Day Twelve

Malcolm has gone back to work. The Rescue effort has now been declared as a Recovery effort, which is very sad. I still hold hope that someone will be pulled out of the rubble alive. In other disasters around the world, people have been pulled out alive after 20 days! My heart goes out for all of the families who have lost, or are still waiting for news of, their loved ones. I cannot even imagine the emotional scale of what these people are going through.

I do know that at home we are both very tired. Malcolm has worked every day since the earthquake (with the exception of last Sunday) and each day has comprised of 12-18 hours of work. Whilst I am not 'working in town', I am tired due to lack of sleep (hard to sleep when there are aftershocks) and I have been waking up with Malcolm in the mornings to get him his breakfast and prepare a lunch for him. During the day I have been doing a mixture of baking to donate to workers in town, boiling water, taking water to friends and family without it, gardening, housework, and a bit of school work. Oh, and mopping up the mess our hot cylinder made yesterday. We had someone come in to 'fix' our cylinder...and yet it still leaked everywhere over night - suffice to say after 12 days that we still have no hot water!

I am itching to get some normality back into life. The talk is that school could be re-opening sometime in the next week (primarily for adults to go in and do a big clean up, and contractors can come and do repairs, then once that is done school can be opened for the children). I am ready to go back to school now. A week ago, I wasn't. The thought of facing a class of terrified chidlren (and their terrified parents!) was mind-numbing.

We are hoping that Malcolm might get a day off tomorrow. If so, we are keen to hoof it out of Christchurch for the night. We hope to go and stay with Malc's parents in Fairlie (hour and half south) for a night. Here, there will be opportunities to talk about things other than the earthquake, 2 year olds to play with, and there is usually a good supply of wine/beer on hand. Fingers crossed...

As for today, I have heard that my gym has re-opened and it is all safe and sound to enter. So I will go and do a little workout (as much as I can with my sprained shoulder - will probably just do a cardio workout on the treadmill and cross trainer if I can handle it) there. The bonus of this is I can have a shower there too! For the last 12 days I have been showering at friends every second/third day...