Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Casa

Been a while. I housesit for some friends for a week. It snowed. Quite heavily. The city had a day off work and tried to stay warm. The snow lingered for two or three days after that, but we got warmth back and it melted.

After I finished housesitting, a friend had a party seeing as she had finished her course of chemotherapy to deal with a cancer. We all wore wigs and hats, the band was great, heaps of twitter peeps attended and some school friends came down from Wellington and Wanganui, so it was great to see them all again too.

The weekend just gone, I went up to Wellington and saw all those school friends again. It was really nice to just get away from everything down here.. broken roads, work, little shakes, lack of malls and shops, tired people with tired homes. I love visiting Wellington, I've decided. Well, I love visiting the people there, but the city is quite pretty, too. Especially at night. There is an easy-going-ness to the general public there that has been missing a little from Christchurch since February. I felt like.. smiles were easier to come by. Christchurch is tired.. and it shows on peoples faces.. no matter how well we try to hide it.

I couldn't live there though.. a bit too hilly.. suburbs are disconnected.. the roads confuse me. I like Christchurch for it's flat, sensible layout. I like how decent the bus system is, even through all the disruption. There are too many people, and my job, here, that I could never contemplate anywhere else being 'home'. I lived in Wanganui some 10 years, but it never felt permanent. Christchurch is where my home will always be.. no matter how long it takes her to get back on her feet.