New Zealand!

Ga' Day from Christchurch New Zealand! Britt writing here. After the longest plane ride of my life (16 hours in three different planes with a total of 12 hours of layovers) I'm excited to say that I'm in my new favorite country and enjoying tea time! Aaron's been at McMurdo for about two weeks now and is having a blast! Thus far, he's done Sea Ice training and snowmobile school along with learning the in's and out's of being a fuelie. I've been in Christchurch for three days now and we're supposed to fly to the ice today but we were just given a three hour delay because of the weather. The word on the street is that we probably won't go today. It started raining last night and hasn't stopped yet but if we stay here one more day, I'm headed to the art museum and the Antarctica exhibit at the Canterbury history museum. Christchurch is unlike any city I've ever been to. It's fairly big but doesn't give you the closed in feeling that most cities do. The buildings are beautiful with Victorian shutters and trim, bright colors, and incredible gardens. I spent yesterday absorbing chlorophyll at the Botanical Gardens and found a ton of similar herbaceous plants to the ones we have in the USA. Alot of these species are landscaping plants so they could be found around the world but it was really interesting to see them growing in the exact same way as in Colorado. Sedum, penstemon, and Achillea are just a few of the zillions of plants I saw. Really cool! There were enormous trees, the Rimu species, that weave their branches together like a wicker basket and have moss hanging off the bark. ducks, a river that weaves through the city, and everyone seems to have a dog so I've made a point of petting as many dogs as possible since I won't even see one for the next 5 months on the ice. Extremely friendly people with wonderful chocolate (a true test for any country)! The Windsor Inn where I'm staying is super cute and serves the best breakfasts I've ever had (I'm still loyal to Green Chili at Campus Cafe but these breakfasts are pretty dang good!).  I won't be able to upload photos until I get to the ice BUT this website has some really great pictures of things that I've seen: http://www.christchurch.org.nz/photosvideos/index.asp

Cheers and thanks for reading!