The Rest of the arrival story

On the way home from the airport, we did a quick tour of Gore, the closest town to Camp Columba. We stopped at the grocery store, drove by the Warehouse(NZ version of Walmart), saw the Gore High School where Samantha will be teaching and got acquainted with round-a-bouts and the give-way rule of driving. More about that in another post. Camp Columba is about 10 minutes from Gore, just outside of the village of Pukerau. On our way to camp we stopped by the Pukerau School where Sam & Abby will be attending school. It's a small 2 classroom school. It was very nice looking from the outside. After looking that over we headed to camp. Camp is a 2 minute drive from the school.

We pulled into camp and were met by another board member and his wife who were preparing tea(that's what they call the supper meal) for us all. Shelly and Phil, two of the camp staff came over and helped us move in as well. It didn't take long to get the bags into the house. We did a wander through and the kids picked their bedrooms without much difficulty. We put our bags in our room and shared a meal with the Gardyne's and the Kennedy's. We then took a quick walking tour of the sight with Dave Kennedy, a board member. It was nice to get a chance to be outside and in the fresh air. The air is so fresh and wonderfully fragrant - it smells great. The kids enjoyed a bounce on the camp trampolines and then we headed home.

We followed a tip from Samantha's seat mate on the overnight flight and we stayed up until our normal bedtime and then went to bed. Exhausted and ready to sleep in beds, it didn't take us long to drift off.

I really want to type more but am exhausted. I shall fill in the rest of it so far at some point tomorrow.