Day 11: Covid results, keeping entertained and animals

Thankfully my one-off Covid test results came back negative which was good news. Clearly I'd just had a cold but what terrible timing for it to happen during isolation.

Our rooms aren't serviced and so we've been doing all the cleaning, dishes, changing towels and linen etc. ourselves. For some reason vacuum cleaners aren't available and so our well trodden carpet has been getting grottier by the day. Today I was down on my hands and knees picking up what I could to try and slightly decrease the grot factor.

Every night this week we've been hearing the sound of fireworks being set off. We haven't seen a single firework in the sky however. It is likely that all the action is happening in the parkland and residential area to the north of where we are (but we are facing south), and the sound is being bounced off the huge concrete warehouse wall that we can see from our room.

Passing the time

We've been enjoying taking turns to choose movies to watch, which has helped pass the time. We also see it as a mutual learning exercise ... us being able to show our teenager some of the classics, while the teenager helping her parents become aware of what is current.

Movies we've watched (you pick who chose what) are: A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote, Chariots of Fire, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Little Miss Sunshine, Lost in Translation, Love Actually, Pitch Perfect, Pulp Fiction, Ricky Gervais: Humanity, She’s the Man, The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Eva also put together an excellent games night, complete with a series of online quizzes (eg. how many countries can you name in 5 mins?), Scattergories, creativity puzzles and Skip Bo. We also brought along some other games ... Ticket to Ride and Rat-a-tat-cat have already had a workout.

Animals

I'm sure like every prisoner has done before, we've looked out and seen the birds flying around, free to come and go as they wish. No borders or cages constrain them.

We've also been pleasantly surprised with the creatures we've seen, especially while out on our supervised walks.

We've seen a chook:


.... lots of pigeons and other birds ...

Eva also spotted a cat one day beyond the security fencing, which we've looked for every day since but haven't seen again ....

The sounds of the birds has also been something we've appreciated. NZ birds definitely sound different from the Australian birds we've become familiar with.

The pond in the central garden area also some some fish, which all look like goldfish:


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