Rugby game

This week was much more exiting than I anticipated it to be. School was normal. Nothing special happening there. This Saturday we went to our first Major League Rugby (Super Rugby) game. We watched the Canterbury Crusaders VS the Souther Kings from South Africa. My dad was in a bit of a knot because he was born very close to the Southern Kings  home town is. In the end he was rooting for the Crusaders. The Crusaders destroyed the Kings 55 to 20. We saw the game in the replacement stadium because the large scale one is being rebuilt due to the earthquake damage. In the upcoming week I get 3 days off of school because of Easter. We are planning another road trip to the other side of the South Island. We don’t know yet what we will do specifically on the road trip but we plan to head to the very southern part of the South Island. 

Rugby game

Today My mom and I went to a local exhibit about “Scott’s last exhibition”. The exhibit was about an explorer named Scott who set off to the South Pole. Little did he know that he would die on this trip. The exhibit was very interesting. The voyage from Wales took 7 months. The team was in Antarctica for 3 years. Scott and 4 others died while getting stuck in the winter of Antarctica. With a large ice patch the ship could not pick them up. They survived many months in an ice cave. They eventually tried to walk back to their home base but died in a blizzard.

This week my dad took a business trip to China over his birthday. We all thought (including him) that he would be miserable on a business trip in China. When he returned we found out he did enjoy himself apart from the pollution. He said that the Chinese people he was staying with him were more than fluent in the English language. He also said that one of the ladies with him had such an American accent you could not tell she has never left China. 

Not only my dad had fun though this week. While he was gone the 2 of us went to a street fair at the local beach town. It was rather strange. It seemed to have no theme. My mom soon discovered a wooden clothes peg on the back of her backpack saying “pass me on”. It took us a while to find the right person to pin it to. We saw a drunk man who seemed very strange. I was moments away from pinning the clothes pin to him when he turned around. We decided that if he found out I did this he wouldn’t be too happy if I bugged him. My mom immediately saw a women in a chicken suit. While my mom used her food talk to distract the chicken I put the wooden clothes peg on it’s tail. Funny enough she didn’t seem to notice.

 The rest of the week was the usual school days, today (Monday) it was very cold and rainy, that means it is a shorts day! We also got are mid-term progress report. I scored reasonably well in every subject. We get a 1 to a 3 for our reports, 3 being good and 1 being bad. I scored a 3 in math, electronics, grammar, French, and history. I scored a 2 in science due to the fact I tend to talk a lot... I scored a 2 in PE because I forgot to bring my uniform 1 day... shame... To my surprise My electronics teacher said I achieve above the teachers expectations... I don't really get this because I have barely said a word to my teacher, I am also starting too think he doesn't know who I am..

Another thing about our road trip. We encountered some sand flies in the West Coast. My dad an I could feel them biting us while we were fishing. About 2 days later the bites started itching like you would never believe. We are still itching after a week. My dad had thought he brought some kinda of a bug back from China. thanks god the suffering has stopped on day 8

This weekend our school had 2 teacher meeting days so we got Friday and Monday off. For this 4 day weekend my family decided to take a road trip to the West Coast. In school we discussed the West Coast a lot. We talked about how rainy it was. I have to say I don’t think it is the rainiest place in NZ... The skies were blue everyday and getting very hot. I pictured the West Coast as more England’s weather.. I was very very wrong. The West Coast is very tropical. The plants and terrain change a great deal. It gets very humid out there. While we were in the West Coast we took a tubing trip out on a local river. Since the West Coast hadn’t had rain in 7 weeks the rivers were VERY low. It seems that us Californians bring drought with us to every river. The tubing trip was fun. They gave us a free zip line ride to make up for the lack of water. I could see the fear in my dad's eyes standing over the cliff edge. After we finished the zip line we got to sit on what was left of the water. The ride was slow but fun.

After we finished tubing we headed into a glow worm cave. The cave was very cold and long. The cave was inhabited by glow worms. The glow worms were not actually worms but maggots. They had silky strings hanging down from them to catch up insects to eat..  We learned that the worms were territorial so they would defend each's property. They also spend months as the maggot then turn into large flies. The flies only live for about 2 days max...

The next day we tried to go find an area to fish. It took us forever to find a good place. All of the rivers (if they had water in them) were stone covered and we kept getting our lines stuck in the rocks. In the end we didn’t get to catch anything. Instead we decided to skip stones. I beat my dad's record of 12 skips while I got 15!  

The next day we took a nice walk through a path alongside a river. While we were driving we came across New Zealand's largest swinging bridges. It didn't look very far though... The walk across it was great. My mom decided to walk both ways while I took a zip line on the way back. After that we did nothing except drive back to Christchurch and stop at the occasional rest area. This weekend had lots of adventures and we hope to do another road trip all the way around the south island.

After my cousins and aunts left, things around here have a gotten a lot quieter. School seems to be flying by. More than 1 month has passed by since we have arrived.. The trip seems to be going much much faster than I predicted. Everything school-wise has been going great. On Saturday my family went to see my dad’s work host, Mark, play cricket. It got a little boring not knowing what was happening, although my dad tried to explain it to me and Mark was scoring over 50 runs. Later  that day we headed down to the mall to watch a New Zealand movie. The movie was a bit weird. After we started to exit the mall we heard the sound of motor cycles. We then saw a ton of people crowding around a 75 foot jump. We stayed in the mall parking lot for a while watching 3 dirt bikers doing 70-80 foot high jumps. Some of them did tricks like backflips while some drove through jets shooting out fire. The show went on for about 1 hour then all of the spectators left. So far this has been the most exiting part of my week. 

I noticed many similarities and differences between New Zealand and California. The weather here is almost exactly like what it would be like in summer back in California. Many of the cars are the same, although they drive on the other side of the road. The hair and clothes styles are a bit different though. It seems that rat tails and mullets are in fashion here, weird...