I'm Dangerous!

Yep, it's true. I'm dangerous. Very dangerous. You want to know why? Well, I'll tell you.

This is Gabriella. Gabriella is our flatmate's niece and is extremely fun, and cute as you can see:
She loves me, of course. She doesn't really like Emily very much. Not really sure why on that one, but whenever Emily tries to talk to her, she runs back to Gen's leg and hides. We play puzzles and soccer with a tennis ball, she acts like different kinds of farm animals, and she likes to tell me what to do. Gen says she talks about me all the time when were not around. I'm awesome, really. I don't say this to brag, I'm just dangerous when it comes to 3 year old affections.

And then theres Pip. Pip is a woman who called at work to reorder some diary refills.......sorry, I fell asleep for a second. We got to talking about home and North Carolina, and it turns out she has a friend who used to live there, and she's visited Emerald Isle and everything. And since we had so much in common, she invited us over for dinner, and of course being the generous and kind people that we are, we went. WE WENT TO A LADIES HOUSE FOR DINNER WHO I MET OVER THE PHONE. (just to clarify) Don't worry, we told all of our coworkers to call police if we didn't show up after the weekend. And we didn't get cut up into little pieces or anything, although I played out all of the scenarios in my head before we showed up. Things like:

Use this bottle of wine as a club to beat the hairy guy over the head before he puts you in the pit and asks you to rub the lotion on your skin...
--or--
Visualize cat-like quickness as you strike the 6'7" woman-beast in the throat and run like the dickens...
--or--
Make sure Emily has the phone so she can call the police in case it's all a set up by a gang of misled youths on a mission to humiliate an American by hanging him from his feet in the center of town with his underwear stretched over his head. Misled youths are always causing a ruckus. They're misled, what can you expect?

Anyway, she didn't have us for dinner, if you know what I mean. We ate and didn't get caged or tortured. It was awesome. That seems pretty dangerous, doesn't it? I think so.

And then there's the

"The Bastard Shot Me! Show"

Starring:
Emily
as the unassuming, innocent, make-up applying victim
Josh
as the shifty, stealthy vindicator of freedom, while mostly in search of laughter by shooting his wife with a plastic pellet
Genevieve
Bystander, commentary on Josh's fate

Here's a visual, (I'm still working on the script and the poster):

And the plot goes something like this:

Emily is unassumingly, innocently, sheepishly applying her makeup, focused and beautiful in her sweatpants. The words she hears next send chills up her spine as Genevieve calls out, "She's going to kill you!" in slow motion sound. The words glance off my head as no attention is paid to such as asinine suggestion. My stealth training kicks into full throttle as I creep, no! slink, around the corner and aim the pistol toward my victim. My mercy levels are unprecedentedly low I zero in. In an instant it is over as the screams and curses fly forth toward my retreat. Threats, empty threats, are made and laughs are had by all. Well almost all. And YES, that is a real beard; none of that pansy stage beard business.

Now THAT is my definition of dangerous. If if get any stronger or badder, I'll become dangeresque!

Hanmer, Mullets and Mexican Food

Much has been going on in the past week or so. We have been quite busy with work, and traveling on the weekends. We usually try to do something to get away from the monotony of life in the office. It's nice. There is a lot to see, all of it is beautiful.

We made a trip to town last Friday to find a little excitement and check out the Rose Gardens here in Christchurch. The roses weren't fully bloomed yet, but some had come out to see us. Pretty amazing. We plan to go back and check them out when they're all blooming.

After tramping through the gardens for a while, we headed into town to find some food. And since we can never seem to have a craving for anything specific (other than thai food), we stumbled into a Mexican restaurant. It seemed pretty safe to assume that mexican food is pretty good, and rather hard to screw up.

It seems, however, that the Kiwi's do not have a handle on the recipes created by our friends to the south. The margarita's were good, as were the chip's and salsa, but as soon as the food arrived, something was amiss......

It stunk horribly, A little bit like the food had been smoked over cardboard, with the ashes had sprinkled as a garnish atop the enchiladas and fish tacos. Being good citizens, Emily and I each had a bite, somehow kept the vomit away from the light of day, and calmly asked for our check.

LESSON LEARNED: The goodness of Mexican food is indirectly proportional to the your proximity to the nation of Mexico. Basically, the farther away from Mexico you get, the higher the chance you will hurl in you refried beans before you taste your meal. Be warned.

Saturday, we hopped on a bus to Hanmer springs to get away and see some mountains. We trekked through a maze and played a little putt-putt. Any type of golf game with Emily is interesting. I find myself saying things like, "Your putter is backwards," or "Your ball is the green one," or "You're still away." It's quite the rousing time for anyone in the vicinity.

And we also saw an amazing mullet. It's like we are living in a time warp! There are mullets all over the place. Mullets proudly walking around, sitting on benches, riding buses. It's just wacky. Check out the mullet we played putt-putt behind:The scenery was pretty awesome in Hanmer along with the camaro mullet that we saw. There wasn't terribly much to do, so we took some walks, sat in the hot springs for a little bit. The springs were quite strange because they were set up like swimming pools, so it looked like a bunch of hot-tubs filled with sulfur smelling water. Nasty.

We did, however, get to see this:

We ventured to church last night for a young adult's gathering. It was interesting, but the guy teaching talked bad about American's, implying that visitors could get shot, and that Americans believe prosperity theology. Anyway, we left without anyone talking to us. Just a bit of encouragement to those of you at Hope, Visio Dei, or wherever you are, friendly churches are a good thing. We certainly miss the community we experienced there. On a higher note, it looks like we might try being Anglicans next. So stay tuned to find out how that goes....

The Recent Goings On...

Hey party peoples! It is time for the latest installment of (drumroll please).....

"Weekend Adventures of Josh and Emily in Christchurch and Surrounding Areas!" heretofore referred to as "WAJECSA" We're still working on the name.

This week on WAJECSA:

Emily and I had the opportunity to attend a recent rugby contest: New Zealand v. Great Britain. It took about half of the match to realize exactly what was going on, but we (Josh) finally got the hang of it. To sum it up, it is baiscally 'smear the queer' with uniforms (pardon the politically incorrectness). Guys would just run with what looked like an obese football and when the guys from the other team got close, they would toss it back, lateral style, to their teammate. That's pretty much it. Sometimes, the guy with the ball would get nervous and not know whether or not to toss the ball, so he would just run into the arms of the other team, who would promptly slam him ruthlessly into the ground. Here's a picture, witness the mayhem:

We went to church last week. Grace Vineyard Church of Christchurch. A little redundant, but we went anyway. It was pretty cool and we sang a lot of Matt Redman songs and we were allowed to bring coffee into the auditorium and we sat behind a really smelly old guy. We are going to check out a young adults gathering tonight, see if we can meet some people more our age and play some board games with them, if they're lucky.

We also took a trip to Quail Island, named, oddly enough, after the quails that live there. (as you can see, the creative genius is not exactly overwhelming in this country). We saw some of them though, quails, running around all quail-like. It was pretty and we got to go to the beach by the old leper colony. Czech it out:

There are some more pictures on flickr that I updated today, so go check them out.

Stay tuned to the blog for more installments of WAECSA.