This is the ripped out chimney at our house. Mike crawled through and through the bricks down. He looked like he ought to be on Mary Poppins. So we are going to clean up the brick work and then get the pellet burner in sometime in the next few weeks. Yummy Warmness for our house. With all the construction its been quite, let just say, cold.

These are the Taiwanese kids I have been teaching for the past month. Sandy, Rachel and David. They came over here with their family to stay for their summer holiday. They weren't able to go to school so I have been substitute Chris. Of course, why did the kids have to study during their holiday???? Don't ask me. Its a Taiwanese thing. Must study. No play.

This is the Christchurch Art Gallery. I took the Taiwanese kids I teach here for some culture and enrichment. It was quite funny to try to get them to talk about what they saw. Do you like this? Uuuhhhh what? I don't know teacher. HA!

This past weekend we spent up at Lake Lyndon. The Cammocks have been going up there for years. It was a crew of family and friends. There is a great cabin at the end of the lake. We hoped there would be snow so we could play in that but there wasn't so we found much enjoyment in mud and driving in it. Its about an hour and a bit out of Christchurch. I love being out there.

Lake Lyndon.

Here we are getting stuck in the mud for maybe the 4th time. This was our main means of entertainment.

It was beautiful...more beautiful than this picture details. It was cold up there but you just layer up.

Mike took the Nissan around the bank of the Lake...soon after we saw Mack running back towards the hut and we knew that Mike was stuck. So the troops were rallied and we headed to get him out but we soon saw him truckin back. This is where he got stuck. We all went back to see and here he tells of the event. Notice how close to the water they were. Hmmm Mike.

Mike stands on the place of his incident. He was quite impressed he got out.

We played Cricket. Tom (with Bat) actually carved this bat with an ax...they really wanted to play.

There were lots of friends and cousins along for the weekend and a mini-truck. There wasn't any snow so we spent lots of time 4 wheeling in the mud, getting stuck, and getting out.

We came upon a LandRover that needed some assistance. At first we tried one car and then we added another one. Not to mention the crew of people that had unloaded from the cars to push the landrover out.

The Nissan pulling the BigHorn pulling the LandRover. HA!

These are out cool bikes that we got from our friend in Taiwan. Christchurch is a biking city. You can pretty much everywhere in 10 minutes.

This is the Avon River on the other side of the road from our house. Its quite a lovely settling.

This is a not very good photo of our house ( our camera likes to overexpose all photos).Most of the houses in Christchurch are Villas. This one is a California Bungalow.

This is a pic from Sasha's birthday. Sasha lives with the Cammocks. She turned 17 so Alice and I performed a special Dancing Queen performance for her. Alice is Mike's youngest sister. She turned 14 the other day. She is quite the ;lp syncher...fun for me.

This is Sasha's special Danicing Queen Birthday crown that Alice and I so artistically molded.

Here are the perfect cookies I baked...just like Mom's. The cookies, or buscuits as they say, are very hard here so I thought I would make some of Mom's extra chewy one. Even with the oven conversion and metric conversion they turned out alright. Too bad my second batch was sort of a disaster.

We are in New Zealand now and have been for a month. Its gone by fast as we have gotten settled into things. We are staying at Mike's grandad's ole place. Its nice and we plan to help Pete and Liz fix it up. We are living with Mackenzie (Mike's bro) and Jonny (Mike's friend) to keep costs down. Jonny has a 23 inch Phillips 1920 by 1200 resolution screen. He is a graphics designer. Mike started Uni last week and is going part-time this semester to get into things. I have been tutoring ( for two hours) three Taiwanese kids that have come over with their family so that's a lil extra cash and we have another Taiwanese girl (Jenny) coming over for a month to live and learn English. I am working on a curriculum for her and she'll be here this week. Then in September I start a 12 week painting course for Interiors and Exteriors. Its a free trade course. Everyone is excited to see what kind of classmates I have. I was really cold when we first got here but my blood seems to be thickening. July and August are the coldest months apparently but we are pretty far down here in Christchurch.