Crusing CHCH

It rained all Friday which I thought would be a great thing for the mountain this weekend however I guess if it is a storm from the north then it doesn't snow....it just rains in the mountains. Very bad sad angry mad. The rain washed away the snow on the mountains. I would show you a picture but it is too depressing. My flatie and friend (Chris and Rob) drove me around and showed me some sights around Christchurch. Very beautiful scenery with some AMAZING roads to hit up as soon as I get my motorcycle. Saw quite a few Jixxers today and a pack of rockets hitting up the hills. There are so many sweet Ducati's running around too. This next week to get to the Artificial Limb Centre where I want to work I might go rent a Buell Firebolt to get me there because its a demo bike. A stupid demo bike but it is still a demo bike that would be fun to drive.....especially on the left side of the road. Hahahaha



The 1st is a picture of where I want to live this summer. (Dec-Feb)
The 2nd picture is me overlooking the coastline of Christchurch.
The 3rd is a picture from Castle Rock overlooking a bay coming into Christchurch with the main port
The 4th is a picture from Castle Rock with the Christchurch, Chris and the sun over my shoulder.

More Than Meets the Eye!

Hello kids of a far and distant region. I have been busy the last few days working on my Curriculum Vitae and getting a hold of contacts to help me get a job so times have been less then thrilling sitting in front of a computer in a foreign land. Some people have been a little concerned (parents) about finding a job (even if those people don't know how to pick up a telephone) but I do not want anyone to stress. I have uploaded a video to show you all how hard I have been preparing and training for me to acquire such a thing you people call a J-O-B.

Job Training

Yesterday was gorgeous here and as it was about noon time when my internet connection went out. I waited for it to come back as there is not much job searching I can do without it. After waiting for a bit longer I decided if it wasn't going to work that it was time to hit up the beach!!! Yeah! So I totally Hans Solo'ed it to the beach on Chris's Haro bike. Which if you could have seen me, I looked like some sort of a combination of PeeWee's Big Adventure / Shriners Family Circus. Had I not eaten my Sailor Cereal that morning I might not have made it to the beach via the little circus bike.(On a side note most of my cereal is made from the company "Sanitarium" which I find to be an odd company name yet I feel strangely at home.)There is another picture here of a bike trail right by the ocean which is a really fun ride.

One of my buddies thought that going to NZ was a "pipe dream" so I sent him a little video. However I liked the video because of the waves so I included it here if you so desire.Pipe Dream



I just got back from the movie theater where we went and saw TRANSFORMERS! It was pretty cool seeing my childhood idols finally make it to the big screen where their story needed to be told accurately and concisely. It was a lot of work but we pulled through it together. I'm pretty sure that movie doesn't open in America until July 3rd.....hmmmm.....The theater was way different from the U.S. There was so much room I couldn't even kick the guys chair in front of me if I tried, we had assigned seating and a full bar outside of the theatre. And apparently that was a "crappy" theater. Either way, the Transformers were sick.

Other than that I am just talking to telemarketers and asking them questions about the country that I don't know. It really throws them for a loop and they usually answer with a very professional,"I don't have that answer right here in front of me Sir". After I get enough amusement out of them I tell them I am from America and conversation ends rather abruptly.

I will mingle with you cats later.
Cheers

Hitting the Snow Fields

Saturday two of my three flaties (Chris and Sera) got up early and we headed to Mt. Hutt for some snowboarding. After hitching a ride up the mountain because we didn't have chains for the car they shut down the mountain due to winds a couple minutes before we actually got there. We hiked up the mountain about 100 meters and came down. WEEEEEEEEE, lets go home. We hitched a ride back down the mountain with a gentleman from the UK and it was amazing to me how similar there accents are. Chris did most of the talking with this guy which consisted of,"Yeah, yeah, ye, ye....ye.......ye, yeyeye, yeyeye" Nice block though.

Saturday night I said I would go up snowboarding in the morning forgetting that it was Sunday morning and I wanted to scope out a church. So I went rallying up the mountain with Sam, one of Chris's mates, to do some snowboarding. I have never hit so many rocks in my life!!! The base here is really small and I stuffed my board up pretty bad. I need some P-tex and a few more centimeters of base before I head up again.
I've been checking out the city a little bit trying to get my directions straight getting bank accounts and figuring out where places are that I want to apply to work at. However before I left the U.S. my computer crashed and I have to write my curriculum vitae over again which should be a daunting task this week. Thanks for checking in and I will keep ya posted on the things crapening in Nu Z land : )

Arriving in the N of Z

Well, I finally made it from Omaha to Denver to L.A. to Auckland to Christchurch. I met some nice people from all over the world which was a blessing, however it ruined the plans I had to draw charactures of some very unhappy people on the plane.

I was greeted at customs of NZ with much zeal and little hassle until I waited to pick up my luggage. All of a sudden this Jobba-da-hut figure morphed in out of my perif to ask me a million questions. Eventually the conversation went towards the always needed,"What drugs are you on?". After some more abuse we laughed, hugged, ate ginger nuts together and parted ways. The next lady was very nice as she took everything out of my bag and swabbed it down for drugs. It gave me a chance to realize I had about 80 quarters (American money, again, not drugs) in my bag and some time to put on some well deserved deodorant. Apparently customs has a hard time believing someone would move to a country they have never been to before, don't know a soul, and have a living address with people that they don't know. I caught a pretty hard time, my mom thinks it was the biker jacket....dodgy bikers. Customs was more like an epic battle of grotesque figures from starwars and somebody had been feeding these animals booze.

My flatie Chris was kindly waiting for me the whole time and gave me some keys to the pad and a pat on the butt...he went back to work. I found my way across town with the help of the lovely citizens of CHCH. The picture below is the main level of the flat. My room is on the third level.

Below is a picture of my new best friend Basil. Basil enjoys long walks on the fence, jumping from the second story window, and grooming himself in my lap. Basil was using my chopstick from when I went downtown and ate some sushi to scratch himself.

I have not had a lot of time to get out and check the city out(plus its stinking cold )so more pictures of the area later.