I have been working in Christchurch for a while and I must say it suits me quite well. I wake up every morning at 6:00 AM and get ready, usually talk to Ellen a bit, then go to work at the Pacific Tower. This is the building on which my friends and I are working. I've still been working everyday with George. It's interesting because, although the earthquakes were almost two years ago, the Pacific Tower is one of the first buildings to go back online. That makes my crew one of the only ones in the town with any real on the job experience. This means we may be able to stay together as a crew after December. I am left with a choice if this comes to pass. Go elsewhere or stay in Christchurch? I may be able to get more interesting work in another place but I like my crew. We can go get a beer after work and it feels a bit like home.
By the end of the first week of working I found a flat. It was a little place in the suburb of St. Albans. The people living with me were older people but all of them were very fun. Writing for the blog has become more difficult because I have less time to think. I'm usually on the swing stage with George most of the day. I usually work 9.5 hours in a day. We are doing crack repair in the side of the building. This involves a lot of power tool use. It's difficult to hold drills and grinders over your head all day and come home awake.
It just so happened that on October 16th one of my flat mates mentioned an All Whites game in Christchurch. The All Whites are the national soccer team in New Zealand. We decided that we couldn't have the All Whites coming to Christchurch and not go. That would just be a travesty. We got off work and got ready to go to the game.
Going felt like going to one of the VT football games. We went in and it turned out we were right behind the goal. The game was the All Whites vs. Tahiti. The Tahitians were favored to win the game. In the first couple of minutes the All Whites had scored a goal. This was unfortunate since we hadn't found our seats by then. I was sad when the All Whites then seemed to go cold. That being said, they played very good defense and kept Tahiti out of the goal. The overhead lights went off right as halftime was supposed to happen.
The weather was being very typical Christchurch. The nice warm day gave way to the very cold windy night. It was a nice cool evening to watch soccer. I noticed that the Kiwis were about like Hokie fans. There were plenty of snarky remarks along with jeers to the ref. A couple of yellow cards later there was a corner kick. The cross came in beautifully and the head ball bounced off the goalie. Then all of a sudden an All White swooped in and scored the goal. The whole stadium went nuts. People blew air horns and vuvuzelas. This was very well received but not quite as much as when an All White came down the center of the field. He placed a kick to the top right corner of the goal and landed the shot perfectly. A keeper's nightmare. The crowd went absolutely wild. People were jumping up and down and doing what I heard people around me calling the "earthquake". Basically they were banging their feet on the bleachers making a loud noise.
Coming home we talked about the awesome goals during the game. It was nice to be at a big game again. This was a playoff game for a spot in the 2014 world cup. The whole thing was apparently a very big deal. I was just happy to go to a public event with lots of happy people around.
I'm sorry this isn't a longer post but I am having a hard time staying awake. I'll try to do a little better on the next one.
No comments:
Post a Comment