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Published: January 13th 2007
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And what a year it is going to be!
I am still really enjoying life in New Zealand. Work at Ecan is lots of fun and I am learning so much. I went on site visits for 2 days to Kaikoura which is a beautiful area. As well as learning about the area and the consents in that area, I also got to visit the seal colony after we had finished work! You can go out on boats whale watching and you are almost guaranteed to see whales. There had been Orca's there the day before. The Department of Conservation (DOC) has really strict rules for the whale watching there. Only one boat company and one helicopter company are allowed to run tours and only 2 vessels are allowed near the whales at any one time. We might go back and do one of the tours but at nearly 100 dollars a go, it is quite expensive!
Christmas away from home was very strange. As much as I hate to admit it, the otherside of the world really is a long way from family and friends! We still had a fantastic day though.
On Christmas Eve we went
Alison meets a giant kiwi
I told her not to annoy it..... to see the Kiwi band "the feelers" play live in town. They were really good but the vibrations for the bass shook poor Rhiannon's collar bone so much that she was in quite a lot of pain by the end! On Christmas day we cooked a huge turkey but got so distracted with making sure we didn't poison ourselves, we forgot to make the starters! Alison made us a traditional Scurly to go with it. We had never heard of it (apparently its a Dundee thing!) but it was quite tasty! We also had bread sauce, another thing that I don't traditionally have. It was quite nice but I wasn't as big as a fan as Louise! She loves it! On boxing day we went for a wee walk at the top of the Port Hills near our house. It was the first time we had been up to that location and the views from the park were lovely. You don't realise how big the city is until you see it from above!
New Years was also lots of fun. We had a bit of a party at our house with just the five of us before heading out
Heading to Arthurs pass
Our car had to make it up those mountains!! to the central square in town to listen to some live music and watch some fireworks. It was so strange being out at the bells and not being totally and utterly freezing! We had Kiwi pavlova the next day...a great New Zealand Tradition!
Other trips we have done since I last blogged include a trip to the local wildlife park where we got to feed giraffes and I got to see my first real life kangaroo! We also went on a lovely walk along part of the coast. The coastline is riddled with tunnels and gun mounts from WWII but we didn't see any because I parked the car at the wrong car park at the bottom of the hill! Ooops!
We also went to another concert...to see Tenacious D! It was really funny. The day before the show, Jack Black had been out in town and asked two local boys to support him. They must have only been around 12 years old and they looked petrified as they stepped out on stage! They did really well though. I attempted to count the number of swear words used during the concert but soon stopped as I reached 12
Kea
The apline parrots unique to this part of New Zeland before Tenacious D even got on stage...the other support band was a very similar style to Jack Blacks work!
Our other big trip included a day at Arthur' Pass, the highest village in the whole of New Zealand I believe (maybe only south island though) at about 955metres high. There were some spectacular views as we climbed higher and higher and crossed all the braided rivers. Arthurs Pass is also the only place that has a special kind of alpine parrot which lives at the high altitudes. They are called Kias and are very cheeky. The side of the slopes are so unstable that at one point you have to drive through a rock shelter which prevents the road from bring clogged up with all the gravel coming off the slopes!!
I bought a shiny new BBQ with some Christmas money from my lovely mummy and daddy, the only problem is that the weather has been so bad, I haven't yet been able to christen it! I don't want to use it until a really lovely day when we can take it to the beach! We have to be careful here though, due to bush fires, there are
a lot of area which are fire exclusion zones and you therefor can't use the BBQs! We did have one BBQ with a disposable one but it just isn't as good...although I very much doubt that even with the brand new sparkly one, we won't be able to match daddy's expert skills. Practice makes perfect tough. Lets just hope the weather improves enough to give us lots of practice! xxxxx
PS: It won't let me upload photos but I will try posting them again tomorrow as some of them are amazing!!
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