earthquake photos

having finally gotten my poor camera to allow me to transfer photos again, i figured i should finally post some of the photos i took right after last month's earthquake. certainly there are better pictures available, but hopefully this will help you see it from our perspective.

not having experienced any earthquakes before, we had no sense of magnitude and actually expected a 7.1 to feel much worse than it did. our upstairs bedroom shook violently for those few seconds, some pots and pans fell out of the cupboards, but afterwards we look at each other, laughed, and guessed its magnitude as a 4.0. it wasn't until a few hours later, not being able to go back to sleep (the earthquake occurred around 4:30 am) because of the excitement, that we wandered outside and saw that not every building had fared as well as our solid little home. we had planned to grab a bite to eat at the daily bagel, but from the picture below, you can see how that turned out. i was originally glad to see that next door my favorite local eatery, the new york deli (look for the red sign), was still standing, but it has since been torn down.

one of the first evidences of the quake, visible along the street just outside of our house, was the strange mud-like substance that lay in small hills along fences and in streams in the gutter. we've since learned that this is silt from the river that forced its way up through the soil when the quake triggered a sudden wave down the river...something like that.

i think my favorite destroyed building, if i can be so insensitive as to call it that, is the one that housed the south of the border restaurant (it was reportedly terrible) on colombo st. mainly i just like that the second-floor bathroom is fully exposed, a roll of toilet paper still hanging on the wall.

one of the shops that i felt bad for was the painted room, a sort of odds-n-ends/antique shop that had just moved into this new location (left) weeks before. its old location (right) was just a block away, and didn't appear to have sustained any damage save for this poor mannequin sprawled awkwardly on the floor. terrible timing.

while the suburbs near the beach didn't fare too well, in general the damage was limited to chimneys falling through roofs, like this sad example in a lovely old home. even now, six weeks later, any residential street contains homes with tarps strapped over chimney holes.

we're still experiencing aftershocks daily (anything above a 4.0 is worth remarking on), and expect the same for the coming months. in one sense, i think we'll miss the experience when it's all over, but don't tell that to the poor people who've lost homes or who are suffering psychologically (which is actually quite a large part of the population). hope this gives you a taste for what the christchurch streets look like - while many of the damaged buildings have been demolished, just as many are still cordoned off, their doors and windows marked with spraypainted Xs and the words "NO GO".

-rachel

my apologies for the long delay between posts of late - we are still alive and living it up in new zealand, never fear. the big thrill for bryan this week was the much-anticipated arrival of about 70 of our movies (plus some great treats that my parents threw in) that we, of course, have not had access to for the last 14 months. so when i threw open the curtains last weekend and decided to spend my warm spring saturday dayhiking in the port hills, i found that i would be going alone, as he could not be convinced to leave his comfortable position on the couch. not a problem - i think a person is entitled to spend their saturday however they see fit, though i have been reminding him all week about the fantastic experience that he missed out on.

my hike was absolutely perfect, the kind of little day trip that i'd easily repeat with a friend (or husband!) who's up for a little activity on a nice day. i took the bus out to lyttleton, then walked up the popular and unexpectedly steep bridle path that the early settlers used to climb over the hills between the port and the plains where they would eventually build their homes. this path connected me with the crater rim walkway, part of which we explored back in march, which i followed out to godley head, where the remains of a WWII base can be seen. from there, i took a coastal track down to taylor's mistake, a quiet little beach where lifeguards were training, and ultimately along to sumner, a long and popular beach with a boardwalk that we've visited with friends quite a lot in last few months. i finished my walk around 4 pm, purchasing an ice cream for the remaining barefoot stretch down to the bus stop at the far end of the beach. it's as if i'm just now discovering that i live on the coast, having spend last summer exploring the city itself and not bothering to venture out too far in the cold of winter, and i am embracing this discovery wholeheartedly.

on tuesday i was fortunate enough to join the teenage girls from the church youth group on a mini-retreat to the french settlement of akaroa, about an hour and a half from christchurch along very windy roads, where they had rented a beautiful house that overlooked the harbor. i arrived halfway through the 3-day retreat, so we checked out of the house the morning after i arrived, and then drove to the north side of the peninsula to spend the day soaking up the sun in okains bay. it was the middle of the two-week school holidays, so i was surprised to find that the only other people at the beach were so far away that i had to squint to see them clearly. i got a lot of reading done, received my first sunburn of the season, and even managed to get in the frigid water up to my waist. good, good times.

next (mini) adventure: biking the 40-km christchurch to little river rail trail, which should be gorgeous, though i've heard rumors that it's still blocked by a landslide because of the earthquake. speaking of earthquakes, we're still getting aftershocks from the quake 5 weeks ago, generally at the rate of one a day that's large enough to feel. what a strange experience.

-rachel

national conference

Last night we returned home from a 4-day conference up in Auckland that we attended with the rest of our church staff and most of the interns. I believe I've hinted at the fact that we're moving into a new role at the church, but I don't know that I've ever actually explained it. Since March/April we've been heading up what we've termed Family Ministries, a program that runs in conjunction with our kids ministry by providing one event for families with young kids each month. Ideally this would have been run under the leadership of the kids ministry staff, but the volunteer kids pastors have five kids of their own and just didn't have the time to do it. The more recent development is that, having served in this role for five years, they've decided that it's time for a change and will be stepping down from kids ministry at the end of November, and Bryan and I have agreed to take on this role in their stead. Over the past few years, especially having been involved with fantastic kids ministry teams at our church at home (Oak Hills Church) in Minnesota, we've felt drawn to kids ministry, and so we feel like this is a very natural (though still very challenging!) step for us.

So we flew up to Auckland on Monday for the annual National Conference for our church movement, staying with the family of a friend that we met here in Christchurch at their home on Auckland's lovely North Shore, just a 10-minute drive from the conference in the beachside suburb of Takapuna. We'd been there before, having stayed at a campground a block away from the conference center on the last night of our 34-day Cape Reinga-Auckland hike last September, and were struck by how different our circumstances were. We miss our backpacking lifestyle, but also embrace the good friends that we've found over the last year and the strong sense of local identity that we've cultivated in Christchurch. 

The Saturday before we left for the conference, while saying goodbye to our good friend Ann-Kristin at the airport, Bryan and I discovered that we weren't actually registered for the conference, each of us having thought that the other person had taken care of this crucial step. We shared a good nervous laugh but boarded our flights anyway, having no opportunity to contact anyone about the problem but knowing enough about the workings of our small (and often disorganized) movement to have a fair amount of confidence in our ability to attend anyway. To our relief, this was the case, though it was painful to see the money we could have saved had we qualified for the early-bird rate. I think my mom would say "you live and you learn" here.

I think all of us from City Church enjoyed the conference, though as a first-time attendee, I had some expectations that did not match up with the actual event. For the first time in my life, probably because I'm recognizing how much I have to learn as a new kids pastor, I was looking forward to networking with other people in similar roles, and was disappointed to find that this conference made no attempt to assist with this process - no workshops, no discussion groups, no special lunches, just eight long general sessions. Yikes! The keynote speaker was an American, Pastor Glen Berteau from Calvary Temple Worship Center in Modesto, CA. He had plenty of great things to say, though his proud declaration that he doesn't read books, just the Bible, made me squirm more than just a little. I'm not sure if he was serious about this or just emphasizing a point (that we need to know the Bible itself, not just what other people have to say about it), but it didn't exactly make me want to put him on my favorite people list.

The highlights for me were a short message preached by Jordan Smith, the movement's youth ministry guy, who spoke inspiringly about our ability to make an impact no matter how large the size of our team, which is especially relevant for us as most of the kids ministry work is done by the two of us and our fabulous (and hilariously innocent) intern, Hannah. I was also able to connect meaningfully with Sarah Thompson, who's been the kids pastor at South Life Church in Dunedin (we were at this church a few months ago for the Branded Conference) for 6 or 8 years and who is making valiant efforts to build a kidmin community nationwide. I'd stumbled upon her blog last week through a kids ministry website and had been hoping to meet her while up north. We went out for coffee and talked about check-in systems, teambuilding, and her desire to create meaningful experiences for kids throughout their Sunday morning kids program. Good stuff, and hopefully just the beginning of a fruitful relationship that someday I may actually have something to contribute to.

So that was my first experience with the ACTS Churches National Conference. I'm glad we went...and thanks to Joel and Karen for helping make that possible for us.

-Rachel

winter tramping

This is the tale of a hike that did not go according to plan - but then again, I've started many a blog with this same formula: the plan was X, but because of Y, we ended up doing Z. In this particular case, plan X was to drive up into the mountains with our friends Ann-Kristin and Josh on Wednesday afternoon and hike the Lake Man route, a loop that would take us up the Doubtful River (top of the image below), across the Doubtful Range, and down the Hope River as it swings east to arrive back at our entrance point by Saturday evening. It was going to be a strong jolt back into the backpacking lifestyle after 9 sedentary months in the city, but we were keen for a little adventure as Ann flies back home to Berlin this week to start her university studies and we'd been talking about doing a good tramp together for months.

Within the first half hour we knew that our plans would have to change, as the car that we were planning to take suddenly lost its power steering and the car that we did take got a flat tire before we even got out of Christchurch. So instead of beginning our hike on Day 1, we camped at a free site by the side of the highway and cooked our dinner outside in the rain on our small stove. While Bryan and I believe in travelling as light as possible, Josh's mentality is to bring as much as can possibly be carried, which was to our benefit when he pulled out a block of butter in which to fry two massive rump steaks, accompanied by peas and mashed potatoes.

The new plan was to leave early on Day 2 and make up the two lost hours from Day 1...but of course that was not to be. The beginning of our hike involved a crossing of the Boyle River where there is no bridge, which may have been a simple task were it late summer, but with all the snowmelt of early spring as well as days of heavy rain in the region, there was no way a sane human could be convinced to attempt that feat. So instead we drove down to the carpark at what was supposed to be the end of our trip, an hour's walk downriver, to the only swingbridge in the area. Our topo maps indicated a rough track that would lead us back up to the Doubtful Valley, but we soon lost the path and found ourselves enclosed by fences that were most definitely not on the maps. Two hours into our wandering we gave up and decided to start hiking the loop backwards, hoping to reach the 20-bunk Hope Kiwi Hut (#1 on the map) by sunset. The going was much easier once this decision was made, though the sun never emerged from the drizzling clouds and the mud often reached over the tops of our gaiters, and we made decent time making our way up to the head of the valley. We were rewarded at the end of our 9-hour day with the sight that we most wanted to see: a spacious, clean, and (most of all) empty hut with a stack of firewood resting by the stove. We hung up our wet gear, unrolled our sleeping bags in one of the two spacious bunkrooms, and heated up a pot of water for the first round of hot chocolate. I think most of us had already given up on the Lake Man route by this time, secretly planning a short day hike down to Lake Sumner or thereabouts for Day 3, but none of us wanted to vocalize this complete deterioration of The Plan quite yet.

On Day 3, having been awoken many times in the night by the rain pounding down on the roof and windows, none of us displayed any eagerness to leave the hut. We officially postponed a decision until lunchtime (clearly already much too late if we were going to do any hiking), at which point we unanimously voted to drag our sleeping bags next to the fire and spend the day reading and playing card games. Bryan and I pulled on our hiking boots in the late afternoon for a five-minute walk along the grassy flat just outside the hut, more to be able to say that we went outside than from an actual desire to do so. During those short minutes the rain turned into sleet, and by the time we were seated comfortably next to the fire again a layer of snow was visibly settling on the fenceposts just outside the window. Living next to the sea at an elevation of about 30m, we've had to adjust to the disappointment of a snowless winter and were therefore so excited by this weather development that we all headed outside to build a snowman and have a snowball fight as the last glow of daylight faded away.

On the last day, then, there was nothing left to do but to head back out the way we came: across the short field of grassy hillocks, along the long river flat crisscrossed with cow and rabbit tracks, and up and down through the muddy forest roughly following the river's curves. It's difficult to get excited about a hike that you've already done, so we made excellent time in our haste to get back home to change into dry clothes and crank up the heatpump. Roughly halfway back to the car we stopped at the Hope Halfway Hut, a basic 6-bunk hut where some freeze-dried food had been left by hikers before us. On the way in, two days earlier, Bryan had taken one of the two packages of Cocoa Rice Balls with Fruit Salad, which subsequently proved terrible enough to warrant being dumped into the long-drop toilet, and despite much prodding from the rest of the group he was not tempted to take the second package with him on the way out.

Looking back, I'm not at all disappointed that plan X turned into plan Z. It's as if we took a retreat together (at a very remote retreat center), and I wonder if that wasn't what I needed more than just an active adventure. Through months of tramping and months of fruitless job searching, I'm getting used to my plan not working out. Sometimes the alternative is better and sometimes it's worse, but I'm trying to learn to take it as it is and emerge intact on the other end.

-Rachel

moving church

While Bryan and I have still not been affected by Saturday's earthquake in regards to our own home, our church is a different story. We met in the auditorium as usual on Sunday, but as chunks of plaster began falling off the walls we grew concerned about safety and decided to move this weekend's service to our smaller (and much rattier) youth hall. The wisdom of this decision was confirmed by a structural engineer who issued us with one of the yellow certificates that we've seen around the city, meaning that the building is to be entered with caution and only by those people who have legitimate business being there. We were thankful that the damage extended only to the auditorium, which is technically a separate building from our office area though they have a long wall in common. This morning, after a series of particularly strong aftershocks, as Bryan was in the office particularly early on a phone call to the U.S., he heard the familiar sound of a collapsing building and rushed to the door in time to see the ceiling open over our senior pastor's office and a load of bricks and debris landing solidly on his (very expensive) desk. So much for the office area being safer.

And so this is why, on our cherished and much-too-rare days off, we will be moving everything from both the auditorium and the offices over to the youth hall. This complicates everything, but as it could be months before we have a usable auditorium and office area again, we have to plan for it being a fairly long-term solution. We've already spent the morning cleaning out the youth hall, moving furniture, trying to spruce up the grungy upstairs area that was just recently vacated by a Korean church, and brainstorming to identify the most efficient and effective solutions to our new problems. It's an irritating job, but it's all necessary and there's a sense of community about it as well. Hopefully at the end of this process we'll emerge with more creativity, commitment, and momentum than ever before - if not, I don't know how we'll handle the next few months. More later.

-Rachel

earthquake!

On Saturday morning we woke up just before 5 am to the undulations of our first earthquake - always glad to add something new to our list of New Zealand experiences! We knew about the major fault line that bisects the entire country, so while we hadn't found ourselves in an earthquake here before, it wasn't surprising to us that it was occurring. As there was no damage to our home, save for a few items that fell off of shelves and out of the cupboards, we considered it to be a quite minor quake, and only realized its extent hours later. There wasn't a word about the earthquake on TV (too early for the news) so, not being able to sleep, we walked downtown for an early breakfast and encountered firsthand the piles of rubble where the entrance to the bagel shop used to be. The central city area has the most dramatic damage, as it contains the oldest and therefore most fragile buildings, and about 25 square blocks of the city were roped off later in the day and have been patrolled by city police ever since.

We had planned to go on a nice long day-hike with friends to a forest park an hour or so south of here, but unfortunately had to give up that plan because local authorities were encouraging people to stay off of the roads. Later it became clear that the roads we would have taken were clear after all, but a part of us probably wanted an excuse to be rubberneckers, to remember this one dramatic moment in history before it would be cleaned up for the upcoming tourist season. So the four of us got together for lunch (and afternoon tea, and dinner, and dessert) and wandered around in the warm sunshine of early spring, appreciating the curious little mud mountains that bubbled up in parks and lawns, which I understand to be silt from the nearby Avon that forced itself up through the soil. Though it was a beautiful Saturday morning, almost no shops or restaurants were open, so the few places that did manage to serve customers were busy non-stop. A friend of mine manages a KFC which was, to her dismay, open. She did not have a pleasant day. After a long afternoon of walking I attempted to drag the boys into some sort of intensely girly shop (I believe it's called Truly Scrumptious) that advertised cold drinks, but in desperation they found a coffee shop secretly open down the street. 

I'm amused by the news reports that are coming out about the quake, some of which are just blatantly wrong. We all laughed about someone's dramatic statement on TV this morning that "20% of residences are uninhabitable". While there certainly are some homes that fall into this category, the vast majority of them are either completely fine or report something minor, like the common loss of a chimney. We had lunch this afternoon with a friend's family on the south side of the city and would never have known there was an earthquake there had we not experienced it. I think the big surprise was that the magnitude was as large as it was (a 7.1, downgraded from the 7.4 originally reported) and that it originated so close to the city (40ish kms west, coming down from the low hills and plains to our lovely coastal city). It was hard not to chuckle at a woman who appeared on TV in the morning, having obviously been interviewed before anything was known about the earthquake's originating point, who declared with wide, panicked eyes that she was heading for the hills to avoid the tsunami.

More later - the camera's acting up, so unfortunately I can't upload any of my pictures yet. The picture above is from stuff.co.nz and was taken at the school that I worked at the week before last.

-Rachel

urban tramping

This week I've been picking up some hours working at an after-school program with Outaskool, the organization that I worked for during the school holidays a few months ago. I'm glad for the 15 or so hours of employment, but in order to avoid spending a large chunk of my miniscule paycheck on transportation, I've been walking to and from the school each day, which is just over 2 miles from the church or 3 miles if I'm leaving from our home. On Friday I decided to try jogging home, but quickly found that the 30ish miles of walking during the week had rendered my muscles completely uncapable of any extraordinary feats, a category to which running clearly belonged. During this attempted jog I also incorrectly judged the curvature of the river that I had been following to my next turn-off and was surprised to pop out east of The Palms Mall when I had planned to remain on its southwest side for my entire home journey.

I gave up and took the bus home instead, having been taken under the wing of a British man who had emigrated here 20 years prior and assumed from my accent (and the backpack I was jogging with) that I would be in need of assistance on the public transportation system. This wasn't quite the case, but I'm realizing that I will be pegged as a tourist no matter how long I'm here, and am trying to reconcile myself to this truth.

-Rachel