there are rainy days in paradise, too.

i took this photo of my friend craig a few months after i moved to christchurch...yep, he's up there on the top of Castle Rock.

hello hello!

my friend Nate is always badgering me to write for his clever, brain-child website, Ocsplora.com. all too often i'm too busy to find room in my brain for settling down with a cup of tea, a pen and a blank page to let the creative juices flow for long enough to craft a string of words together worthy of a website aimed at 'creative revolutionaries.' but when Nate told me that the theme for april was "Life Abroad," the aforementioned creative juices started trickling, all on their own.

as a canadian girl who grew up in the middle of nowhere, and has done the tourist thing, the round-the-world-in-80-days thing, the solo road trip thing, the sneaky weekend away with the girls thing, the volunteer abroad thing, and finally, the actually-pick-up-and-move-to-a-different-country thing, i had some experience to draw on for this one.

what i wanted to touch on with this short article was the repeated comments i got from people from 'back home' who seemed to think i was living in new zealand on a perpetual contiki tour, rather than actually doing normal, everyday life type things. i've used some real experiences, mixed with some artistic license... i'm happy with the finished product :)

click here to read it for yourself.

churr.