Yesterday was great though – I was up really early for an excursion that was a tour of Christchurch and Canterbury. We started the morning by heading out to a lookout point just to look over the city of Christchurch, which is beautiful (as is all of New Zealand…maybe I should marry a Kiwi??). Then we headed out to Riccarton House and Bush (which means forest). Riccarton House is a Victorian home which is one of the oldest buildings in the Canterbury plains owns by the Deans family who is highly influential here. The house was beautiful with tons of imported woods and luxurious things around the home. The gardens around the home were spectacular – as is every garden here. Christchurch is known as “The Garden City.”

Next, we headed off to Homebush Stables in Homebush. We started with a sheep herding demonstration and there were sheep that were only about weeks old. You’ll have to see them when I eventually post the pictures! I also have a video of the sheep herding as well as the sheep shearing demonstration. The sheep he sheared (?) had 18 months worth of wool on it, so I think it lost about 30 pounds of wool!! We walked around the property which was amazingly beautiful and the family still lives in the home there! There was a woman who turned the wool into thread and we watched her use a New Zealand made spinner to thread it all around a spool. After all of that, we headed inside for a great dinner that was made for us – food was fantastic!!!

The next stop was the Antarctic Center. Basically, the US Antarctic Research Center is located there also. But, you can go on a Hagglund ride and see blue New Zealand penguins. There is also the Antarctic experience where they give you booties and a jacket and send you into a room covered in ice and snow (really slippery!!) with a snow slide and an igloo. The lights dim down really low, the wind picks up and the temperatures drop to -17 degrees Celsius! It was a bit cold for my taste. We didn’t get to explore too much because the rest of the tour was quite rushed, so we only have 45 minutes to see the entire attraction unfortunately! L

Our last stop was the Art Center of the City. We literally had about 20 minutes there which really stunk because there were lots of local artists there who had tons of beautiful jewelry and I had no time to look! I also found some New Zealand wool boots – I think I might be investing in some before we leave here J They had a great fudge store – I wish it wasn’t so expensive to ship because I’d love to send some to Aunt Louise! It’s fantastic – they had bailey’s fudge and double chocolate and probably 15 other flavors!

I guess that’s about all for now – I still haven’t posted any pictures like I said because the internet is so freakin slow! I will try and find a place tomorrow in Wellington that I can get some!

Happy New Year! I’ll be celebrating it long before you all will, but I guess there’s not much celebration with 3-7 year olds!

Here’s to a great 2008!