In Tauranga

For the last few days, I've been hanging out with Rich and his parents in Tauranga. However, the "sunny" Bay of Plenty hasn't really been living up to it's name. It's cold, and I mean really cold.

Well for me at least - everyone else doesn't seem to be suffering quite as badly. I just hope New Zealand can give me one day of sunshine before I leave.

I haven't been up to that much since I've been here (that's what holidays are for right). However, I did manage to make two batches of cupcake and I will post pictures soon.

I'm also working on a very small cross stitch project - I've had a bit of drama with the pin-up girl I was working out which requires a lot of removing stitches. Which I just can't be bothered with right now.

We also had a rather successful shopping trip into town today - I manged to buy two new cute cardies for the warm weather in Taiwan as well as other necessities which can be hard for a Kiwi girl to find in Asia.

I also bought a Manderin Phrasebook and CD - let's see if I can move beyond "Hello" and "Thank you".

If you've been watching the news in New Zealand or in fact anywhere in the world you would have seen that our beautiful Christchurch city has been hit by a 7.1 earthquake. Thankfully it happened in the small hours of the morning so there were no casualties.

But many people's homes and businesses have been destroyed which makes me sad.

I have also read that at least two of the historical buildings in the CBD will need to be demolished - which makes me incredibly sad. I loved Christchurch's town centre and part of that is due to the historical buildings. It's so sad to lose our history.

Over the weekend I spent much of my time crafting and listening to radio New Zealand - due to the fact they had a lot of coverage on the earthquake.

I don't want to sound like an advertisement for Radio New Zealand, but they do also have a fantastic music show on. I'm pretty much totally out of touch with the New Zealand music scene after living in Korea. But I am pretty much sure this is my new favourite New Zealand song.


I shall return soon with a cupcake post!