Boom....crash!!!

Hey everyone!!

Another update in English again. Almost getting easier than the Dutch ones by now!! Haha!

I have had a fairly easy week at work last week. Had to work Monday and Tuesday, which were pretty normal working days. Received a new assignment to check out some competitors in the industry and check out companies who we might be able to work together with. So that’s gonna be pretty cool, at least that’s what I think!

Wednesday it was Waitangi Day. For people who aren’t really aware of the NZ history. The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in Waitangi (surprise!) in 1840 by both Maori and the British as a sort of constitution in which rights for both the Maori and Europeans were recorded. Unfortunately both parties seemed to have different understandings of this Treaty and in later years it caused quite a bit of trouble and fights. But still it is a big thing in the history of New Zealand and therefore still remembered/celebrated every year on the 6th of Feb. This being a National Holiday it actually meant that I had the entire day off and so I decided to check out the big celebrations you would expect on a day like this. Well....big celebrations didn’t really seem to be happening, so I ended up at the court yard of the Christchurch Art Gallery, enjoying some NZ artists whilst lying in the grass. Was pretty relaxing and especially the Kapa Haka group (see pics) was pretty cool and cute to watch. Afterwards they showed some short Maori movies inside which were also quite interesting to see.

Thursday and Friday were pretty easy as all of the men (Geoff, Russell and Tim) were out of the office. So it was just the girls running the company and we were put to a little test when on Friday morning some lunatic woman decided to attack her two pilots with a knife, trying to hijack the plane, which was on its way to Christchurch airport. Thankfully the pilots got her under control, but then she decided to yell out that she had a bomb with her.... Great....Cause that meant that the entire airport got shut down and all passengers had to wait and wonder whether they would get on their scheduled flight. And of course, we had a group of 14 French clients who had to fly to Auckland to get their connecting flight to Hong Kong and home... So that meant quite some telephone calls to different airports and airlines. Just in time the airport got opened again and with a little delay our clients managed to get on their flight to Hong Kong, haha!! A pretty exciting morning! With Russ being away as well it meant that I volunteered to clean a trailer and a van (covered in sheep sh*t...) later that afternoon. Which was fine as the sun was shining!

Yesterday one of my fellow students, Mariska, came down to Christchurch for a weekend in the big city. She’s working in Hanmer Springs and by the sound of it there is not a whole lot going on there! So we went shopping and had a night out on Saturday. On the bus we met two America guys who we had a laugh with (or at...) and we spent some time listening to Irish folk music in the Irish pub. This morning we went for a walk up the hill here into Victoria Park. Which is an amazing place, so I’ll def be going back there again for another, longer walk. After that we went to the Botanical Gardens (just like Australia, every city here has a Botanical Garden), which are pretty awesome here as well. Discovered that there was a free play on about the Complete History of NZ in 90 min. I absolutely love Christchurch, because there is always something going on here for which entire families bring their picnic basket and rug to have a nice day out in the park etc. It’s really great! The play was quite funny, so I told Geoff and Shelley to go tonight, so they are there right now. Hope they’ll enjoy it!

Then coming back from the city I probably had the biggest adventure so far as I was in a pretty heavy bus crash..... This car in front of us hit the brakes as soon as the traffic lights turned amber and our bus driver tried to hit the brakes too, but just couldn’t manage on time. So BAAAAANNNNNGGGGGGGGGG we hit the tiny car in front of us, shattering the back window completely and pushing the car another 10 metres up the road.... D*mn.... Thankfully nobody was hurt, but it sure looked pretty scary. And then the craziest thing for me: Our driver goes up to this lady to ask whether she is okay, yep, she was just shocked, driver comes back into the bus, calls a number so the lady will be picked up and drives on again. REALLY! I think we were there for only 7 minutes, no police, no paperwork, we just finished the round... Bus had had a pretty big blow at the front as well, but still, we just drove on! I just thought that was crazy! Crazy kiwi country!

Right, following week is only 3 days of work and then I am off to Queenstown for 3,5 days with Fons and Kate (family I stayed with 4 yrs ago), so that’s gonna be some fun and crazy activity time!!! What exactly, you’ll find out in the next update!!! Cheersss Pep