Mary Bellamy

Happy Boxing Day to all my readers! Yesterday we celebrated Christmas in style. Tom spent the morning surfing with a bunch of Chinese people who were staying at The Asylum with us, while I poked around the grounds and tried to get into as many abandoned buildings as possible. In the afternoon, we went to the beach at Moeraki with a German couple (yes, the ones I was talking LOUD and slooooow with), where we spotted sea lions lounging on the grass and frolicking in the surf. As we were hiking up the hill back to the car, I looked through the fence and saw a yellow-eyed penguin with its chick standing not 2 feet away from us! So, we can check off most of the rare species on the South Island - yellow-eyed penguins, Hector's dolphins, Hooker's sea lions and many, many seals.

When we got back to The Asylum, the party was just getting started. Frank, the owner, fired up the old blacksmith's forge (left over from the days when the administrators thought it best for the crazy folk to work hard instead of take medications) in one of the outbuildings. A bunch of lovely German girls had spent the day making salads and preparing bowle - a potent fruit punch. We cooked up a heap of sausages, steaks and kebabs over the fire and sat around a collection of old couches eating, drinking and talking. Later we tried to come up with games that the whole group could play. With 10 Chinese, 6 Germans, 2 Americans and 1 Kiwi, we couldn't play anything that required lots of talking. Someone had bought a box of crackers, so we joined hands in a big circle to pull the crackers, then donned our party hats and ceremonially burned the bad jokes.

Best. Christmas. Ever.