Kia Ora: Hearts for Christchurch

After our 6 hour drive from Queenstown we finally got to our hotel in Christchurch. We stepped into our hotel rooms and thought we were in mansions (compared to what we had just been living in at our hostel). Our rooms had two separate bedrooms, a kitchen, family room with a TV!!, and my personal favorite, a big bathtub. We literally were in AW when we walked in the room. I kept thinking, "do we really get to stay here?" haha.

Christchurch was a very sad and devastating place to be after all of the earthquakes that had taken place. There was destruction of buildings, shops, and churches on every corner and street. Last year on February 22 (2011), a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck near Christchurch leaving a lot of damage to the city. The earthquake killed 185 people and was described as one of the nation's worst peacetime disasters. Since that earthquake there have been a series of aftershocks occurring on April 16th--5.3 magnitude, May 10th--5.3 magnitude, June 6th--5.5 magnitude, June 13th--series of 5.7 and 6.3 magnitudes, and just recently on December 23rd--5.9 magnitude. The BYU girls that went last year left just 2 days before the main earthquake hit the city.

It was so sad to walk around the city and see it totally destroyed. Everything was empty and buildings were in pieces while churches steeples were sitting on the ground. Cars weren't even driving on the roads and people just walked right down the middle of streets. We didn't even want to take any pictures with us in them because it felt wrong. What a devastating disaster for Christchurch. James said that we are the first group to visit there since the earthquake and he said he couldn't believe it. Everything they usually do down there was not in operation or was destroyed all because of the earthquakes.

The city is starting to re-build itself now and so they have a lot of their shops in what is called "containers", and that's what they literally are. All of the stores are in these little containers, going about their everyday business lives until the city and store buildings can be rebuilt. It was an eye opening experience to see the effects of this horrible natural disaster.

Last free "drink" (of apple juice) before we headed out
of Queenstown to go to Christchurch. (And no that's not
our beer on the table....it was just there already.)

NZ's main sport, Rugby....always on TV!

We stopped for some Hokey-Pokey ice cream. It is a NZ favorite.
It's pretty much vanilla ice cream bits of honey comb. All of the girls
here with me are obsessed with it. Like literally everyone in our group
loves it! Phil loves it a lot too. I like the fresh fruit ice cream better :)

Fruit, fruit, and more fruit in NZ. I LOVE the fresh fruit stands all over
in NZ. I don't think I have eaten this much fruit in my life!

Our little stretching break....we had been driving for hours.

Another driving break. This was absolutely beautiful. I have never
seen such light BLUE water before in my life.

Crazy huh?

Yay!! We're almost there haha...Christchurch here we come.

Our Christchurch hotel. They usually stay in a hostel in Christchurch too
but it is also being rebuilt from the earthquake.

Our room! We were in heaven.

It had a kitchen. . .

. . .and this beauty!

I loved our little room. Me and Brooke had some fun late night chats.
She even fell asleep one night with the light still on because she was reading.
We didn't get much sleep, but we had fun!

Earthquake destruction by our hotel

This was all over. So sad.

Church buildings were some of the main buildings damaged during
the earthquakes. A lot of them had their steeples on the ground like this.

I finished The Hunger Games series. I think I read all three books in like
a week. They were really good, very addicting, but I was still a little sad with
the depressing ending!

My FAVORITE cookies (bickies) in NZ. When all of the girls eat chocolate
Tim Tam cookies with their Milo (hot chocolate drink), I eat these!
They taste like animal cookies from back home. I'm not the only one
addicted to them.

Sunday dinner at our room. Yummy Spaghetti and of course Tim Tam
slams for dessert. I don't think I have ever talked about those (probably
because I don't like chocolate so I don't eat them), but a big thing here in
NZ is Tim Tam slams. You make Milo, which is like hot chocolate, and
then you get Tim Tams and bite off the ends while you suck up the
Milo drink in it. It's like a chocolate feast of cookie and drink haha.
Everyone LOVES them!

Our Sunday night classical music concert in the park.

We had so much fun :)

I loved hearing claire de lune live!

We were trying to kill time waiting for the fireworks so we did the thing
where you shake your face and take a picture. Pretty attractive huh?

Ok normal one now :)

Even more attractive....

Whew, much better.

It took a lot of pictures to finally get this shot of all of us!

Too much fun!

FINALLY got it to look like a star haha

Firework show. It was pretty cool to see the fireworks going off
to the classical music. I liked the fairy dust looking ones.

Steeple off of another old building

The Museum was one of the few things still up
and running in Christchurch so we were able to go
through it. There were a lot of artifacts that were
removed however because they were damaged in
the earthquake.

I love the Maori culture

Maori tongue with Kirsten

This explains the Maori wood carving in the Maori culture.

Maori jade, green stone.

This was in the museum while we were there. It was cool to see the unique
clothing worn in an art show.

They were so crazy and cool!

This was in the museum too. Their house is literally covered with paua
shells. I can't believe we actually ate real Abalone from these shells
(for free)! I even kept a shell to bring home cus they cost a lot to buy here.

Paua shells are so pretty and are all over NZ on jewelry, in stores, decorating
houses...etc. Phil and Nisha even have some outside their house with their
flowers!