Every year on the 1st Sunday of Advent we fill up the house with Christmas decorations - and we love it. All the Christmas music is let out of the box and the house smells amazing, with all the scented candles - and the Christmas gravy bubbling away in the kitchen.... hmmmmmmm - Christmas is here!!
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A big earthquake has hit north of Christchurch on the South Island - with more than 4000 after shocks by now - 3 days later. Some of these were felt all the way up here in Auckland... (not that either Per or I have noticed anything.....) We were woken on the day - or should I say night - by Janus. It was 3am and they just wanted to be sure we weren't in danger of being swept away by a tsunami - love, love, love :) (We think we're OK living on the 3rd floor... by the inner harbour). But anyway - you never know and there was a tsumani warning out for all of NZ's eastern coast-lines, so we checked the TV and got some updates - and checked whether we needed to react to any of it - but decided to go back to bed after a while. So the worst part hit was the South Island, around Kaikoura and all the way up to Wellington - where some buildings were damaged and are now in danger of collapsing. All the roads in and out of Kaikoura are gone - the sea bed has risen about 2 m. along the coast and railway tracks are now going straight into the ocean... Many, many land slides have ruin Highway 1 - which is basically the road going from north to south....
The worst part is that the scientist expect a new earthquake - possibly bigger than the last - within the next year, so I'm really glad we're not living on the South Island. The fault lines go all the way through the South Island and the North Island but in an almost straight line, going through Bay of Plenty and out in the water somewhere East of us... But - we could still be affected - no doubt about that, but hopefully not as bad as when living on top of the fault lines... As always - so nice to be on holiday, but really....nothing better than getting back home :) Even if the weather is not the best. It has apparently been raining for a whole week before we arrived and it's still gray and rainy. But it's spring I guess and it doesn't matter to us - we're HOME !!
Since arriving back home we've been busy - as usual. Always stacks of work to get through - and stacks of washing... but it's OK - it's all worth it :) I've started painting again - after a bit of a break as I've been too busy in the office. But I've decided that I NEED to paint to keep sane... But instead of going back to what I usually do, I've decided to set myself a challenge. So I'm looking into/testing what kind of art people are hanging above their sofa. It seems my paintings are too bold, too colourful - and what people buy is a painting that fits the room - which is fair enough. But by 'fitting the room' it looks like the painting has to be subdued in colour and also not very busy in forms and shapes. Also - apparently - men often like to have a sofa piece with something recognisable in it... So that's my latest challenge; subdued, calm paintings with something recognisable on the canvas. Not an easy task - but I'm always up for a challenge, so I'm enjoying it and have 6-7 pieces going - in grey, light blue, light yellow, etc. Per's - as always - having fun in the office - still enjoying it, which is the main thing. He's not going to talk about retirering until he's over 70, so still going strong :) Other than that - we're planning and making ready for when Tina, Janus and Lucas arrives in December. We're having fun buying toys, kids furniture and planning their visit here. They arrive 20 Dec. and we have our Kiwi Danish Christmas 23 Dec. We then go out for dinner on 24 Dec.which is very common here in NZ. But we do it for another reason - as we're leaving very early on 25 Dec to go to Rarotonga - where we pass the date line and arrive on 24 Dec. in time for another Christmas Eve :) We stay in Raro for a week and then fly onto Aitutaki and stay there over New Year - back in Auckland 3 January. Tina, Janus and Lucas then have another week in Auckland before flying back home to Denmark. So we're really looking forward to this!! |
G&PThis is our blog - we use this to keep track of what we've done and where we've been.... as we can't always remember :) Archives
October 2019
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