Nearly Away!

Photo: The Clulows' dog "Froig" loves the snow

Well, we've finished up at work, had a farewell party (momentarily delayed as everyone raced down to watch the All Blacks Ireland match at Bruce and Simone's), emptied out the flat, filled up Peter and Rosie Clulow's garage with stuff, and have almost finished packing at last!

Katie has come down with a cold after a busy last week at work, and is relaxing under the care of Rosie (and me). As usual the food and hospitality out here at the Clulows in superb. The snow that has covered much of Canterbury is still on the lawn, the southerly means it may be around for a while yet. I had a great day skiing up at Mt Hutt with Peter and Mike Clulow last Wednesday (Katie was still at work!)

We're setting up this blog so we can share our travels with those who're interested - there's space for your comments at the bottom of each posting. It's been a great 6mo in Christchurch since the wedding, and now we are really looking fwd to seeing some new places.

We arrive in Bangkok Thursday 22nd June for 2 weeks rock-climbing and a week's volunteer work at a vet clinic called PAWS - Phuket Animal Welfare Society. Then we're flying in to Qinghai Province in China, where we will be staying a month with a Canadian couple who have been working in horticultural and English language development for 9 years. We'll be living in an apartment in a small town on the edge of the Tibetan plateau - 1900m. The surrounding peaks get up to 3500m. Hopefully Katie can add something to the glasshouse work they're doing, and I'm going to try to help with hydatids education, as the area is a world epicentre for the disease. We'll also catch up with my Mum (Marg) in Chengdu, when she flies up from Hong Kong. Then in August we will be on to the UK to start a 2 year working holiday.