excellent developments on the job front

just wrote a long blog all about my new job - only to have it post a blank one and delete all of my writing. fantastic.

summary: i found a full-time job. it's sweet. it's as a lab assistant in a pharmaceutical company. this means we can stay in new zealand. hooray!

maybe i'll rewrite it when i'm not quite so annoyed.

-rachel

deconstructing church

Here are some before and after photos that our senior pastor snapped yesterday of our church building getting demolished. Apparently they've just instituted some new policies today that would require a longer permit process for demolishing a building, but yesterday these weren't yet in force and it was taken down, as I hear it, in a matter of minutes. The auditorium that was torn down hasn't been used since the September earthquake, when some bricks from a supporting wall came crashing through our offices, but it had been hoped until last week that it would still be able to be repaired. Actually, the insurance company was still hoping this - the rest of us wanted the old converted building to go so that we could rebuild one better suited to our needs. We've been using our much smaller youth hall building for the last six months, which has proven to be impressively earthquake-proof; this is what we expect to move back into in a month or two. The plan until then hasn't yet been finalized.


After: Just the Youth Hall

Before: Youth Hall (left) and Auditorium (right)



-Rachel

earthquake update: part 2

In the days immediately following the quake we stayed at home, never straying far from the TV where the news coverage gave round-the-clock updates on the rescue and recovery efforts with frequent briefings by our well-spoken mayor, Bob Parker, on whom I have a bit of an older-man crush. We listened especially for information about the CTV building, which had caught on fire after its total collapse, where Paul, one of the elders from our church, had been working on Tuesday morning. Having not had any live rescues since Wednesday afternoon, just 26 hours after the quake, the media were especially sensitive to any possible signs of life and issued reports on a few trapped survivors that were later found to be not true. On Thursday or Friday we were all discouraged to hear the USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) chief declare 100% certainty that the building was no longer a survivable environment and began to acknowledge that we had lost a valued member of our church and a man who had been a good friend to us.

Paul and his wife Nancy were the first people that we met at City Church last January, and if it weren't for their kindness we probably wouldn't have stayed in New Zealand as long as we have. They took us out for lunch at their favorite restaurant, drove us up to the Port Hills to introduce us to a bird's eye view of our new city, and helped us sort out Bryan's internship at the church. At Christmas, knowing that I was still unsuccessfully looking for work, they gave us a lovely gift basket of tasty food as well as a very generous monetary gift that bought us groceries for multiple weeks. We had just invited them over to our place for lunch to repay their many kindnesses to us, but as we were waiting for the school year to get into full swing (Nancy's a teacher), the opportunity hadn't yet come around. As far as I'm aware, his body hasn't yet been found or identified, which isn't surprising, as work at the CTV building has been progressing slowly because of the extent of the damage there. 



Towards the end of the week we began meeting at Westside, one of the other churches in our movement, to arrange food distribution, help shovel liquefaction off of lawns and driveways, and sort out any other needs of families in our churches and in their communities. Bryan headed up the team that hosted sausage sizzles at a couple of water distribution sites on the east side of town, and I went out with them on Thursday to Cowles Stadium in Bromley, where one of the welfare centres was beginning to wind down as the newly homeless sorted out longer-term accommodation options. Our two BBQ stations were swamped with kids and adults who hadn't had hot food in days, most of the residents in that area still being without power and water, and many of them filling their couches and floor space with friends and family whose homes were even less inhabitable.

On Sunday we had a combined church service at Westside with the 4-5 other churches of our denomination in the Christchurch area, the most energetic Sunday service that we've had in a long time. We were surprised at the number of families that decided to venture out to the far side of town, and threw together a kids program at the last minute. We'd originally been expecting to just support the kids programs that Westside was already running, but we found that we quickly outstripped the resources that they had available, especially with many of the normal volunteers needing to sort out their own family's needs as well as recover psychologically from the experience.

Today our pastor will be sorting out the building situation for our church, trying to find a place that's closer to the city as we expect to be out of our building for a month at the very least. One of the options is having an afternoon service at a church that's half a block away from where we live, which would really help us with our lack of transport as the bus system doesn't seem to be anywhere near up and running. We'll see what happens.

-Rachel

earthquake update

Bryan and James shoveling liquefaction from our driveway

So this Tuesday was supposed to be a fairly quiet day - Bryan had gone down to the church to help with a BBQ that we were putting on for the students of Vision College, next door to our church, and I slept in, lounging around in my pajamas until lunchtime. I was trying to talk myself into heading down to the library to do more job searching, but a good book about Scott's Discovery voyage to the Antarctic kept my inside - which turned out to be particularly fortunate on this day.

Just before 1 PM, as I was still in my second-floor bedroom, engrossed in my book, we experienced an aftershock that was particularly startling and felt even more severe than the original earthquake that we experienced in September. I could hear things crashing to the floor downstairs and darted to my earthquake position in the doorway, feeling only slighly more prepared than last year. Though I was immediately able to get a call through to Bryan and knew that he and others with him were all right, I started walking down to the church right away. There's something helpful about being able to see others and share the experience with them that outweighed the potential dangers of leaving the house.

Everyone was out on the streets, and as I got closer to the city I started meeting people who had walked up from the city center. One man told me that he'd been in a conference in the Town Hall when the floor split in two. I passed a corner pharmacy that had suffered minor damage during the last quake and moved to a new location; good thing, too, because the second floor had completely collapsed in on the bottom floor where their store had been, leaving interior hallways and doors exposed for all to see.

At the church I discovered that a 30-ft wall looming over their BBQ spot had partially collapsed just as they were about to start, and a few people had been snatched away from the wall by friends as it began to fall. No one there was hurt, but some friends hadn't yet been able to locate family and were becoming more and more distraught, not sure if their phone's silence meant that their family members were caught in the rubble or simply that the cell phone network wasn't working properly. Finding nothing to do at the church itself, I drove a friend in this situation towards her house on the east side of town, not sure if we could get through but determined to find out if her house, which had been damaged in the last quake, was still standing and if her mom was there. We finally abandoned the car a mile or two from the church after 45 minutes in stand-still traffic, and walked the final mile along roads buckled with pressure and clotted with liquefaction, soil that's been compressed by the pressure and turns to mud, which seeps up through the cracks and holes that are available to it. Fortunately, we found her family safe and well, though their house has moved off of its foundations and they've since moved in with family in other parts of town.

Knowing the traffic to be impossible and expecting the buses not to be running (I had since heard of buses having been crushed by falling buildings in the city), I headed off on foot towards my home, 3 or 4 miles west, at some points finding the streets underwater to knee-level. Most of the homes I saw in this area seemed to be in good condition, as some of the most fragile ones had come down last September and almost none of the chimneys had yet been replaced after their tumbles from last year. I arrived home to find our small back pation area covered with inches of liquefaction, a stream of water running through from an outlet I couldn't pinpoint and slowly filling the area even more.

Throughout the afternoon and evening we sat glued to the TV, amazed at the difference in damage compared to the last earthquake, which was larger on the magnitude scale (7.1 compared to a 6.3) but, being farther from the city center, shallower, and occurring overnight, didn't result in anything near what we were seeing this time around. We had power but not water, and dutifully set out every large pot and unbroken bowl onto our balcony to collect the rain that was now starting to come down.

More later.

-Rachel

german night: session 1

You may remember from previous posts the Lewis Pass tramping trip that we took in the snow six or so months ago with Ann-Kristin, our German friend, and her boyfriend Josh, a Kiwi. Since Ann returned to Berlin in September, Josh has been planning his own overseas trip to visit her and has finally purchased his tickets for a six-month trip leaving in April. I'm sure he'll have a fantastic time visiting his Liebchen, working, sightseeing, and maybe even doing some climbing...but the only problem is that Josh doesn't really speak German.

And he's not the only one wanting to learn - being overseas is a constant reminder that knowing only one language is an intellectual and cultural weakness and that I am in the minority for it. I brushed up on some vocabulary with Ann while she was here ("Der Schmetterling? The butterfly is a masculine noun?"), but am eager for opportunities to move beyond my kindergarten speaking level and develop the language into something that I can legitimately put on a resume...not to mention that trip to Germany that Bryan and I intend to take...eventually.

Thus begins an official series of German Nights, in which Bryan, Josh and I work through a chapter of exercises in the book that Ann so hopefully sent him for Christmas, sample a menu of "traditional" German food from a library book of Central European cuisine, watch a movie set in Germany (lots of war films to choose from), and play some Settlers of Catan. That last one doesn't have any cultural significance, but it should always been included in any enjoyable evening.

As we have only recently instituted the German Nights program, we have so far only met once for this purpose, but I believe we could easily call it a success. We mastered the alphabet, were introduced to the idea of formal and casual pronouns, and heard over and over from the dialogue sound clips that "Aynur" is a Turkish name.

But the highlight of the evening was the success of our meal: Schnitzel with Spaetzle (inconveniently similarly named for our group of beginners). Being on a budget and acknowledging the danger of spreading our limited cooking skills too thinly, the Schnitzel was the frozen kind that we merely threw in the oven, while the Spaetzle with bacon, mushrooms and poached celery was fully homemade. Spaetzle are a sort of knobbly pasta made by scraping little bits off of the wet dough into a pot of boiling water, an art which I cannot yet claim to have mastered, as many of mine came out in big dumpling-like clumps that weren't all that appetizing. Fortunately, we had enough decent Spaetzle to go around and were all pleasantly surprised to have genuinely enjoyed our new dish.

With these two dishes we've exhausted the good-looking recipes in our Central European Cuisine book, so we're now taking suggestions for future meals. Maybe next week we'll skip dinner and go right to dessert - German chocolate cake? Apple strudel? Black forest cake? Plenty of options in the sweets category...

-Rachel

an awesome valentine's day card

so this is the card i gave bryan for valentine's day. it's blank inside. i don't have a clue why this card needs to exist, but i think it's hilarious and i'm hoping that he did too. it's made by the korean company mmmg (millimeter milligram), who office above the cutest little urban coffee shop. apparently the "you are not ugly" slogan also comes printed on a canvas bag or on a button featuring a redhead with braces, available through telegram paper goods. :)

-rachel

crossing our fingers...

So we've pulled out our (thick) file of immigration paperwork, and today we're submitting a variance request to INZ with the hope that they'll grant us two things:

1) Our current visas expire in August, and we're hoping that by submitting our police checks (which we hadn't received from the FBI when our current visas were being processed), they'll extend our visas for another two years, the maximum allowed under our Missionaries and Religious Workers visa. I'm thinking it might also help me with the job search to be able to prove my ability to work in the country for more than just the next six months. What's really cool is that when we attempted to photocopy our background checks for our files, the copy came out with "UNAUTHORIZED COPY" printed all over it in. That's some pretty sweet technology.
2) Bryan's also applying for the ability to work with a program called Wise Up, teaching social and behavioral skills to primary school kids. He would only be working 5 hours/wk at most, but the program is very much in need of male facilitators and it would give us a little extra income as well as more experience working with kids. His current visa prohibits him from working anywhere but the church, so we're crossing our fingers that they'll be lenient on this one, since it's only a few hours and it's kinda related to his field of study.

Wish us luck! We've been needing to get our act together on this for a while, so it will feel good to have all of our paperwork finally in and step into the part of the process that's out of our control :)

-Rachel