Day Eleven January 22, 2008 Tuesday

Today, despite the promise that we were going to be able to sleep late and take it easy, they woke us up bright and early and told us we had half an hour to eat breakfast and pack up camp. After scrambling around we finally pulled out of our camp around 8:30. We hopped in the vans and drove for a few hours. Most of the time I read my book, but we also played a few car games that were really fun. One game we played was called make the link. Basically one person would come up with two actors and we would have to make a chain of movies and other actors to get from one to the other. So for example, Meg Ryan and Pierce Brosnan: Meg Ryan was in Kate and Leopold with Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman was in X-Men with Halle Berry, and Halle Berry was in James Bond with Pierce Brosnan! It sounds kind of dumb, but it is actually really hard and fun! Finally when we got to Christchurch we pulled into the LDS church and had lunch on the lawn: cliché? Yes. After lunch we went to the Christchurch botanical gardens. This was quite possibly the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. The best part was that it wasn’t just flowers, there were gigantic trees everywhere with grass and winding paths. We did find one greenhouse that had a section called flowering plants, this room was full of the biggest most beautiful flowers I have ever seen in my entire life, some were bigger than my head or a large rock! After looking at the flowers for a while I walked into town with my friend Janessa to find a bank so I could finally get rid of my American money. After we found the bank it started to rain pretty hard, so we all piled into the vans to check into our campsite. Little did we know that they had a surprise for us: We get to sleep in beds! There are four of us to a room, but we really get to sleep on beds with mattresses and everything! Who knew a bed would be the best gift you could ever get? Once we all settled in I went to the store with another group and bought some really cheap jeans so that I would have something casual to wear other than basketball shorts and track pants. When we got back the dinner crew made grilled cheese and tomato soup, which was absolutely heavenly! After dinner I took a shower so that I would be ready to go into town. Unfortunately the rain had picked up so most of the cool things in town were cancelled. Most of the girls ended up staying here and we all crowded into our bedroom and told stories. I am really excited to explore Christchurch tomorrow, I sure hope it stays dry!