After over 30 hours of travel, I’m finally sitting in my hotel room in Christchurch, New Zealand. The trip started a little rough. I made the mistake of not starting my packing until 8:00 pm the night before I left. On top of that, I was having some laptop issues that caused me to stay up until 3:30 am. As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I finally made it to the airport the lady sitting next to me while I was waiting in my gate was eating tuna. There are only two things I find more disgusting than tuna—large birds (like pigeons and doves) and gum.
While the rest of my team flew KC to Dallas, for some reason my tickets took me through Chicago. As I was racing through the Chicago airport to make my next flight, I suddenly found myself surrounded by the Baylor men’s basketball team. It was quite difficult to find a way out amidst the tall trees, but I persevered. Although the flight from LAX to Auckland, New Zealand was 13.5 hours, it was quite pleasant. I somehow lucked out and had nobody sitting next to me, which meant double pillow, double blanket, and double seat—I might as well have been in business class!!
New Zealand (and Antarctica for that matter) is 19 hours ahead of central standard time, but I find it easier to think 5 hours behind and a day ahead. For those of you who lack a mighty math muscle: when it’s 6pm in KS on Tuesday, it’s 1pm on Wednesday in NZ. From Auckland, we flew to our final New Zealand destination, Christchurch. Since I am 19 hours in the future from everyone, if there are any big world news stories I will make sure to let you know so you can prepare accordingly. =)
After dinner tonight I decided to walk a bit around Christchurch, and it was somewhat depressing. For those of you that don’t know, Christchurch was hit with a major earthquake in fall 2010. It has since also braced itself for several severe aftershocks since. The quake and subsequent aftershocks have absolutely crippled the city, especially the downtown area. As I walked through the city tonight I saw tall business buildings with windows still smashed out and a church whose steeple fell off among other serious damage. Both of the hotels I was told to request for my stay here have either been torn down or are scheduled to be torn down. The farther I walked, it was very obvious that I was only seeing a ghost of a once vibrant city. If only there were zombies running around, I would have felt that I had somehow landed in a post-apocalyptic world flick.
Well, I’m completely beat. I don’t even have the energy to reread through this post and correct errors, so please forgive all my typos and rambling just this once. Tomorrow we will travel to the Clothing Distribution Center to check out our Extreme Cold Weather gear. Until next time, stay warm my friends.
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