Here, Karpetroley Romie Swartier! Happy?!

So.. hey. If you happen to stumble across my blog, welcome:) I’m not really sure what I’m going to write, I guess I could be described as a spontaneous person. I’m spontaneous, but I lead a pretty boring life. This could make for a really good blog then:L

I’m thinking the first entry in any blog would be something quite important. Something big in my life. School? Family? Friends? I don’t really know. I don’t have that many interests because I’m not really... an easily interested person. So I was thinking and something that keeps coming to me- something that’s been my life for a good year and a half now- is the earthquakes. So I live in Christchurch (already giving out personal details) and I guess I’ve been quite affected- yet lucky. This last year and a half it’s just been my life- my house is one of the many condemned, right on the edge of the red zone. Most of my street has been unoccupied for some time now. If someone is driving me home... you’re almost guaranteed a great joke about the appearance of our street- how it’d make a great 4WD track. Something like that. I guess I just accepted the fact- however strange- that I could die in my house any given night I went to sleep up there- and that is no exaggeration. We were living in a house that was getting pulled down any time soon and we had no where better to go. And after a few months of it, it just becomes... life. Becomes normal. Becomes something that doesn’t really scare you any longer.

I remember my life before September 4 2010, and it’s an understatement to say that I miss it. My whole life changed after and I don’t think I can explain how much. I remember in 2010, me and my friend lived 5 houses away from each other and we used to think we owned our town- we used to spend every night and every weekend downtown doing something crazy- buying $10 worth of 10c lollies... busking on the main street... making ‘friends’ at the skate park (a part of me feels like they didn’t really like us being there)... walking our dogs along the riverbank... every single day was something new, something fun. We even used to write checklists of crazy things to do and a timer and head out to accomplish them all. I’m sure everyone in our town loved our presence on the streets. And then I remember the day of September 4 2010, at around 4.35am, when everything around me literally came crashing down. I wasn’t even home- I was at my Granny’s place, the worst off street in the town- and I sat up in my bed to the sound of china smashing, the ground opening up, the houses moving around... the sound was so loud and I was so scared I didn’t even hear a glass vase fall and smash right by my bed. My Gran came into the room during it and we just stood there, hugging, while we tried to take it all in. I still remember the very first thing I said to her after it- ‘I thought we were going to die.’ I hardly knew anything about earthquakes- I genuinely thought that I was a ‘3^rd world thing’- I’d never heard of a thing called aftershocks and I had no idea where the mud came from that had saturated my Gran’s entire garden. I remember alot of things about that day- I remember walking on the roads from Gran’s to my place... down roads that were knee-high in the mud stuff and had pretty much turned sideways. One of the rubberneckers that came got their car wheel completely stuck in one of the many holes the earthquakes had created. He was stuck there all day.  I remember running into my friend from 5 doors down on the main street and she told me her house was flooded; it was gone. Story of my whole town.

These days we hardly go out there anymore- we finally moved out a few months ago into the house my Granny bought with her red zone money (they’re going to knock down her house and never rebuild there again-it’s too dangerous). It definitely puts things in a new perspective when you can’t even trust the ground you live on to stay the same; to keep you safe. Now I’ve moved it’s fair to say I have a pretty rational fair of any unexpected movements- it didn’t really bother me when i was in direct danger because I couldn’t exactly afford to be scared. Being scared wasn’t going to help me. I kind of numbed myself out for a while and I think it was a good idea. So where are we today? Well, my town is still munted. They’re rebuilding it here and there but since the February aftershocks destroyed the city it’s slowed down. Apparently they’re more important. We’re waiting for our house to be demolished and rebuilt- we were two houses from the red zone so we’ll be heading back there soon. To lose mostly everything you know because of geological problems really suck. But despite that- I do see some kind of bright future for Christchurch... being one of the main business centres again and people coming back... however far away that might be.