Angela there is someone on the phone for you...your friend has just been hospitalised

---

Yip, you gotta love it when your boss interrupts you taking an order from a table with those words!! Thankfully Rhiannon was ok and had "just" fallen off her bike and not been struck by a lorry which was my main fear while legging it to the hospital! Not being the best on bikes...she fell off and has broken her collar bone and skinned every patch of skin on her elbows and knees! Needless to say she is in a lot of pain but she is a brave little soldier so is doing fine. (there are some lovely photos on her blog for those of you who like to see shoulders at two completely different heights!)It will take a while to heal though and she can't even enjoy her days off due to the pain associated with dressing/walking/getting in a car. That really only leaves her with one past time...looking out for a mouse that has invaded our house....I mouse might I add that must have attacked me in my sleep as I went to bed one night with ear plugs in and woke up the next day to find them neatly shredded and left next to a wee pile of mouse poop next to my bed! It's a clever mouse though. I laid down some food and waited ever so patiently for it to come out of it's hiding place so I could trap it with a bucket! Needless to say the mouse was a no show!

Christmas may be drawing closer but I certainly am not feeling it! Despite my best efforts! Last week we got a Christmas tree (Louise's first real tree!) and decorated it beautifully with decorations for our favouritest shop in New Zealand "The Warehouse - where everyone gets a bargin"! It did have a few broken limbs as I single-handedly bought it and squeezed it into our car in an attempt to surprise the flat mates!

I have just finished my second day at Environment Canterbury and it it good fun. The work is quite tough but the people I work with are really patient and helpful as they try to train me. I have the title of a Resource Consents Officer but I feel more like I should have the title of "the kid playing at being a resource consents officer"! I have my first field trip tomorrow which means I will be getting paid for looking at the beautiful scenery of New Zealand! How cool!

Other adventures since the last blog include a wee trip to the most amazing Christmas house on the planet! It has a garden with 12 sheds which are meant to be like the 12 days of Christmas. They are packed full of lights and dolls and basically junk! There is even a baby Jesus with a real life pig for company! Inside the house, every room is jam packed with lights or soft toys or other random objects. Words really cannot explain what it looks like...I have photos that I will post on Friday....honestly you have to see them to believe them! As the house was in the middle of no where, we stopped for a wee drink in a pub on the way home! We got chatting to the local fencers who were on their Christmas night out! They take their job very seriously and offered to train us in fencing! The landlord was ecstatic at the number of people in his pub (us and the fencing guys) that they opened later tan usual and gave us money to put on songs from the juke box! Sadly it was still a couple of hours drive back home to Christchurch...a journey which RJ decided we would test 4 wheel driving in...the only problem was that the gear was stuck in 4WD and we couldn't move!For a few minutes we were stuck in the middle of the road! Strange car indeed!

The final adventure I wish to share is our visit to the local Afghan resteraunt! We walked in and waited patiently to order while the owner ran about and got things sorted....5 minutes later our food was on our table as apparently you don't get to choose, he makes you food and you eat! It was however a lovely giant kebab served on the biggest piece of kebab bread I have ever seen. We had our leftovers for dinner the next night too!

Anyhoo, after a hard day at work, I am starvin marvin so I'm off home for some grub. Hope the rain has stopped at home....I can still get burnt in half an hour here! he he!

---