Don't let the bed bugs bite

Helen: Not been a particularly inspiring week, I have to be honest. We drove to ChristChurch from Nelson, and have been waiting here since then in limbo. We were all geared up to leave NZ and head to Aus after our YM exams...and then we got stuck here because C wanted to retake. Thankfully that's all sorted now and he's doing his exam again on Sat (back in bloody Nelson though. Another long drive - and we don't even have any Dan Brown to keep us occupied (I won't say amused or interested) this time). Oh well... hope he passes this time!

We have managed to go swing dancing once, meet up with some friends (from Tahiti - who are now having a baby - I told C that everyone we know is having babies now so maybe we should too and he just said 'no, all we need is some new friends!), and go to the cinema (Valkyrie is very good, if you can ignore Tom Cruise, which, I admit, is hard as he's the main character). But we haven't managed much, partly because we've been in wierdo limbo land, and partly because we've been hanging out at the Backpackers Car Market every day. It's about as glamourous and exciting as it sounds. We've been trying to sell our car for 3 days now and no one wants it! It's really upsetting C that people would rather buy rust-buckets that even I think sound awful than spend decent money on our car, which he's looked after well. I'm going to cover the car in coloured stickers tomorrow in an attempt to get people's attention.

Only other thing of note that's happened to us is that C has been munched by bed bugs. Yup, bed bugs. He had so many itchy red bumps he even went to the doctor to see if he had chicken pox. He didn't, so he went rooting around under the mattress in our hostel and found a colony of the little buggers. All our possessions have now been fumigated. It's making me itchy just writing this (although, I have, unusually, escaped, unscathed. Normally, if there's a rash to be got, I'll get it, but not this time. Serves C right as he insisted on swapping sides of the bed with me - he ended up in the bed bug nest not me!)

Ok, that's all. Time for bed
Hxxxx