Leaving Christchurch

This blog marks my last few days in Christchurch, which is incredibly sad. I can’t believe how fast my time here has flown by and how much fun I’ve had. Living in a new country, coming here knowing no one, seeing so many spectacular parts of New Zealand, and making amazing friendships I know will last far beyond my stay here have all made this easily the most amazing experience of my life. I’m so thankful that my study abroad experience exceeded my high expectations and I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I’d chosen to go somewhere else or especially if I hadn’t forced myself to get out of my comfort zone and follow a dream at all. I hope that I can hold these feelings with me as I go on in life and continue being willing to do things that might be hard because new experiences and connections are so rewarding in the long run. For anyone who’s been part of my life in Christchurch who might be reading this, I hope you know you’re amazing and thank you so much for coming into my life. I will always carry these last 4 months with me.

I spent my last weekend here out on the nearby Banks Peninsula camping with Bernard. It’s a beautiful area but every time I’ve been out that way it’s been rainy so I was hoping this last hurrah would treat us kindly. Of course that was too much to ask and it was so stormy as we drove over we could hardly see 10 feet in front of us. Luckily when we got to the campground things started clearing up, and by the next morning it was pretty nice and we were able to wander around and check out the beautiful area. This combined with plenty of hot chips and movies made for a great last weekend.

Rainy bay

Sunny bay!

Gorgeous Banks Peninsula

I’ve spent my time since finals frantically hanging out with everyone, trying to squeeze in as much time together as we can before many people head home. It’s been sad to say goodbye to so many of the other exchange students but my consolation prize is I’m not even close to going home yet! My mom arrives in New Zealand today and we’re taking off for a few weeks of travel together and then I’ll meet up with some other friends to round out my month-long tour of the sights I’ve missed. As Semisonic said, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end, so though I’m sad to wish Christchurch goodbye I’m also very excited for this last leg of my stay here. I might not be blogging as much because I’ll be traveling but I will have internet with my couchsurfing hosts and such so I’ll do my best to keep whoever might actually be reading this posted! Bon voyage!

Christchurch video blog - please watch! :)

The last few weeks I've been working on a video project for my Rebuilding Christchurch class and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I wanted to make something that would help people at home understand how extensive the damage from the earthquakes is and what it's like to live somewhere that's recovering from such a tragedy.

It was a very strange experience for me to come here only knowing what I'd seen on the news and then realize how wrong my perceptions had been - it's at the same time worse and longer lasting damage than I imagined and also less sensational. I've become increasingly curious about learning about the earthquakes the longer I've been here and it's only made me realize now that I can never understand what it was like to be here in February no matter how much I want to. But I think trying to understand is, in itself, valuable and I've been a little disappointed that many of the exchange students I know didn't seem to share this sensitive curiosity. What I'm trying to say with all this rambling is that I wanted to share the small insight I might have gained from all the thinking I've done while living here and I hope people who don't live here might understand a little better too.

This video project came at a perfect time because the first major recovery development since the earthquake came last weekend. There wasn't much hype about this beforehand, which I think made it even more heartwarming. They opened up one corner of the central business district (aka the red zone that has been guarded and fenced off since the earthquake while they knock down most of the downtown's buildings) and turned it into a few blocks worth of shops, bus exchange, and pedestrian urban container shopping area. I was so impressed and touched to be here for this and it was really incredible to see the streets absolutely flooded with people in a place that's just been behind a depressing fence the whole time I've been here. This is the first really visible sign of recovery there's been and I'm so pleasantly surprised that this came soon enough for me to experience it. 

Everything colored used to be closed

Arch in the background is the Bridge of Remembrance - if you go way back to my second ever blog there are pictures of it still fenced off

Being a dork with Prime Minister John Key

Winning the rugby world cup and other fun things

The most exciting thing that’s happened recently is that New Zealand won the rugby world cup! We went to the fan zone to watch the game sporting some finely crafted face paint. The place was packed at it was really fun to see so many people come out and get excited. The game was against France and was too close for comfort – in all honesty France played much better than New Zealand – but somehow the All Blacks pulled out a victory and it was so fun to be there for it. They haven’t won since 1987 even though they’re consistently the best team in the world. Even better, the last time they won was in New Zealand and that time was also against France, so this was a repeat of history. It was especially special in light of the hard year a lot of Kiwis have had with all the earthquakes. Christchurch was supposed to be one of the host cities for the world cup but lost that chance when the stadium was destroyed in the earthquake.

The day after the victory the whole All Blacks team came to Christchurch (with the shiny gold cup in hand) for a parade and speech at the fan zone. I was glad to be there for that because in some small way winning the world cup has made up for the earthquakes for a lot of people (yeah, they’re that obsessed with rugby) and this is really the first happy thing that’s happened in Christchurch in a year. It was also just fun to see all the guys in real life because they’re superstars here and I think it meant a lot to people that they would come to Christchurch. Much of the team is from Christchurch so it was pretty special that they were ‘bringing the world cup home’.

Aside from rugby I’ve been doing boring stuff like relaxing and studying – took one final, two more exams and a video project I’m pretty excited about to go. Only other real stories to share are a few little trips around Christchurch I’ve done.

My flatmate brought a lamb home from her parents' farm!

GapFiller event, an organization that puts public art on sites of demolished buildings

View towards Banks Peninsula, walking around in the hills south of Chch

View of Canterbury plains from a day hike up Mt. Grey

That’s all for now – only  three weeks left in Christchurch (wow oh my god sad), including two exams and one last weekend hike, before I take off for further adventures!

Last week of class and other Christchurch life

Somehow it’s the last week of class here! I can’t tell you how that happened, time is both flying by and making me feel like I’ve been here for way longer than three months. So here’s the breakdown of my remaining time in NZ: one month during which I have three finals spread out in (I know, what an annoying way of doing it) and then another five weeks in which I’ll travel around in parts with my mom, alone, and with friends. I leave for home December 20, so I’m a bit past halfway through my time here – that helps slightly with the bit of panic in the back of my mind about coming home when I really don’t want to yet.

So, recent events! I’ve been spending a lot of downtime in Christchurch, which has been nice to just relax a bit and have some quality time with the lovely friends I’ve made here. My life during the school week is not particularly eventful – class, yoga, sushi for lunch, library, hang out with friends in the evening. It’s been spring for the last few weeks so on nice days it’s very enjoyable to hang out outside and soak in the sun. Pictures are better than words for showing what I’ve been up to lately:

Cherry trees blooming on campus

Girls' night

Ducklings in my apartment complex

Dahlia's birthday

All is blooming in the botanical gardens

Rugby fanzone

All Blacks games are getting more and more exciting -

only the semifinal and final left in the world cup!

Taylor's Mistake beach out on the coast

Somehow we got involved in some sort of black sheep flash mob at the rugby fanzone.

Video here: http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/sheepish-rwc-tale-video-4458281

Only other noteworthy occasion that has no photos to go with it is that we had a 5.5 earthquake! That's by far the biggest one since I've been here but still not even close to the really bad ones they had a year ago. It was the first one to be big enough to be a little scary but still wasn't too bad - some serious shaking and lights swinging from the ceiling but no power outage or damage so we carried on watching the rugby semifinal. Just another day in the usual New Zealand life :)

Christchurch life – tragedy anniversaries, rugby, volunteering

Life since break has been good but pretty low key – a lot of resting, catching up on school, and hanging out around Christchurch. My life in the last two weeks has consisted of a lot of relaxing, good conversations, cooking awesome snacks, watching movies, and spreading the Arrested Development gospel to my Kiwi friend. School here is harder than expected and staying on top of things has been consuming a lot of time and energy, but only five weeks of class left! Don’t panic like I did the other day – I’m just shy of the halfway mark of my time here, so even though class ends soon I have a month of finals and a month of travel after class ends. Not to worry.

One of the most memorable things that’s happened in the last week or two is the anniversaries of both the first earthquake in Christchurch (September 4) and 9/11. There’s a lot of similarity in the feelings people seem to have about these tragedies and it certainly makes you think and remember and appreciate how lucky you are. As I’ve written about, downtown Christchurch is totally devastated and will be closed for years, but they are gradually bringing events and art and life back into the area around the fence. We checked out the Canterbury Museum, which just reopened, and a lot of public art put on by the Christchurch Arts Festival, and it was great to see people down near city center. On September 4 they unveiled two beams of light from the dark city center to represent hope, which I watched from the fence, and it’s a touching idea but still sad that there was no sort of public event where everyone could come together again and start to heal. This sort of private, insular way is very characteristic of Christchurch culture.

Another sign of life near city center is the Rugby World Cup fan zone they’ve set up in the park downtown! The World Cup started last week and is a really big deal because it’s hosted in NZ this year, it only happens every 4 years, and NZ is pretty much accepted as the best rugby team in the world and fittingly Kiwis are obsessed with it. I went with some Kiwi friends to the opening night, which had an awesome opening ceremony (check it out here if you want, gorgeous and fascinating Maori history http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GkXpQhc51g) and celebrated the All Blacks’ first win against Tonga. It’s great to see people out and excited and coming together, especially in Christchurch since they really need that and it isn’t happening. It’s silly, but rugby is so big here that it’s really something that brings people together. So the next month of games and festivities should be really fun!

Another really cool thing that I did last weekend was some volunteering with the Student Volunteer Army. This is a university club that just exploded in size after the earthquakes, becoming one of the most important volunteer groups and getting international recognition for their service. They have an unbelievable and inspiring story, so I’d encourage anyone to read more about them if you’re interested (start here http://www.facebook.com/StudentVolunteerArmy). Last weekend they were getting done a few odd projects left over from past service events so Dahlia and Bernard and I got sent out to a preschool to do some serious yardwork so they could build an orchard for the kids. We spent about three hours weedwhacking, which was exhausting but so fun and satisfying! My arms are still aching as I write this three days later. Little projects like that don’t seem to matter much but I think when you combine many of these little projects it means a lot because people feel like support is out there and that people are helping each other. It was great to be a part of something like that, since I really wanted to help being here but there’s not much to do anymore unless you’re an engineer or a demolition worker. We even got official SVA t shirts! I am very excited about that because the shirts are so recognizable and these students are seen as heroes in the community.

The field we were up against

 Very excited about this shirt

 Looking badass as usual - we forgot to take an after picture but look how good that grass looks

A few other recent happenings: last week my flatmates had another girls’ night so I went out to a club with them, always good to bond even if we spent the whole time avoiding a really drunk Irish guy. Another friend that has a car tried to teach me to drive manual recently, which was a hilarious ordeal because after 15 minutes of not managing to get into first gear I was too frustrated and gave up (temporarily!) without actually making it into the road. I’m determined to learn though! Even if it is on the left side of the street. My last piece of exciting news is that it’s finally spring here! Things are blooming and it’s been in the 60s and it is so nice – it feels good to finally almost be on the good end of the opposite weather thing. Today was warm and grey and a little drizzly and felt very much like Seattle, which was nice for 5 minutes until I realized with horror that I’m not used to the rain any more and I don’t like it and it’s going to suck when I get back. On that cheerful note I’ll sign off – lots of exciting hikes coming up, keep an eye out!

Concerts galore!

The weekends here are the best, there’s always a ton going on and people going to all these cool places. It’s great to have options, I feel like I’ll never run out of things to see while I’m here.

As I’ve probably already mentioned, most of the nightlife in Christchurch is shut down, but I was pleased to find there are still some music venues open and so I went to two different concerts this weekend. The first was a rock-type band that’s big here in New Zealand and they’re really good, you can check them out here if you’re interested: http://www.facebook.com/Six60
The usual venue is closed the earthquake so the concert was in a big circus style tent in the parking lot, which was kind of fun, and we had a great time dancing all night and making some new friends. The buses don’t run very late here so most people take taxis home from these things and it was chaos – we had to wait an hour and a half for ours to come but luckily we found a Denny’s (salvation!) for a midnight snack while we waited. We pretended it was my birthday and got a free ice cream sundae.

The next day the apartments we all live in was putting on a free trip out to Hanmer Springs, which is 2 hours away and closer to the mountains. That was the first time I’ve really gotten far out of Christchurch so the bus ride was great to just soak in the scenery. It’s so beautiful here, we were all quite excited as we went through farmlands (tons of sheep) and then up into rocky hills to the foot of the Southern Alps. It was very Lord of the Rings looking. We walked around the town a bit, enjoyed soaking in the hot springs, and then headed back to get ready for the evening. We couldn’t really get good pictures from the bus but here are a few:

The second concert was called the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party so it was Alice in Wonderland themed and had a lot of bands and weird entertainment on stage. I don’t think it was quite as crazy or cool as we were expecting but it was still really fun, lots of great costumes and weird dancers and stuff. I’m really glad all the friends I’ve made here like dancing just as much as my best friends do at home because going somewhere with lights and loud music is so fun! Here are some pictures from that concert:

People on the bus ride there with various crazy costumes - we all tried to wear the brightest clothes we have but we're unprepared living out of suitcases!

Luckily Phil and I found some sparkly hats on the floor.

This girl had a crazy light up hula hoop

A taste of the kinds of performers they had

Hard to see but this was an acrobat doing that thing on ropes!

And some happy/sweaty concert goers.

Now I’m in the library trying to not spend a fortune on internet; needless to say it’s a little hard to buckle down and do schoolwork but so far it hasn’t taken too much time. There are a lot more Winterlude events this week (it’s their two week start to the semester where the student association puts on a bunch of cool stuff) and I think one of the girls I really like and I are going to go backpacking next weekend. One more week and this will be the longest I’ve ever been out of the country, pretty exciting to keep feeling more and more like I live here!