Christchurch, NZ

Greetings from Christchurch, NZ. I remember years ago I was standing at an airline checkin, and the gentlemen in front of me had luggage tags which read "Christchurch, New Zealand." I thought that was such an amazing part of the world to be from, and I hoped I'd see it some day.

Yesterday we drove up the western coast from Queenstown to Mt. Cook, then headed east to Christchurch. Beautiful scenery all the way, including snow-capped mountains. We'll fly to Melbourne later today and spend 10 days or so with the Aussies. We take four flights within the country while there because it's such a huge land and there is so much to see.

Our dinner with the host family was definitely a highlight of NZ. Ian and Barbara are retired pharmacists. They have a home high on a hill overlooking the lake and the town. They served a delicious meal of roast lamb, fresh vegetables from their garden, and Pavlova for dessert. More about Pavlova later.

A humorous story from the dinner: Ian was talking about Christchurch, and he pronounced it "Krost Chitch," of course. Meg, also at the dinner with us, thought he was saying "cross stitch." Finally she said, "Where is Cross Stitch located, anyway?" She thought it was a village in NZ. We laughed so hard we almost cried.

Prices here are very high, with "petrol" about $7 a gallon (Is it up that high back home yet?!?, a simple t-shirt about $34, etc. I have bought only yarn, as you might have guessed.

I'll hurriedly try to answer a couple of e-mails in my few minutes left. I'm still under the gun with computer time. It's still 75 cents a minute in our hotel room, so I'm at the hotel internet center, where it's $2 for 10 minutes.

Oh, as I was walking around Queenstown two days ago, I suddenly remembered "hic" is spelled like that, not like this: hick. Temporary brain malfunction. I seem to have more and more of them these days.

Next post: from Australia! Everyone in our tour group has said how seeing Australia and New Zealand have been lifelong dreams.