February 28, 2011

“Stop farting”

This was the latest earthquake advice we saw a psychologist give on the television. Since a tremor is pressure building up, and then being eased, like passing gas, parents should allow kids to use a little “toilet humor” to take the fear out of the event and to inject a little humor. So his advice was to tell your kids that when a tremor hits (and they just had a 4.1 tremor this morning), just yell at it “Stop farting.”

“Kia kaha.”

We also saw New Zealanders in NYC on television, all saying the same thing to those back in Christchurch, “Kia kaha” meaning “Stay strong” in Maori. None appeared to be Maoris. So why is it that they would choose Maori words as words of inspiration to the population of Christchurch? Certainly, Americans abroad would not use Apache words or Comanche words to inspire those at home who had undergone such a trauma. Why the difference?

A different pace

Today has been a slower paced day, a day to catch up, to shop, to walk, to write postcards, and to study New Zealand flying rules and review aeronautical charts of the area we’ll be flying in. After a quick trip up the gondola on an errand, we returned to town and did the walk around the municipal park, with its manicured bowling lawn, tennis courts, rose garden, lily pond with ducks. It was cloudy but warm and you got a different perspective looking up at the gondola station and mountains than our vantage point yesterday, which for most of the day was looking down on the town. We shopped for a bit, and then went to Fergburgers for lunch. It is the most popular place in Queenstown with scores of under-30’s, and today Sugar and me, placing an order and then congregating outside waiting for your order number to be called. Your reward is a huge cheeseburger with onions, lettuce, tomato and barbecue sauce. We took ours across the street to a small park and ate ours on park benches. The sun had returned and it became warm sitting there. It’s a shortsleeve shirt type of day, although rainshowers had been predicted. We are now back in the room having just called to our flyinn hosts and leaving a message that we are in Queenstown and will meet them at the airport tomorrow at 9 AM. Then we’ll try 4500 feet WITH an engine. Back to the books...

Love, Dad, Nat, Matt, DB

PS And I learned how to copy the contents of a CD to my computer, so the picture I’m attaching is a picture of Shane and me above Queenstown. He held a camera out on a pole with which to take pictures and to make a 2 minute movie of a portion of our flight. Awesome, eh?

PPS And it’s a rest day for you as well. Thank you for hanging in there. I’m not sure about Wifi at Geordie Station so if you don’t hear from me, don’t worry. We’ll be fine and we’ll be in contact on the 8th or 9th (your 7th or 8th). However, I think that, although we may not have Wifi in our separate quarters, there is Internet in the main house and I should be able to send it out on that.