Ohoka Life

I thought you might like to now a little bit about what we are up to at the moment, so I will tell you what is happening, well, as much as we know anyway.

We are currently living in a little holiday house in a place called Ohoka. Ohoka is in the countryside, just 35 minutes north of Christchurch. There is a garage, a school, a drive through farm where you can buy your carrots and brocolli, a sports centre, a tennis court, a playground, and a farmers market on a Friday, which sounds like the place to be - a social gathering point for the community once a week. It is very quiet here. I can hear the fridge, the tick tock of the clock and the heating system. I am not used to that kind of quiet, but it is nice. It is also pretty windy. I guess you don't realise that in the city, the wind is broken by all the buildings around you. Here, you have to hold onto your car door very firmly as you open it. And, if you look up to the sky at night, you can also see the stars, which is beautiful.

Here are the views from our place. Can you see the mountains? Yesterday they were snow covered, and we also had our first snow flurry in the afternoon.







My lovely husband gave me some flowers from the farmers market, aw.




And here are our friendly Alpaca neighbours!




On Sunday we are going to spend two weeks in Ashburton, which is an hour south of Christchurch, to see if we like it. When we booked it, we were going to keep Benny and Naomi out of school for a few weeks, but now we have sent them back to St Patricks, it will be an awfully big commute to drop them off and pick them up, I don't really fancy four hours a day in the car. In hindsight, I think Ashburton is too far for Alex to commute on a permanent basis, so I can't see us moving there, but we will go there for our two week holiday anyway.

After that, we will have no fixed abode. I am in charge of sorting out some more accommodation, but I am currently writing to you instead! I am actually looking at a house which is for sale in Ohoka tomorrow, so you never know. I have always dreamed of a character house in the city and now we are looking at new houses in the country. From talking with people here it would seem that the earthquakes have not impacted this area as much as in town, so this could be a good compromise for us, but it would be so sad to leave St Patrick's, as it is such a wonderful school. These decisions are always hard.

So, what do you reckon? Can you see me hanging up my sparkly sequinned stilettos in favour of muddy sludgy gumboots?

Watch this space!

Love
Est xxx