Christchurch

For our blog followers who aren't too sure - We are nowhere near Christchurch - and so are perfectly safe.
Wanganui is on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand and Christchurch is on the East coast of the South Island, about 600kilometres away. But thank you for your concern and messages.





We took this picture of the cathedral when we were in Christchurch in December/January. Everyone was so pleased that this icon had escaped serious damage in the September earthquake - and now, with the quake yesterday having been so much more devastating, the spire is shattered and the main church damaged also.









The cathedral spire is down now - sadly, there were tourists inside at the time of the quake and their fate at this time is not known, but the worst is feared. There have been reports of folks getting out safely, but the damage inside the church is massive and the whole place is littered with beams and bricks and general debris which will have fallen from a great height.

If you look closely, you can see the young lady perched on the top of this collapsed building - the rescue was watched by New Zealand about two hours after the quake hit.

It is feared that this building still has many people in it - it's not known if they are alive or not. At the moment, the focus of all of the personnel on the ground is the search and rescue effort. Unfortunately, there are so many buildings in a state like this one, that it could take quite some time to cover them all.

The fears of course, are for any folks who could still be trapped under all this debris.

Some of the pictures coming through are really hard to comprehend.

The news broadcasts are continual - there are rescue teams arriving from Australia, the UK, China and even the USA to support the guys in Christchurch who are overwhelmed with the scale of the rescue that is required. There are still people known to be alive but trapped in buildings and so the emphasis is on reaching them and getting them out.

Of course there are fabulous stories of incredible bravery and sacrifice and heartwarming reports of folks saved against all the odds.

It's hard however, not to feel helpless and wish there was something we could do to help.

Dis al.

Cars,children,candlelabra,Christmas and cherubs.

One of the things that we are still trying to get accustomed to here in New Zealand is the road rule which I shall now attempt to explain to you! This picture is for demonstration purposes!!!

OK folks! this has to be the weirdest thing we have had to learn to do - it's quite hard to describe, but here goes!

Imagine for a minute, you are driving along in your car and this is the view ahead of you. Now, lets say you are wanting to turn left at the next intersection - with me so far?

Good - when you approach the turn, you slow down (to make the turn of course) but here in New Zealand, have your foot hovering above the brake pedal - it could be that you will have to come to a complete stop - (note: there is no stop sign or similar in sight, not even a yield sign)

Here comes the dumbness - if there is a car approaching from the front - in this case it's a blue one, you need to be sure that he is not planning on taking a right turn into the same street that you are planning on turning into. If he is wanting to turn as you are approaching, HE HAS RIGHT OF WAY- this means that you come to a complete stop at the kerb, about to turn left into the side street. He will cross over the road in front of you and enter the aforementioned street to your left ahead of you. If you should forget about this rule, and turn in ahead of him, the chances are you will cause an accident (and it would be entirely your fault) or you will have your ears ringing from the hooter which the aforementioned approaching car's driver will be leaning on while he stands on his brakes! Every South African we have asked agrees that this is an extremely dumb rule! - mostly because, sometimes while you stop dutifully at the kerb to allow the car from the front to turn in ahead of you, he doesn't turn, because there is a car behind you which is going straight ahead! And there, my dear blog readers, is the disaster waiting to happen. Toss indicators (or lack thereof) into the mix and it's all a bit dodgy to say the least! The best of everything, is that now that we are almost accustomed to doing things this way - it has been decided to scrap the rule after the World Cup - since (and I quote) New Zealand is the only country in the world with this particular traffic peculiarity! Weirdness!

These candlelabra have finally been found! We have been searching for a long time for just the right ones to 'fix' the two times four blobs of ugliness on the Carl Ecke piano - the two photographs below show the piano without it's new attachments of beauty!

Now that there are candles to round off the adornments, we are really happy we stopped off and browsed around a little antique shop in the middle of nowhere!

One can be forgiven for having a slight sense of deja vu - this little lass comes for piano lessons here in Wanganui and looks almost familiar when you compare her with the lassie below, who came for lessons in 2006 in Kroonstad!

Same piano, same teacher, different child!

Wanganui generally, and our little group of ex-pats in particular are incredibly proud of Bonnita Viljoen, pictured here (photograph taken from the newspaper) with her trophy won in Christchurch late last year for Best Men's hair cut at the national competition. When she won the 'local' competition and was headed for the nationals, we hardly dared hope - but she pulled it off and walked away with the trophy!

Apprentices are thick on the ground in Wanganui - this town has a marvellous reputation for training top hairdressers.

We tried to make the Christmas Service a little different this year and so had a medley of Christmas Carols on the violin with a backtrack to fill out the sound!

Our little church in Wanganui is still very small but we are doing things just like the 'big guys' - first we managed to get it together and import our very own minister from South Africa, and here is the moment she did the baptism of little Nikita - the first in the church's register!

Matilda is a month old - it's incredible to think that the time is flying by so fast and we haven't even met her yet! Some fortunate folks have done though - we hope you are in the process of getting all the photographs together for us to enjoy!

Let's be brutally honest - isn't this just the cutest little poppet you ever did see? And I don't care what anyone says - even those who were there at the time, I can definitely see glimpses of this little girl's daddy in her - particularly in this

picture.

Dis al!