Monday!

The whole red section is closed for demolition, so sad.

I loved this, it was on a shirt too but it was one of the most expensive shirts I have ever seen so I took a picture of the picture instead

Most old churches in Christchurch are destroyed.

The first back-scratcher in existence

Paua shell heaven.

Monday morning we woke up and went down the street to a really cool museum. There were three floors with multiple exhibits, but I had two favorites. The first was the famous Paua house of Bill and Myrtle. They started hanging shells on their walls so that Myrtle could vacuum the floor and pretty soon people were coming from across the universe to see it. They died as millionaires a few years ago and their house continues to be a tourist attraction. The other cool exhibit was wearable art. I got a couple pictures before we were told that we weren’t allowed but some of them were really cool, and they all told a story. One of them was Persephone and it was armor, made by the man that headed up armor design for LoTR. I also learned in that museum that we were in a couple earthquakes the night before, so I can officially say that I have been in a Christchurch earthquake. It was really just an aftershock but it is a cool claim anyway. After the museum we just wandered around the city. It was a really humbling experience to see all of the destruction and how much the people still had to overcome. The whole city center was basically fenced off to be demolished because there was so much damage in the area. So around the outside of the fence people have built little shops and businesses out of boxcars, or the boxes that are stacked on train cars. They are pretty cool. I was with Brittany B. a lot of people went to play volleyball, but when we finally decided to go back to swim in the hotel pool everyone else was already there and getting ready to go to the beach. So we all piled into the vans and drove about 20 minutes. It was beautiful and there were pretty decent waves, but it was so windy that we were instantly covered in sand and freezing. Most of us just wanted to take a nap in the sun so after a short time we all piled back into the vans and drove back to the hotel/pool. All 20 of us laid down around the pool and slept for a couple hours in the sun, it was relaxing, but I think we annoyed the other guests a little bit. Monday night we watched Sweet home Alabama and then went to sleep.