Earthquakes!

On Christmas night, I was sleeping soundly until shaking of the entire building suddenly awakened me.  We all woke up and determined that the shaking must have been an earthquake.  I have never been in an earthquake before and was very scared!  I woke up two more times during the night to small earthquakes.  I barely slept after that, picturing the building crashing down on me!  In the morning, the receptionist at the hotel told us that these are still aftershocks from the big earthquake September and they may continue to have aftershocks for up to a year.  We felt two more earthquakes in the morning and at the airport.  We later heard there was quite a bit of damage downtown during the quake that we felt at the airport (4.9).  After all this, I was quite happy to leave Christchurch.

After our time in Christchurch, we flew to Auckland and spent one night there.  We drove into the city, walked around, went to mass, and ate dinner at a restaurant at the harbor.  The following morning, we walked around again and shopped a bit downtown.  The harbor area was very pretty and I enjoyed seeing the city.