Last Friday Celia and I headed out for an excursion of our own to take the GhostWalk at the Arts Centre in Christchurch. The tour, which promised lots of spooky fun, warned about taking people up and down numerous stairs, so Greg sat this one out. So around 6 pm Celia and I hopped the bus downtown to pick up our tickets and grab dinner before the tour started at 9. We picked up our tickets at the Arts Centre then went back to Cathedral Square to find a bit to eat. Now we had both committed to trying something new this time instead of laming out and going to Burger King or some other imported US franchise. With this in mind we wandered all around downtown seeking. There are a lot of Asian places and a lot of places that sell Souvlakis. Now we had both eyed the souvlaki with interest but Celia was hesitant and pretty much took a half hour convincing before she finally agreed to try it. A souvlaki is seasoned grilled meat, chicken, beef or lamb, a salad of shredded veggies, and various sauces all wrapped up in a warm soft pita bread. Greg had something similar in Vienna and raved about them. So I got the chicken, she got the beef and after grabbing a frozen coke we headed back to the square. The souvlakis are delicious! I'm craving one now as I write this. We were both enjoying our meal when we noticed some strange things in the square. A group of four early twenties girls came running from around Starbucks in identical black capris, black tank tops and white shawls tied about their hips. Odd. Then we see four other girls dressed as pirate wenches. And then four brides, and four punks, and so on. This definitely peaked our curiosity as we watched one group run up to a couple of guys on the square and ask them if they knew how to play leap frog. After convincing the guys to do so, they were off again, dashing across the square to a tourist shop only to emerge moments later victoriously waving post cards and Australian coins. Well, we had to ask, so I stopped the group of brides as they were dashing past and asked what was up. Apparently a local radio station was sponsoring a scavenger hunt with a $4000 prize to the winner. It was hilarious to watch these girls in these crazy get ups run all over the square hunting up the stuff on their lists. So we ate and watched for a while before heading back to the Art Centre for our tour.
Now we had both been to the Art Centre during the weekend market before and briefly wanted through the art workshop area but never fully toured the place. Our tour started at 9.01 pm at the clock tower where a rather tall thin man dressed in an old fashioned completely black suit and top hat emerged from the shadows carrying several lanterns. He took our tickets and ushered us into the start of our tour. The Art Centre was originally Canterbury College, a large series of Gothic architecture buildings that housed the original university in Christchurch before it moved to the more spacious burbs. We began in Rutherford's Den, the private underground study area when Rutherford, who apparently split the atom, did his research. Then it was up several flights of winding stair to a preserved original lecture hall. Our host told us about the ghosts reputed to roam about the center as we sat in the dark hall and I have to say that room definitely had a feel to it. The tour started out more like a history lecture, building up for when we went down the stairs when doors slammed in peoples faces and the spooky stuff began. The first good door slam got a good scream out of Celia. The tour progressed through many buildings on various parts of the campus, each one with its own spooky tale, though the last two stood out the most. First to last was the prop room above what is now the Court Theater. A narrow hot and very spooky place, it gave me an instant headache and no one was comfortable there. After that we went to a room that use to be part of the engineering school which had a very low ceiling because above it use to be a huge water tank for experiment use. It was here that the last of our steadily dying lanterns gave up and we got our biggest fright as something came barreling out of the darkness causing everyone to scream and freak out. Over all it was a lot of fun and Celia and my cheeks hurt from screams, laughs and lots of smiling through out the tour.
Aside from that we've been a bit quiet. Finally took Greg down to the Art Centre as well a few days later for some us time and took in the art at the Centre and the main gallery of Christchurch. Sadly the main gallery had nothing on the art in the Centre and was rather disappointing in contrast to other art we've seen such as that in D.C. Another day he and I took a hike down the beach to see if we could make it all the way to the Southshore. We did make it, despite me getting yet another sun burn and walked a total of 2.8 miles, which is astoundingly good given he could only do .8 on a treadmill when we left Michigan Other then those outings we've been keeping to the house, me doing my illustration work and Greg has been focusing on career prep. He has pulled together his resume and is starting the job of finding a job. Being here has accomplished that goal of ours, getting him strong enough to start his career as all the physical activity noted in this blog shows. We're working on our plans for the future, including ironing out those pesky wedding details, while enjoying our present. Tonight we meet with a wedding celebrant to try and arrange our beach wedding and this weekend all three of us plan on hitting a Gypsy Fair, so I'll post again in a few days. Cheers! :)
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