It was a really busy day today. First, at about 3am I said goodbye to the canadians. They left nz and who knows when we see each other the next time...
We had a good time and its kinda sad that they left. But there are some 3 other canadians arriving in january who will work at Trimble too, which is good.
Then in the early morning I picked up the campervan, that will hopefully help my family and me getting around well in nz for the next 3 weeks. In the afternoon I picked up my parents and my brother at the airport in Christchurch. Apart from the fact that they arrived 2 hours late, it was good seeing them again. The funny thing was, that they saw me first, and guess how? Emirates has got a feature in their entertainment program (=every passenger has got its own screen, on which they can watch movies and stuff...), that shows the live picture, filmed by a camera that sits right at the front leg of the plane. So i was bored waiting for them and went outside to watch the arriving planes... and in fact, the plane i was watching while docking to the finger, was the plane my family was sitting in, and they were watching that live picture... so they could see me on the screen... they were quite excited :-)
Tomorrow we are gonna leave Christchurch and we will head north to Abel Tasman, then the north island (rotorua), then coming back to the south island, heading west to the westcoast, cruising over the southern alps, seeing some nice lakes, and then finally cruise back to christchurch by driving along the eastcoast.

I whish everybody a nice christmas time! - enjoy!
...and "en guete rutsch is neue johrzent!"