Celebrations in quarantine

 We've had a few things to celebrate over our time in MIQ that have made the time go by a little bit faster; it helps that we've made a lot of friends with other people, mainly during our outdoor exercise time in the courtyard of the hotel, and they've all made our celebrations special in many ways.

First, Tamara and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary on 21st July. We put a sticky-note message up in the window (see below), cancelled our usual hotel dinner (the food has actually been pretty good, but we wanted something extra special), and ordered delivery from a local Italian restaurant. On top of that, the hotel kitchen made us a special cheese and fruit plate with "Happy Anniversary" written on it in chocolate, as well as a bowl of crackers. They also got the hotel staff to sign a big anniversary card for us! And then one of the families who also are in MIQ and who have a 1.5 year old son sent us a bottle of wine and card through the hotel.

Next, we celebrated Ralph's first birthday on 22nd July! Again, we put up a sticky-note message in our window so everyone would know. One of our MIQ friends wrote a birthday greeting to Ralph in the exercise courtyard in the morning using chalk, but sadly it rained most of the day and so the message got washed away. We asked our friend who lives in Christchurch (who's one of the two lead professors on the project I'll be working on) to bring us a cake for Ralph. He ended up making a chocolate cake from scratch and bringing it to the hotel, so Ralph got to have cake for his birthday! We had a Zoom party with family back in the US so they could watch Ralph eat his birthday cake and open his presents. Ralph LOVED the cake, especially the icing, so much so that all he wanted for dinner was to eat more cake! The hotel staff also sent a birthday card that they all (even the army guys!) signed for Ralph, as well as a little plate of goodies for him.

And finally, we got a call this morning from the staff to let us know what the arrangements are for getting us back up to Auckland (which is where we initially flew into from LA) from where we are in Christchurch (where they flew us to for MIQ). This means we're on day 10 - 4 days to go! It's going to be an early morning...the nurses have to do a final temperature check within the last 3 hours of our quarantine, and our quarantine officially ends at 6 AM on Thursday, which means they'll come by between 3 - 6 am to do a temperature check! Then we have a 9 am flight and they have a lot of us to get downstairs, checked out, onto busses, and to the airport, so please pray for strength on Thursday. We are definitely looking forward to being done with MIQ and being in Hamilton finally! Our plan is to stay the first weekend after MIQ with our friends Geoff and Louise, then go down to Hamilton (hopefully in our own car - please pray we can buy a car that weekend!). Until we can get into our rental house (probably end of August), we'll be staying in the house of a family from the Hukanui Reformed church who are currently abroad, so thank God for the provision of a place to stay.

In other good news, Ralph and I are almost done with our colds, so they've moved us back to blue bands, which means we are able to go back to our normal recreation time with Tamara! It's doubly good because if we still had symptoms, we might have had to stay longer in MIQ, even with a negative covid test. So praise God for answered prayer on that!

The anniversary goodies sent up by the hotel kitchen

Our sticky note sign - not shown is the other window, which said S loves T

Sticky notes for Ralph's birthday

Ralph enjoying his cake

Not too bad of a mess after all that!

Ralph opening his cards and presents from family

Ralph's birthday cards, including the big one from the hotel