Long live your dreams
New York, New York
Sydney
Climbing for Dawn
Photos from Sydney
The Land of the Long White Cloud
Christmas
Jumping high, jumping higher
My birthday
North to South
26th December 2005 - posted from Christchurch
It's very easy to forget it's Christmas. When Matt handed me some Christmas pudding last night while we were watching Lord of the Rings (Christmas TV in New Zealand, naturally...) I thought he'd gone insane - but it was still Christmas day.
On Christmas Eve we went out to dinner with a friend we had met in a national park near Christchurch. We had a hearty meal (I had local lamb!) then went out for drinks. Most DJs seemed to ignore that it was Christmas - but we had Fairytale of New York in the early hours.
On Christmas day, the hostel had organised a BBQ on the roof of the hostel. We had lamb, sausages and turkey. It had rained in the morning as we opened presents that our families had sent us - just like home! The rain made us think twice about going to the beach, but it cleared up in the afternoon we wondered into Christchurch's main park; sat in the sun, strolled around and generally got very confused as to what wasn't quite right. T-shirts and sunglasses are not the norm for Christmas day.
Boxing Day, we went to see some family friends of Andy's, who were having an 'open house' for all their friends. Most of them had moved here from Britain or the US, so they knew how confused we were by the weather. After lunch we went for a walk on their land, said hello to their horses and came back for strawberries and cream, fresh from the garden!
All very strange. I've uploaded some photos for you to look at, plus a few from the national park we visited last week. We've got one full day left in New Zealand and then we're off to Sydney. Merry Christmas!