Creative Christchurch

To start this post, I want to write a quick ode recognizing the bravery of some of my fellow passengers on my flight from San Francisco to Auckland. First, to the parents who brought their one month old baby on the 14 hour flight. Next to the couple that let their small son and daughter ear four bags of M&Ms while we waited at the gate. Third, to all the women who wore tight skinny jeans. And finally, to the flight attendants who wore their little hats at jaunty angles for most of the ride. To all of you courageous souls I raise my glass. Cheers.
The weirdest part of that entire trip was losing Tuesday. I left San Fran at 7:30 pm, we flew for a while and the early morning hours of Tuesday momentarily appeared, then POOF! It was actually early on Wednesday. I feel a little upset about this - luckily I will gain it back on the way home. But I hope all your Tuesdays were exciting and amazing things happened.

View out of my window in the plane on the ride from Auckland to Christchurch. The land went from flat...

...to extremely mountainous.

Since I got here, it's been a crazy whirlwind of trying to figure out what my classes are, where all the campus buildings are, how to get food, how to ride the bus, and more. While all of this has been extremely overwhelming, the worst part of my time here has been crossing the road. The University of Canterbury campus is split in half by the very busy Ilam Road that has exactly zero crosswalks. Attending school in Middlebury, Vermont for three years has completely ruined my ability to cross streets. There, cars will screech to a halt to stop if a pedestrian even glances at a crosswalk. Here, I stand at the edge of Ilam Road and edge my way out into the street to see past the parked cars. Then, I look for cars the wrong way, remind myself I'm looking the wrong way because the stearing wheel is on the other side of the car than in the US, take a deep breath and sprint across the street. Phew! I've survived the trauma of another crossing between my dorm and class buildings! And that, my friends, is true bravery.
My dorm is called Connon. Although most of the international students here live together in apartments, a sceries of unfortunate events left me in a freshman, and it is definitely a freshman dorm. My room is a tiny single with a closet, desk, and bed. I find new chips of paint on my chair from where it flaked off the desk. While this room is, ahem, not the best, it does have a huge window, and sunshine pours across my bed and desk in the afternoon.

The view from my window. Not bad, huh?

Instead of rehashing all the small stressful details of being new in a new place, I'll tell you about my more fun day yesterday. In the morning Dan, Serena (who both go to Midd with me), Camille (a girl from the Frontiers program Dan and Serena were on), and I went to The Eco Store, which is a massive thrift store filled with mugs, plates, couches, ovens, broken VCRs, kids toys, cricket bats, and the rest of the usual crap that I look at and know if I were super crafty something amazing could come out of that yellow and pink folding chair that has a stain shaped like a dragon on the seat.

This is one small portion of The Eco showing the assortment of toys and vases.

A theater of mismatched chairs facing the ovens and washing machines.

I got two mugs for $1 ($1 NZ = about $.88 US). One has a mouse holding a bunch of flowers, the other has a dodo bird on it surrounded by the words "Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust." In other words, I now have two killer cups.

In the afternoon, Dan and I decided to explore the campus to get our bearings and understand how the buildings were laid out. But once we reached the edge of campus, we decided to keep going to the Botanic Gardens and the center of the city. Since Dan has lived in Christchurch before, he, thank god, understands the layout of the city and directed up to the Gardens. There, found the Rose Garden by following our noses to the luscious blooms.

Entrance to the rose garden.

Stopping to smell the roses.

This was my favorite color of the roses we saw. It was so bright it almost hummed.

There were also plants in the shapes of animals throughout the Garden, such as penguins and Dan-shaped.

We then went to the Container Mall, which is the best part of the city I've seen so far. It is in a part of Christchurch that's being rebuilt from the 2011 earthquake, and man, these Kiwis are innovative.

The stores at the Container Mall.

As you can see, the stores are made out of large shipping containers with the corrugated metal sides removed and replaced with glass.

I love how they stacked other brightly painted shipping containers on top of the stores to highlight that they were repurposing these ugly metal boxes into something useful. But reminders of the earthquake are never far away. At the edge of the Container Mall there was a fence through which we could easily see a half destroyed building.

The fence has clear plastic viewing panels at the top so everyone can see what still must be done.

I really love the way the city is using a tragedy as an opportunity to add more art and color to the buildings and the streets. We ended our wonderful time in the city with a spicy bratwurst sitting on a colorful bench in the sun.

I love sausages!

Those of you coming to visit me, the Container Mall is on the list of destinations we're definitely going to hit. Speaking of destinations, Dan and I currently looking at warm places to go during our April three week break. We're thinking Fiji, Tonga, Bali, Samoa, or maybe Australia. If you know of any good places for us to go, I'd love to hear about it. Happy Saturday everyone!