Day Two

So it’s just before our third dinner in NZ and I’m already a less picky eater. I’m still supplementing my meals with somewhere between 3 and 4 pieces of fruit but I’m eating food that I would never have touched back home such as Beef Pie and strangely prepared eggs.

But more importantly, the happenings of yesterday.

We went on a tour of Wier House which is the dorms of Victoria University Wellington that we are staying in. Nothing too crazy about the campus except for, as I’m suspecting cannot be avoided, the monstrous hills of the area

After that, we frolicked off to the Botanical Gardens which are a mere two minutes away from our dorms. As we climbed that first hill, the view opened up and I snapped a few pictures.

As we left this beautiful panoramic, a large bush/tree wall appeared. It quickly proved to be begging to be climbed, so our group obliged and scrambled on up. Feeling a bit daring, I clambered high enough to peek over the edge and glimpse the cityscape below. I was not nearly as confident in my climbing abilities as Steven so I did not bring my camera, so I’m stealing some of his pictures.

After observing some nice NZ fauna we made our way to the playground, which as everything NZ, is Xtreme.

We wandered about the gardens for several hours, at which point I almost didn’t make it up the last hill. So I hit the sack for an hour or so after lunch and then woke up to go visit Te Papa, the NZ version of the Smithsonian. The wind at this point was gale-force and made the walk into down a bit more precarious then I like to dwell on. We only barely scratched the surface of the museum so I plan on returning there soon. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that a good museum is worth all the attention you can give it.

We returned for dinner, at which point the gale force winds starting being accompanied by driving rain. This meant no outdoor concert at the Botanical Gardens sadly enough. However, I did play some post-dinner ping-pong and discovered one of my professors plays the fiddle and contra-dances! One of the other professors plays mandolin apparently, so we’ll see what develops musically. That’s about it for yesterday….I’ll post about classes and such tomorrow.