Christmas with the Karpluk's!

The Kapluk's were an amazing family to spend my first white Christmas with. As soon as I stepped through their doors I was immediately part of the family! The Karpluk's live in a city called Kamloops. It has about 85,000 people. Although to NZers that is a big city, to Canadians it is rather small. The city had a small town atmosphere and I soon found out that everybody knew everybody! I describe it as a big Alexandra. All around is brown hills and a river running through the middle. It gets cold in the winter and very hot in the summer, just like Alex.

 In the photo above is Mama Karpluk (Janice) who is sitting directly in the middle. On either side of her are Cara and Steen who are twins and recently turned 21. Then on the floor is Nicholas (23) who was kind enough to give up his room for 3 weeks and sleep in the basement! Thanks Nicholas!! Unfortunately Papa Karpluk (Lindsey) had to take the photo but he is still remembered by his Bob Marley hat and his love for sport (especially basketball)!

During my 3 weeks with The Karpluk's I watched about 11 basketball games. Managed, finally, to beat Steen in Ping Pong. Met the extended version of their family (which is huge) and learnt to play guitar and drums on band hero ( like sing star but with guitar and drums as well)!

On Christmas day they were incredibly generous and I felt like I got more presents then Nicholas did. I also had my first stocking which is the giant Canadian mitten in the above photo. I was very excited about that!

Band Hero was incredibly popular. On the really cold days  of winter we would stay inside and play rock songs to our hearts content. Once we played it for 4 hours straight. After that we had to go for a walk!! In the photo on the right is myself along with Cara and some cousins and Aunties playing and singing away. This was after New Years Day dinner!!