Just got home. Am exhausted. But I will sacrifice my sleep to tell you something cool.
I am in a Christian group at uni called Navigators, which we call Navs most of the time, and this year I am a small group leader. Tonight was the first night for small groups, and we had a basically social time, just getting to know each other, as this year there's heaps of new people. Ryan (my co-leader) and I decided to take our group of about eight up on the Port Hills to the Sign of the Bellbird which overlooks Christchurch, taking blankets, hot chocolate in thermoses, marshmallows and a little gas burner... until this morning, winter officially arrived in New Zealand in a blaze of cold and wet glory and we almost decided to be boring and go to a cafe. However, it wasn't raining so much by this evening, and on the spur of the moment we decided to go up anyway, although we didn't manage the marshmallows and gas burner.
However, when we got there we discovered two people setting up a fire at the little ruin which doubles as a shelter at the Sign of the Bellbird. Get this for a coincidence - they were ex-Navs people. Half of us knew them. And what was the coolest thing - they were setting up the place for their flatmate to bring his girlfriend to and propose to her!!! They had a log fire going in the old fireplace there, they set up candles all around the room, and they had an electric piano they had brought up so their flatmate could croon love songs to his girlfriend - who probably, by now, is his fiancee!
At first we thought we were going to have to leave, but they said we could stay for an hour or so because their friend wasn't coming up for a while - so we got to sit in our little circle eating food and drinking hot chocolate, near a roaring log fire, with candles all over the room, looking down on a sparkling Christchurch! It was lovely. We all chatted and then did the obligatory ice-breaker thing, and then when the prospective proposer texted that they were on their way, we all left and drove down the hill to the nearest cafe.
How cool is that?!
2 comments:
Wow, what a small world!
I keep forgetting where you live. We're just getting spring/summer (Texas gets like a day of spring and then summer just blasts its way in). That sounds like an awesome trip. And I love coincidences like that. I need to get my small group to get out of the house we always meet in. I'm thinking the Port Hills might be a bit too much of a hike for us, though. I'll have to think more on this! Thanks for the idea, though.
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