Sunday, March 15, 2009

A Week of Water


Last weekend was Stephens' birthday. Friday was pretty quiet, but Saturday, with lovely sunshine and no wind, we decided to head down to the beach with a picnic and $40 to learn to surf. We did pretty well for first timers, though halfway through I could no longer push myself up with my arms as they'd turned to spaghetti. Apparently I need to do more pushups at home. But it has been decided we will be back to do it again.


On wednesday we went to see the Ellerslie flower show. It was simply a huge trade show with a flower theme. There were a number of garden 'examples' by various local and regional landscape designers, organizations, and architects. As well as 5 or 6 tents with mysteriously long and sinuous line-ups leading into them. It was amazing how long a lineup people were willing to get into in order to get into these tents where there were no flowers, just vendors selling things! Oh well, to each their own. After seeing the displays, watching a marching band, and touring the garden sculptures we decided to head home and make dinner.

This past weekend we went sailing. A couple of friends of ours had given us a sailing trip here in Christchurch as a wedding present. So we called up the company and organized it for last Saturday at 9am. Amazingly the weather was dead calm when we woke up at 7am. Quite a rarity for Christchurch. Nor had the wind picked up by 9am when we got there. In fact the wind didn't start up until around 11am, by which time we were puttering about in a small harbour across the bay from Lyttleton (the port we had left from). Despite not being under our own power for the entire time, we listened gleefully to the stories Mike, our skipper, regaled us with. The time he saw orcas leading their baby into the bay. The time he found a box full of money just floating in the pier, just below a foreign freighter crawling with police and customs officials (he and the boys divied it up and went to the pub to celebrate). And even older stories about the war and more. It was a great trip and absolutely wonderful to be out on the water again.

I know pictures of our flat have been requested. However, at the moment it is not in the best of states to be photographed. So I will instead include a layout plan to allay any nagging desires to know how we live.





Best wishes to you all.

Cheers,
Erin

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