Tonight Lasma, Allana and I went to a service at a local church where they were telling the story of Jesus's birth through a series of readings and songs. It was a bit more religious than I was expecting - I guess it's weird that I would've been expecting anything less religious since it was at a church. I thought it would include more well known carols, more holiday like - less Christmas like, but they were all quite religious. There were also a handful that I didn't know, maybe they are more specific to NZ? Either way, it was something nice to do this afternoon since Sundays in a small town are pretty sleepy. It didn't however, put me in any more of the Christmas spirit. It was really warm in the church and some of the readers were hard to hear over the birds chirping. Nothing like Christmas back home. Here's a few photos:
Onto the Quails... Here's a photo I took from the doorway of the cafe the other day. I don't think I've ever seen a real living quail before.
And now for Visas -
I believe I'm sending my passport into the Embassy for my visa to India tomorrow. I have to send it away in the mail and will be without a passport for probably 5 weeks. Hopefully nothing will happen in the next 5 weeks that will require me to leave Driving Creek Cafe since my passport is being sent back here (fingers crossed).
I also started looking into visas for the other countries I'm going to. For Nepal it looks like I can get the visa at the airport when I arrive. For Thailand it's the same thing. For Laos I can get it at the border when I show up. Vietnam it appears it's much easier if you get it in advance. The easiest place to do this is Cambodia so I may rearrange my travel plans to do Cambodia before Vietnam so I can get the visa there. We'll see. It does appear, however, that most of these countries require you to pay for the visa in cash in US dollars. I brought some with me but more for a back up plan in case I'm ever in a jam and need to pay for something. I may dip into this reserve for a visa or two but I'm likely also going to have to withdraw money somewhere and then exchange it for US dollars. I did, however, see ATMs in the Sydney airport where you can withdraw money in multiple currencies. I'm not sure how those work - I'll have to look into it - but maybe I will run across another one of those ATMs either when I'm flying out of Auckland or when I'm in Bangalore.
That's all for now. Tomorrow I've just got work - nothing else too exciting - then I have Christmas eve off and the cafe is closed on Christmas day so probably the beach!
Best!
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