Christchurch Continued

Christchurch had a terrible earthquake in February of 2011. It measured 6.3, killed 185 people, and destroyed thousands of buildings. The city is definitely still recovering. It's actually pretty sad to walk around the downtown area. Rubble, broken windows, scaffolding, and empty buildings make up the bulk of what you see. We had consulted a guidebook published in 2010 for some restaurant recommendations before coming; none of the places once listed exist anymore. I took some pictures to give you an idea of the destruction, nearly a year after the disaster...

This church is across from the Botanic Gardens I showed in yesterday's post.

But there's still some Christmas spirit in this town!

And the people of Christchurch have some spirit too!

From walking and driving around the town, you can see how it was once a beautiful place. Hopefully it can recover from the earthquake and build itself back up again.

The Earth Moves Too

Well, we aren't the only ones moving around here. Last night, the ground did too. That's right-we experienced an earthquake! It measured 5.3, which is the strongest one in the Melbourne area in 100 years. The epicenter was Southeast of here, but we definitely felt it.

I was in the kitchen and Zack was on the couch when I heard what sounded like thunder. I didn't think much of it but Zack said, "What was that?" Then he told me to look at my flowers (which my nice husband had brought home for me) on the table, and they were shaking. It was strange, but it's a new house to us, so we didn't know what was going on for sure. We went on with our evening, and Zack at one point said, "Either that was an earthquake, thunder, or I'm not sure." It was only when we got on Facebook before bed and read everyone's comments that we realized it was indeed an earthquake! We were happy that we didn't live in our old place...the 11th floor in a window-filled apartment might have been a bit scarier!

Anyway, that's the exciting news around here. Oh yeah, and it's Zack's birthday today! Some day soon I'll do a post about that-hopefully when we have Internet, because typing on a phone takes forever!