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Published: September 8th 2006
TranzAlpine
Picture taken from the train coming back from the West Coast. Hello all,
Hope this finds everyone doing well. Sorry for the delay in posting here, but as the last month has been quite a blur, it's been hard to sit and get thoughts down.
The past three weeks have been quite eventful to say the least. My flatmates and I have been house-sitting for an American lady oringally from Dublin, GA who has gone back to the states for a visit. The house-sitting should be termed "house-kid-dog sitting" since it also included an 18 year old and two older dogs. The first week was great, as we enjoyed having a large house to spread out in, internet access, and 15 acres on the outskirts of Christchurch to rome - beautiful surroundings. After that first week, the older dog, Rascal came home one morning violently ill - bleedling around his paws and mouth, not eating, immobile....you get the idea. Well to make a long story short, after six vet visits, daily injections, and early morning struggles to get pills down his throat, the blood infection he acquired has subsided and he's stable for the time being.
As for the 18 year old - making sure he went to school
Lyttleton Harbor
Banks Pennisula, suburb of Christchurch and ate daily was quite interesting (may I mention NZ's legal age of 18 for drinking didn't make the job any easier)...do I ever want to have kids?! 'Nuff said.
During the chaos, last weekend along with two friends, I took a train trip from Christchurch over to Greymouth located on the West Coast. Supposedly one of the top five scenic train trips in the world, it certainly lived up to all expectations. We left early Saturday morning on the four-hour journey and returned Sunday afternoon. There were amazing snow-capped mountains, viaducts, winding rivers, plains...and of course plenty of sheep. As they say in the NZ marketing ads - "Pure New Zealand" pretty much sums it up best. Greymouth, supposedly the largest city (if you can call it that) on the South Island's West Coast, proved to be uneventful so we did the only thing we new to do there - taste test all varieties of Monteiths beer made locally. The brewery was unfortunatley closed that afternoon, so we bedded down in the local Irish Pup and tasted away. See attached pics from the train trip.
Believe it or not, we saw the GT/Notre Dame game live last
Monteiths Brewery
Were all the "taste testing" went down... weekend on the Internet (free, cool site by the way). Since UGA played at about 4am here, I snoozed through that one. Now that we don't have internet access at home anymore, we will have to settle for the highlights.
Hopefully in the next weekend, we're heading out to the surrounding mountains for skiing while they still have snow. Last Friday was the first day of Spring here, so hopefully warmer weather is not far away - everything is turning green so that's a good sign. My job at the City Council will be ending on the 15th, so it's time to move on... Will let you know what happens with that. Hard to believe I've already been in NZ almost three months. Where does the time go....
Take care.
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