Watching the Tennis

We caught one day of the Australian Open this past week, and watched about 3 matches in their entirety. It was a very fun day.

Eric decided that he wants to be one of the line judges (the woman in blue behind Venus Williams). Isabel wants to be one of the ball kids (kid in red). Heather wants to be the person who puts up the shades for the players when they sit down to rest.

In addition to watching Venus and one other match, we watched the top rated U.S. mens player (John Isner). He is 6' 10" and though has a wicked serve, has an otherwise difficult time getting around the court. While he won the match we watched, you could tell he wasn't going to go that deep in the tournament. He lost last night in the 3rd round. Both Williams sisters are still in the tournament for now though.

Hello
Isabel Here.
We just went to New Zealand as you know. My favorite part was going to Hanmer Springs. The best part of the springs were the water slides. I loved it! I spent more time on the water slides than in the pools. I also really liked the zip lining! We went on 6 zip lines. The last one was the steepest one in the world! On our trip we got to stay at a castle! You can see the castle in the background of this picture

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Random New Zealand Pictures

Here are more random pictures of Heather, Isabel, Grandpa, and Eric's trip to New Zealand, posted without comment.

Invasive Species

One thing that has surprised us a bit about New Zealand is how messed up the ecosystem is due to invasive species. Before humans arrived, New Zealand only had one land mammal, the bat. The bird species are typically slow and naive and have no natural defenses against the mammals that are prevalent on other continents. Possums and stoats (weasels), dogs, and cats were introduced to New Zealand and have taken a severe toll on the wildlife, including the native kiwi. Many of the forests we visited were mostly devoid of bird sounds. Interestingly, the possum is increasingly threatened in Australia, but has thrived with the nice climate and lack of predators in New Zealand. Plant species such as Douglas fir and broom have taken over much of the countryside as well. Douglas fir is considered a weedy pest, which is interesting given how fond we were of these trees in the Pacific Northwest.

One happy wildlife story is that the local New Zealand fur seal that was nearly hunted to extinction has made a strong comeback. We've spent a good amount of time with these creatures the last few days.

New Zealand

We wanted to relay everything we experienced on our travels here, including all of the interesting places we visited, but decided it would just be too difficult and tedious (to write and read!). Therefore, we'll just show you a picture from a nice boat trip down Milford Sound, and a peculiar picture of Steampunk, the eclectic art collection made of junk in the most interesting town we passed through, Oamaru.

We head back to Australia on Sunday after a trip to Hamner Springs. We accomplished getting Heather seasick in a sea kayak today, but we won't show any pictures or discuss that episode further (although two of us had fun).

Earthquake!

After posting about earthquakes yesterday in our blog, the Canterbury region around Christchurch just had its second strongest earthquake since the 2011 earthquake this morning! Magnitude 6.0. Heather was the only one who felt it though. Others were soundly asleep (Isabel) or in the shower (Eric), or elsewhere (Grandpa).

This will be short, but we began our travels in the mountainous western part of the South Island. We passed by a couple of cool lakes filled with glacial sediment that made the water a turquoise blue. We're off for more adventures the rest of the week. We're also eating too much Indian food.

Mambo Queen Redux

The mambo queen took her act on the road to New Zealand this morning. We've only been here for a few hours so far, but dancing is already happening in the streets.

Grandpa Maloney is visiting for a couple of weeks and we will spend most of our time on the South Island of New Zealand. We are spending the first two days in Christchurch. We knew that we would see quite a bit of damage from the 2011 earthquake, but we were still amazed to see the scale of it all. Almost all of the buildings in the central business district were destroyed or heavily damaged, including the tall one in back of the dancer that is boarded up. Christchurch is making innovative use of some of the open space created by the earthquake. The dance floor shown above has a coin operated disco machine where you plug in your iPad, insert your coin, and the lights and music start.

The city is slowly but surely starting to rebuild, although still has a desolate, eerie feel with a few solitary backpackers wandering aimlessly and looking lost while passing by block upon block of empty lots, cordoned off buildings, and rubble. Pockets of new development and renovated surviving structures are found in a few places. The closest analogue we've seen before is maybe some of the rebuilding cities we visited while we were in Bosnia, or some of the stories and pictures we've seen of Detroit.

Regardless, we are having a good time so far. We were happy to leave Melbourne for a bit because of the heat. It reached 105 the day before we left. No comments on the hat please.