Ruby Tuesday rocks de party

I am now the proud owner of a wee Ford Festiva! She is called RUBY TUESDAY and she rocks! The couple who I bought the car from were very patient and waited a heck of a long time for my money to come through from Scotland but I’m really chuffed they did, since this cute wee Ford is ideal for me to run around in for the next couple of years.

The Navs here in Canterbury are well into the first term now and the introduction period has gone smoothly. When we were discussing how to introduce the students to the concept of small groups I found something that Mark had left on my I-book after borrowing it; it was video footage of the “Best Small group ever” from the Edinburgh Navs, so we decided to show it to the group so they could see what the small groups in Edinburgh were like……thanks to Jenny, Jude, Roz, Phil, Heather and Mark for your excellent demonstration, you should know that your international debut went well and you are all now infamous in Christchurch!

I've just had a tremendous weekend "tramping" along the west coast of NZ in a place called Arthurs pass, which was fantastic! Man I'm really going to have to work on my fitness levels if I'm going to keep up with these guys. We went up this mountain in the Kelly range and got to 1100 metres, which one of the girls called a leisurely walk and she wasn't being sarcastic either! Tramping in NZ is so different compared to climbing up a munroe in Scotland; it's not really walking, more boulder hopping so you need to have good balance and be pretty agile. As you can imagine I was falling all over the place and was pretty slow compared ti the rest of them! They also wade through "creeks" all the time. I felt like laughing every time we did this. Faced with a river they just walk straight through it so you end up permanently walking in wet boots; what a laff!

I had some interesting chats with people about life, gay sex, faith, mental health, tramping gear, music and well just about everything else you can think of! You really get to know people when you spend a couple of days out in the beautiful countryside of NZ with them. I slept in a tent with a guy called John-Paul who was a really lovely guy......there was no romance though since he is not that way inclined;0).