Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Student accom Well, I managed to find the chicken coop, and the keys within. But not without a meeting the housemates first.
Its a fairly classic student/share house kinda deal. An old wooden house with peeling paint and horrendously overgrown garden. Each resident lives their own life and the sudden appearance of strangers wandering the house is barely worth an eyebrow raise. They’re all very friendly and accomodating, being all New Zealanders – although I did hear some a female japanese voice talking loudly after I’d crawled into a cleanly made bed for an early night.
Jerry, is fairly pasty looking, quite reserved, possibly lacks social skills, but a friendly guy all the same. He does illustrations, and making a go of freelancing. Julian, I didn’t bump into till this morning, but seems a very bright slightly extroverted arteest. Pav, I pumped for information about the region at length last night and he filled out and confirmed what the guide book had already told me. There is also a very smelly old dog, which, thankfully, has an aversion to strangers.
So, in between meeting this merry band of men I set forth and wandered the streets of Christchuch.
Well, there’s lots of churches. There’s a very nice square in the center of town, in front of the cathedral. The city radiates from the there, and it seems to do well to try and set some kind of tone for the place. There is a very picturesque little river winding through the entire town – “city?” – Avon, and the place is FLAT. Accordingly there are a pleasing number of cyclists getting about town… although the demographic was clearly 20-40 yo male, some girls sprinkled in sparesly. Ummm, its a good country town. No sign of crime or homelessness, although it was a monday. By 7:00pm the streets were deserted after the 5 o’clock rush hour. It started to cool off after a very warm day, and today is cold, grey, and rainy. There are two 12 storey buildings, and the rest are 4-8.
They don’t make backyards like this anymore
Well, the plan is forming to take Izzy’s car up over to the west coast on a bit of a circuit which will get me back into town around some time when she is here, and I can explore this area then. So after my long leisurely sleep-in, at some point I’ll set out for Hanmar Springs, about 2 hours north west, and hit the regular backpacker’s trail… hmm, haven’t done that for a long time.
Technical notes. It occured to me that blogspot ain’t hosting images, so the pics aren’t much use yet. But I have a plan, involving piggy backing on someone else’s site for the duration… but still I haven’t found an opportunity to get them off the camera. So you’ll have to wait a little longer.
And, if anyone who doesn’t know me stumbles across this blog and has something to say… try meejinnz@johnmee.com
cya.
posted by John Mee at 11:53 AM
