When you can’t celebrate Christmas with your family, you…..

1.Buy a $20 Christmas tree from the Warehouse (where everyone gets a bargain) and craft all the ornaments to decorate it yourself and by forcing all your friends who come over to help support the cause.

2.Bake, build, and decorate a gingerbread house.





3.Buy stockings from the $1 store, decorate them, and then hang them on the wall because fireplaces are illegal in NZ.














4.Go to the beach, because let’s not forget that it’s summer down here.


Nick and Mags basking in the intense NZ sun after playing in the waves.











5.Go to midnight mass? No!!!!! Midnight trash! In NZ we partook in the kiwi tradition of getting wasted on Christmas Eve, even though some of us were working.



Nick, Christine, and some Dux friends taking celebratory jaeger bombs at work.


Caitlin triple fisting it and getting in the xmas eve mood

6.Wake up on Christmas morning, nearly 3 hours after having gone to bed, to open the much anticipated packages from home. Maggie’s xmas was a little more bleak when she opened her package only to find a letter informing her that a “fresh coniferous sprig” (aka part of her fam's xmas tree from home) was detained.


Christine opening her first present of the morning, which turned out to be the last sight of the bruise (aka her car)









7.Invite everybody you know in the city of Christchurch to the best Christmas party this town’s ever seen!!!!!




Note the mistle toe dangling above Nick and Jordi

Taking jello shots early in the night, while we maintained some classiness in our drinking style.