Wellington and SO MUCH MORE....

Time seems to be whizzing by, especially in the past few weeks. So much has happened since I last written and I often find myself saying, "Oh, I should put that in my next post" and then realizing days later that so much more has happened a new post has not yet been started. With that said, I'll try my best to fill you in on what's been going on in the past ten days or so.

Sunrise of the morning we left for Wellington

Two Friday's ago, (14th of October) after a fun night of hanging out and karaoke I set out on an adventure to Wellington with Grace and Miriam. The sun had not yet risen when our taxi came to pick us up to take us to the airpor and when we arrived, the three of us were quite literally the only people in the airport. We walked around and soon took a seat near the children's play place where I went on the slide, many times. I like slides.

About an hour after arriving at the airport we went through some security and boarded our plane and soon we were in Wellington. It was a beautiful morning and after arriving at our hostel and munching on a bagel, we took the free shuttle out to Zealandia, a sanctuary where we saw some incredible birds, wildlife, and other creatures. We spent a few hours there before taking the shuttle to the cable car. After stopping for another bagel and seeing the cable car museum we explored the botanical gardens where we found another playground! This one was EPIC and there were cool swings and a see-saw and a pretty legitimate zip-line and A LOT more. I first climbed the jungle gym and then raced Miriam down the parallel slides. Afterwards I went in line to go on the zip-line but all the little kids were jumping in front of me probably because they thought I was a mother and the mothers were staring at me so I decided i'd better just go an enjoy more flowers in the garden.

Zealandia 

Lizards!

Very rare bird. I believe it is called a Pukeko

I like suspension bridges... and tried to plank across one. 

Cable Car Museum

View from top of the Cable Car (also Botanical Garden) 

Playground! 

In the garden we also found a human sundial. It was actually very cool and highly functional. The sun came out and Grace jumped to where it said we should stand and after raising her arms we saw that her shadow was pointing at 2:30 and it was actually 2:30. Amazing!

Look closely, it really was 2:30

After the botanical garden, we took the cable car back into the city. It was only a dollar which was quite nice. We walked back to our hostel where all three of us napped for a while before Grace and I decided we needed to get food for dinner. The two of us ventured out to New World (supermarket) which was conveniently across the street from our hostel and bought some food that we could cook for the night. I made stir fry with chickpeas, onions, chicken, red peppers, and coconut milk. It was rather yummy and filling. After dinner, we ventured outside again to see some Wellington night life. We didn't see much as it began to rain and we ended up in this gelato place called Kaffee Eis where I had hazlenut and coffee gelato. It was soo good that we actually went back to Kaffee Eis each day we were in Wellington.

Another suspension bridge right outside Te Papa

The next morning we met up with one of Miriam's family friends and had brunch with her at the Hummingbird. Since it was still raining, we headed over to Te Papa, the museum of New Zealand and stayed there for a few hours. One of the highlights in the museum was dancing the haka. There was a little interactive video that would teach you how to do the haka, which is a Maori dance. Most people are familiar with the haka that the All Blacks do before each game. Anyways, we went into the room and we had to raise our hands if we wanted to learn the woman's haka and I raised my hand but ended up being a man anyways. It was fun and we got to see ourselves on video afterwards, which was... entertaining.

Later in the afternoon, after the rain had stopped we took a stroll in center city. We stopped by a few stores along the way and I found a nice pair of shorts in the Canterbury store. We then went to find the Beehive, the parliament building. With the two times I've been to Wellington, it has always reminded me of Philly, but cleaner. The Parliament area reminded me of the art museum in Philly. Anyways, we stopped by the outside to take pictures and then went to visit the old St. Paul's Church and the new one. On our way back to the hostel we stopped by for gelato. This time I had mango and forest fruit yogurt. Om nom nom.

Artwork

Beehive aka the Parliament building

That night after dinner (fried rice) we sat in the TV room at the hostel and watched the Wales vs. France semi final and went to bed soon afterwards. The following day we stopped by the underground market (its like a flea market in an underground parking lot and has nothing to do with drugs...) where I bought some wool socks. The wool its made from is only produced in NZ and they are quite literally the greatest socks ever.

After my sock endeavor we took a ferry ride out to Day's Bay where we walked along the coast and enjoyed our lunch on a bench. There was not much on Day's Bay but the view was pretty incredible. Upon arriving back at Wellington we made our daily trip to Kaffe Eis where I had some interesting flavors: Bon Bon Rocher and After Eight, which in short is Nutella and mint. Glorious. We then went and adventured around Cuba street but since it was pretty close to 5pm many stores were closing. We then walked to Te Papa again and explored it a bit more until it closed at six. Then Grace and I then went on a run along the harbor which was nice after the large amounts of ice cream consumed.

Day's Bay 

Cuba Street

That night we watched the New Zealand vs Australia game at the Fan Zone in the middle of Wellington. It was an amazing game and the All Blacks won. It was also beautiful when everyone around me (like hundreds upon hundreds of people) began singing the New Zealand National Anthem. It wasn't until then that I realized I had never actually heard the anthem before and it was amazing. There were also fireworks at half time. Following the game we headed for bed since we had an early flight back to Dunedin the next morning. Overall Wellington was spectacular and i'm looking forward to more Kaffee Eis during my next layover there. For now though, i'm going on an ice cream hiatus.

Fireworks at the game

This weekend I hung out with Gaia and went on a bunch of successful expeditions. On Saturday I went to the farmers market to buy apples for my upcoming trip. We then went to the public library so I could get my library card and use my free vouchers for CD's and DVD's. Who would have thought that by signing up for the library card I got another set of free vouchers. We then set out on an epic shopping expedition. I needed a formal-ish dress for the horse races I am going to in November and I found one that is mostly white with purple flowers on it. Gaia also found the most awesome May Day dress. After coming home Gaia made me dinner which was amazing Shepard's pie.

Okay, this is kind of a non-sequitur but I just took an 8 hour break from this post and during those 8 hours New Zealand won the Rugby World Cup and I went to town and celebrated. So now i'm back, and it's 4:30 in the morning and i'm going to try my best to fill you in on ALL the excitement before I fall asleep.

Anyways, back to my previous thought before I ramble about rugby glory. After running more errands with Gaia this morning (it was Sunday and one of our stops was K-Mart and there were Christmas trees for sale, mind boggling since its actually just becoming warm outside) I came home for a brief while to do my laundry and clean my room. Oh goodness how my floor needed to be vacuumed, actually I was so happy too see clean floor that I then vacuumed the whole house, which needed more vacuuming than my room did and then spent a lot of time looking at how clean the floor was. Then I went to St. Kilda beach with Tucker, Grace, Kevin, Sophie and Kat. We also met up with Jose and Lydia at the beach. The boys and Sophie went swimming and while I had not planned to get much more than my feet wet, I ended up getting pretty soaked up to my waist. Good thing it wasn't cold.

After getting home yet again and showering, I made dinner and went over to Tucker's to watch the rugby game (New Zealand vs France in the final). The game was really tight, 8 to 7 New Zealand for most of the second half. When we did win (8 to 7), a bunch of us ran out to the sidewalk and we could hear everyone from the Baaa (the bar across the street from my complex) singing "We are the champions". I am quite certain that the Baaa was packed so tightly with people that it was probably a health and fire hazard but it was okay, because New Zealand had just won the Rugby World Cup.

Then a big group of an unknown number of people, maybe 20 (we all ended up separating into chunks anyways) went out to town to celebrate. The entire 20 minute walk consisted of cars honking and people yelling "ALL BLACKS!" and so on and so forth. You can probably guess by now that we ended up at Metro to dance and it was PACKED (as predicted). I wasn't quite in the dance-y mood tonight since I had already showered and did not want to get all sweaty again so I sat around and chatted with the guys I watched the game with. The bass was low enough to change my cardiac rhythm  but the music was good. We started to head home not incredibly late (around 1:30am) but somehow managed to dwaddle around until 3:30am when I finally returned to my own house. I ended up needing to take another shower because while I only danced a little, Metro was about 100ºF and a bunch of sweaty people brushed by me and this guy who was dancing kept on shaking his opened can of Red Bull so I was kind of showered with sugary energy drink. Anyways, great game and great celebration.

Okay, so in my sleepy daze as well as the very busy past few weeks, this may become the most disorganized post ever, but I realized that I never mentioned in my previous post about visiting Aramoana beach. Basically, it was beautiful and the sand was so fine it got into everything. I was still spilling sand out of my ears the next day. The clouds were amazing too. I put pictures up on Facebook pretty soon after I went but i'll post a few on my blog too.

So! That basically sums up the last week or so. I will be travelling around the South Island this week so I may have limited internet access but I will post again soon. Here are the Aramoana pictures: