the icing on the quake
So my hockey trip finally happened! I'm staying with cattrius in a suburb of Christchurch. The only other time I've been in Christchurch was pre-earthquake and in the inner city; it's nice seeing A) another part of Christchurch and B) a part of Christchurch that wasn't totally ruined and thus on TV for the last ten months. That said we did bus through part of town and drive in to Victoria Street so I did see quite a few empty plots where there were once buildings, or two or three walls being held up by buttresses.
While I missed the snow (thank god; I'm cold enough as it is), there are still patches in the shade here and there, haha. But most of them are gross because they used grit to try and melt the snow instead of salt :| Wow, hello, I think I'm showing the state I lived in when I was seven (Michigan). That said this weekend's actually been lovely apart from a spot of drizzle Friday night. Beautifully sunny but still freezing, though it's nice to not have wind chill adding to that like in Wellington.
The night I arrived happened to be Chris' flatmate's 21st party at the flat, so party time with a whole bunch of people I don't know. It was a really nice set up: They moved the couches and seats outside and put out a brazier to keep warm and chucked up a tarp when it started raining. As I discovered last year I'm allergic to alcohol so I just carried around a beaker of lemon water the whole night and people were drunk enough to believe it was vodka or whatever. (Chris has a bunch of beakers and test tubes for drinks after a chemistry themed party.) The flat's speeches for the birthday girl consisted of twenty-one qualities or stories about her and after each one she had to take a shot. I was quite impressed she didn't immediately throw up :) Her mum couriered down a delicious cake which all got eaten even despite Chris' spilling a beer on it. I'm so used to our Filipino family parties ending at like 3AM that I was kind of surprised when it started thinning out around midnight :P I briefly met Chris's boyfriend when he came over after a few too many of Chris' drunk texts and I'm glad he did because he looked after drunk!Chris better than I knew how to. (And the boy's glad that I'm down here because he has work and study to do this weekend so I'm keeping Chris distracted, haha.)
Yesterday Chris and I killed time by bussing out to Sumner. The beach was nice looking, except there were signs everywhere saying not to go in the water because of pollution; Chris said it was because of the sewerage. If you looked inland you could see the houses at the top of the cliffs that fell down in the earthquakes. We also looked around the township a bit and went into a random "junk shop" (read: really old second hand stuff).
The exhibition hockey got rebranded as the Douglas Webber Cup, hurr hurr. The preshow was a montage of NHL footage with "THIS - IS - WHAT - THEY - LIVE FOR" and then an idiot's guide to hockey because this is New Zealand and we don't really have ice hockey. The national anthems were dedicated to everyone affected by the earthquake so while the lady was singing they put up this slideshow of the inner city damage, a bit depressing. Merch was programs, $5 flags which the guys in front of me kept nearly killing people with, $25 overpriced beanies with the flags embroidered on, signed pucks, and then some NHL stuff for charity but of course my teams' merch were sold out.
The game was amazing! CND 1-0 USA the first period, USA brought it back to 3-1 in the second period, and then suddenly Canada came out of nowhere in the last period to win 7-3. Some really beautiful saves on both sides. There were only a few punchups and one staged one before third period started, a bit disappointing. The commentators were saying something about how both teams had less players than standard so they were working "twice as hard for you!!" (I can't find the article now, but I was reading something the other day about how after the February earthquake a lot of players pulled out and the others had a couple of guys go down there to check it out and check it was safe. I'm really quite impressed it went ahead; the guy who organized this is a Cantabrian and says that's why he kept going with it.) Ah, I read something else somewhere about how most of the players are just OHL, not NHL but then at the game and when I met some of the players (!!) they did mention some of the players were from NHL teams, so I guess I'll have to trawl through the program again and check Wiki.
Off the ice was really fun too; looked like a full house and people were getting really into it! Saw a whole family except the mum in Canucks jerseys and the mum was in a Team Canada one, and so many people had flags on. Chris is half-Canadian so I nicked his giant flag to wave (I bought one on a stick at a con last year but didn't think I could take it on the plane; carry on only). During the breaks they had a camera round putting people up on the big screen with "dance with me" captions and I got on it at one point dancing with the flag :D People didn't get nearly as into the "kiss me" cam, hurr hurr. There were some Year 9-looking cheerleaders down from Auckland, one group for the USA and one for Canada, going around the audience and sometimes trying to start chants (didn't go well because they were so high pitched...). The radio stations sponsoring the game here had a couple of contests during the breaks for signed merch but it seemed mostly for people who'd previously won radio contests.
BUT! I did meet Kyle Quincey, defense for the Colorado Avalanche :D
After the game I dragged Chris to the Christchurch Casino for the afterparty. The players were doing something at the Arena right after the game though so they weren't there for ages, so we went around gawking at everything (neither of us had been, especially because Chris is only barely old enough to get in) and finally putting our year and a bit of Latin and ballroom dance classes to use on the dance floor. Eventually the players turned up except I didn't recognize them out of uniform, so we spent ages comparing their photos in the program to the big blokes walking around, before some guy told us all the players had lanyards and I finally got up the balls to go ask for their autographs. :P The Canadian team was so nice, passed my program and pen around the table while they were eating, and asked what my favorite team was (thank god I actually have a couple of teams and I wasn't just a random Kiwi going "oh hockey this sounds kinda interesting") (when they heard I lived in Orlando they thought I was a Panthers fan -_-). I ended up with most of the Canadian team and a few of the Americans. It was so cool :D
This morning we went to check out the artisan/farmers market and so a couple of the girls could try shop for more upcoming 21sts (guess it's the season). I picked up a fish keyring made out of a spoon from a stall with all this jewelry and home decorations (candle holders etc) made out of cutlery :D I wanted to go ice skating (I have never been in New Zealand) but it's a logistical nightmare getting there so we're just going to the bot gardens because it's a nice day.
On a non-Christchurch note, I've been on the verge of a cold for the last few days to the point that my throat is...not painful per se but I can't talk at my normal pitch/volume first thing in the morning and sometimes into the afternoon. So in my tut on Friday, I ended up blowing up the font to size 30 to type notes at everyone and just holding up my netbook :P It got odd when I put a joke on it and there was this moment of silence when the whole class turned around to read the note.
While I missed the snow (thank god; I'm cold enough as it is), there are still patches in the shade here and there, haha. But most of them are gross because they used grit to try and melt the snow instead of salt :| Wow, hello, I think I'm showing the state I lived in when I was seven (Michigan). That said this weekend's actually been lovely apart from a spot of drizzle Friday night. Beautifully sunny but still freezing, though it's nice to not have wind chill adding to that like in Wellington.
The night I arrived happened to be Chris' flatmate's 21st party at the flat, so party time with a whole bunch of people I don't know. It was a really nice set up: They moved the couches and seats outside and put out a brazier to keep warm and chucked up a tarp when it started raining. As I discovered last year I'm allergic to alcohol so I just carried around a beaker of lemon water the whole night and people were drunk enough to believe it was vodka or whatever. (Chris has a bunch of beakers and test tubes for drinks after a chemistry themed party.) The flat's speeches for the birthday girl consisted of twenty-one qualities or stories about her and after each one she had to take a shot. I was quite impressed she didn't immediately throw up :) Her mum couriered down a delicious cake which all got eaten even despite Chris' spilling a beer on it. I'm so used to our Filipino family parties ending at like 3AM that I was kind of surprised when it started thinning out around midnight :P I briefly met Chris's boyfriend when he came over after a few too many of Chris' drunk texts and I'm glad he did because he looked after drunk!Chris better than I knew how to. (And the boy's glad that I'm down here because he has work and study to do this weekend so I'm keeping Chris distracted, haha.)
Yesterday Chris and I killed time by bussing out to Sumner. The beach was nice looking, except there were signs everywhere saying not to go in the water because of pollution; Chris said it was because of the sewerage. If you looked inland you could see the houses at the top of the cliffs that fell down in the earthquakes. We also looked around the township a bit and went into a random "junk shop" (read: really old second hand stuff).
The exhibition hockey got rebranded as the Douglas Webber Cup, hurr hurr. The preshow was a montage of NHL footage with "THIS - IS - WHAT - THEY - LIVE FOR" and then an idiot's guide to hockey because this is New Zealand and we don't really have ice hockey. The national anthems were dedicated to everyone affected by the earthquake so while the lady was singing they put up this slideshow of the inner city damage, a bit depressing. Merch was programs, $5 flags which the guys in front of me kept nearly killing people with, $25 overpriced beanies with the flags embroidered on, signed pucks, and then some NHL stuff for charity but of course my teams' merch were sold out.
The game was amazing! CND 1-0 USA the first period, USA brought it back to 3-1 in the second period, and then suddenly Canada came out of nowhere in the last period to win 7-3. Some really beautiful saves on both sides. There were only a few punchups and one staged one before third period started, a bit disappointing. The commentators were saying something about how both teams had less players than standard so they were working "twice as hard for you!!" (I can't find the article now, but I was reading something the other day about how after the February earthquake a lot of players pulled out and the others had a couple of guys go down there to check it out and check it was safe. I'm really quite impressed it went ahead; the guy who organized this is a Cantabrian and says that's why he kept going with it.) Ah, I read something else somewhere about how most of the players are just OHL, not NHL but then at the game and when I met some of the players (!!) they did mention some of the players were from NHL teams, so I guess I'll have to trawl through the program again and check Wiki.
Off the ice was really fun too; looked like a full house and people were getting really into it! Saw a whole family except the mum in Canucks jerseys and the mum was in a Team Canada one, and so many people had flags on. Chris is half-Canadian so I nicked his giant flag to wave (I bought one on a stick at a con last year but didn't think I could take it on the plane; carry on only). During the breaks they had a camera round putting people up on the big screen with "dance with me" captions and I got on it at one point dancing with the flag :D People didn't get nearly as into the "kiss me" cam, hurr hurr. There were some Year 9-looking cheerleaders down from Auckland, one group for the USA and one for Canada, going around the audience and sometimes trying to start chants (didn't go well because they were so high pitched...). The radio stations sponsoring the game here had a couple of contests during the breaks for signed merch but it seemed mostly for people who'd previously won radio contests.
BUT! I did meet Kyle Quincey, defense for the Colorado Avalanche :D
After the game I dragged Chris to the Christchurch Casino for the afterparty. The players were doing something at the Arena right after the game though so they weren't there for ages, so we went around gawking at everything (neither of us had been, especially because Chris is only barely old enough to get in) and finally putting our year and a bit of Latin and ballroom dance classes to use on the dance floor. Eventually the players turned up except I didn't recognize them out of uniform, so we spent ages comparing their photos in the program to the big blokes walking around, before some guy told us all the players had lanyards and I finally got up the balls to go ask for their autographs. :P The Canadian team was so nice, passed my program and pen around the table while they were eating, and asked what my favorite team was (thank god I actually have a couple of teams and I wasn't just a random Kiwi going "oh hockey this sounds kinda interesting") (when they heard I lived in Orlando they thought I was a Panthers fan -_-). I ended up with most of the Canadian team and a few of the Americans. It was so cool :D
This morning we went to check out the artisan/farmers market and so a couple of the girls could try shop for more upcoming 21sts (guess it's the season). I picked up a fish keyring made out of a spoon from a stall with all this jewelry and home decorations (candle holders etc) made out of cutlery :D I wanted to go ice skating (I have never been in New Zealand) but it's a logistical nightmare getting there so we're just going to the bot gardens because it's a nice day.
On a non-Christchurch note, I've been on the verge of a cold for the last few days to the point that my throat is...not painful per se but I can't talk at my normal pitch/volume first thing in the morning and sometimes into the afternoon. So in my tut on Friday, I ended up blowing up the font to size 30 to type notes at everyone and just holding up my netbook :P It got odd when I put a joke on it and there was this moment of silence when the whole class turned around to read the note.