Settling in for a while...it's already been a week!

 Avon River, Christchurch

I'm now staying at the Tranquil Lodge, a small hostel outside of the city centre of Christchurch.  The room is great!  Two beds, a television, and wireless internet (for a small fee).  It's so comforting being able to watch tv and surf the net.  It makes it a lot easier to stay in touch and work on blogging...without having to drag my laptop around the city!

The highlight of today has been a bus ride to a local mall.  Although we are trying to maintain a relaxed and laid back lifestyle here in NZ, some of the traditional American items are almost unavoidable.  We sought out the local K-Mart (no Targets here!) to pick up some supplies to make the hostel feel more like home:  dishes, towels, kitchen items, a hairdryer (finally, yay! It's pink!), toiletries (kiwi-scented shampoo), etc.  It was quite the adventure.  We were required to shop smart, as we could only buy as much as we could carry back to the bus stop and the few blocks to walk home.  The mall where K-Mart was located had lots of fun stores, and I look forward to some retail therapy there in the future! :)  There are also some pretty cool restaurants and bars (might try and hit up a happy hour) and a cinema.  The restaurants and food court were much cleaner and nicer than those in the downtown city centre.  After all that shopping, we treated ourselves to smoothies and sushi!  Yum!

Tonight, I'm going to attempt to cook spaghetti at the hostel.  It's a communal kitchen with shared dishes and such, but instead of wondering whose germs I was consuming, we invested in the blue light special $16.99 20-piece dish set.  I'm very excited to put it to good use!

There are some interesting things on TV here in NZ.  For example, we only get 4-5 channels.  I don't know if that's prior to cable, or all they have.  The shows are of a wide variety.  After watching Oprah yesterday (which I have never watched in the states before), I flipped over to another channel and found Days of Our Lives, a soap opera favorite of my mom's, and one that I know most of the story line.  I was watching it for a few minutes, and although I haven't watched in a while, I was confused to see characters on the show that I thought had been killed off, and story lines that I swear had already been used.  It wasn't until the end of the show, that the copyright date said 2003!  I was convinced, at this point, that all the shows are on a delay.  Ellen came on next, and they were talking about the election.  I was so confused.  Which election?  2004?  2008?  After a while, I realized that Ellen is current, right down to the day, Days of Our Lives, is not.  Good to know.  Wheel of Fortune in NZ lacks Pat Sajak and Vanna White, but is hilarious anyways.  They give clues for each puzzle in addition to the usual:  Thing, Place, Before and After, etc.  And last night I caught a few minutes of the Girls Next Door, which funnily, is called the Girls of the Playboy Mansion here in NZ.  There are lots of subtle differences here, between NZ and US culture... I will let you know more as I discover them!

NZ word of the day:

No worries:  You're welcome!