Wow! We have been busy since my last blog. We celebrated our 22nd anniversary on the 20th and we celebrated with dinner at Strawberry Fare (pictured) the staff chilled a bottle of bubbly and presented it to us, and made a big fuss over the presenting the dessert we were sharing, so the couple sitting next to us told us that it was their wedding anniversary too. They were celebrating #15, so we gave them the rest of our bubbly! We had a wonderful celebration and have spent the last 10 days or so really enjoying everything Christchurch has to offer.
We said goodbye to our friend Lisa Glenn as she left this week for Blenheim to work in the harvest. Dean and Stephanie and girls cooked a wonderful Scottish dinner for us and Stephanie arranged for a friend of hers to arrive after dinner playing the bagpipes! Wow!
Last weekend they kicked off the flower show and we have been touring the gardens, they are beautiful. The Cathedral is all decorated in fresh flowers with a flower carpet up the aisle. Jon has been feeding the ducks along the Avon, and they are eating right out of his hand! Charmer, that! I've taken to calling him the "duck piper of ChCh". Also, last Saturday the national pipeband competition was held here in ChCh. We had a day full of bagpipe music and marching and I felt like it was heaven. As Jon says, "you have to admire a person that can suck, blow and twiddle all at the same time!" My apologies if any of you are offended by that, but after watching the bands compete, I have to agree. The judges were "experts" and dressed in their family kilts and the competitors were aged 6-60. Wonderful music.
In keeping with our mantra "do something you would be able to do at home", we have visited the Bodhi Tree restaurant for the most AMAZING Burmese food. I thought it would be much like Thai or Indian cuisine, but it is not at all like them, except for the rice. We ask the owners if they knew of any Burmese restaurants in the states, and they only know of one in San Francisco! It is fresh, fresh food with the most incredible flavors of lemon, and mild but powerfully good spices. It definitely goes to the top of the list for the best food I've ever eaten. And to think it's just across the street from us! We will definitely go back before we leave NZ.
The French foreign film festival started this week also, and we have attended 2 of the 3 films we wanted to see. One was a romantic comedy and the other a thriller. Both in French and Italian with sub-titles. Definitely something we couldn't do at home. We'll see another one tomorrow afternoon.
The weather has been generally great here, temps in the 70's and 80's, so we have enjoyed a couple days of beach walking and strolling through the Botanic Gardens. The dahlias are beautiful, the hostas huge and the roses are so sweet smelling. Today it is raining lightly, so we have tickets tonight for a concert called Rock on NZ at the concert hall across the street from us. They have about 4-5 bands playing tunes of the 50's-60's. They have a big dance floor and so we have aisle seats so we can get up and dance. Also in Victoria park just next to us they have 2 nights of the Chinese lantern festival. The park is decorated with the most amazing lanterns. It's really terrific.
That's about it from downunder. We have one more week here in NZ, then onto Sydney for a week and then home on the 13th. We are missing all of you and anxious to get home too!
Blessings all,
Jon and Joyce
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