Student Life

The start of another week, and the insanity of the first few days in New Zealand seem to be finally catching up with me; I am absolutely exhausted.  Luckily (or perhaps not so much) for me I had a day or so of just sitting to contend with.  Monday was orientation day for International Students, so there was a lot of listening to people at the university talking at us.  In fact, there were some points during all the talking that I realized I had no idea what was just said--it was that boring and I was that tired.  I was somewhat surprised at the disproportionate number of American students in the orientation; I think we outnumbered everyone 2:1.  This disappoints me a little bit mostly because I'd like to get to know people from outside the US.  Overall there were probably between 60-70 students there.  I met one guy from Germany and a couple girls from Japan, but they were really the only ones I got to talk to during the event.

The Bob Barker

After they gave us free lunch (I totally nabbed a plethora of apples to snack on), most of the students split.  I took a walk down to the bay and read a book for a while.  The weather here in Wellington never ceases to amaze me, but I've learned it is absolutely no use trusting the weather report because it's been wrong for the past 3 days!  When I was walking back I was taking pictures of the wharf and bay when what do I see, but a big ship with an epic paint scheme and a logo that looked rather familiar.  If anyone reading is a fan of Animal Planet, you might be familiar with the show Whale Wars.  It's a series about combating whale hunters in the Antarctic, and one of their ships is docked in Wellington Harbour for a couple days to take on provisions.





Back tracking for just a brief moment, I was going to go on a super cool adventure with the Wellington Wonders group on Sunday (similar to the Adventure Wellington group) but the trip got canceled.  The trip was to go to Soames Island, hike around and have a picnic, but the weather got a little wet early that morning so they cancelled.  Before we knew it was cancelled we went to explore the farmer's market down by the bay.  It was just like any other farmers market around the world: tons of food stalls, vendors, and lots of varieties.  I picked up a couple of veggies, and a jar of Kiwi Strawberry jam; I've yet to try it I'll let you know when I do!  Anyway, the trip got cancelled but the weather cleared up later in the afternoon so Amy went for a run around the bay and I accompanied her on bike.  The views were spectacular!  I hadn't realized just how large the bay was until I looked back at Wellington across the water--and Amy ran all that way, what a trooper.  It wasn't just the bay that was crazy, but also the way that the houses are just stacked up on these steep hills that go directly up from the water.  Biking the bay was interesting as well.  I had to keep to the left, which of course is the wrong side for the US, and the "bike lane" wasn't the nice smooth flat bike lane I was accustomed to.  The bike lane I was dealing with was more like the shoulder: it was at an angle to the road almost the whole way.  To be fair, the road itself was angled much of the time too: almost like a race track going around a curve.  Apropos, the whole road was curves!  There were rarely any straight-ways for more than 100 meters or so.  To get back to the city we took away from the bay, up a giant hill that went on forever (and I biked up the whole thing-thank goodness for downshifting), and then on downhill for the rest of the way.

Later in the evening I got the chance to have dinner at a historic Wellington house.  It was once the house of Joseph Dransfield, first elected mayor of Wellington in 1876.  The top floors were destroyed by a fire set by squatters in the mid 90s, but a dedicated lawyer bought the building and set about restoring it shortly after.  It's taken him over a decade but now the building has been restored and outfitted as a restaurant.  There's a review of when it first opened Here.  Our friend Rosemary knows the guy who restored it so she showed us around a bit.  The building is impressive, and the food just as good!

That about rounds out the adventures thus far.  The week's been busy exploring campus, and such like.  There's an international arts festival starting this weekend, so I will have more fun adventurous postings about that soon!