Hey rest of the world! Long time no see! In the (once again inordinately long) time since my previous post, lots of stuff has happened! Here are some of the cool things I’ve been up to!
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| Hello,Wellington! |
Classes ensued, and over the weekend of July 29th and 30th, a whole bunch of us international students took a trip to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand! We caught a cheap bus ride down and stayed in a hostel called Lodge in the City, in study abroad-style.
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| It was very accommodating. |
We tried to cram way too many things into one weekend, and succeeded! Haha.
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| Haha, don't worry mom and dad, we didn't go on it. |
First stop, the hostel! Passed this pretty crazy bungy jump thing… basically in the middle of the sidewalk. Building with fun paint on it in the background.
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| Woaaaaah! |
Cool views of the street! Our hostel was luckily pretty much smack in heart of downtown Wellington, so it made getting around and seeing the sites really easy!
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| Ah! Which way do we go!? |
The following morning, we got breakfast at a neat little all-day breakfast diner. Drink of choice of the weekend: Moccachino.
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| Mmmmmmocha. |
Some of the cohort stopped off at Molly Malones, a neat authenticish Irish pub for a morning beer. Supposedly Elijah Wood likes this bar. Cool as.
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| Classy cats. |
Then, we went out exploring! Wellington is the home of Te Papa, New Zealand’s national museum. It’s located right on the waterfront, which was totally beautiful.
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| Aha! We made it! |
We lucked out weather-wise. (:
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| Nifty reflecty sculturey globby things! |
And now, lots and lots of pictures of the water! Ahhh, so pretty!
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| Sail boats... |
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| Water! |
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| People in boats! |
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| General gloriousness. |
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| Cool kids standing on things you're not supposed to stand on! |
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| One of those things they were standing on! |
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| Getting closer... Ahhh, how blue is that water?! |
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| Even closer! Cool mussels and crustacean things! And seaweed! General coolness. |
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| Cool sculpture/statue. Lil' bro Evan approves of this photo. (: |
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| :) |
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| Really liked this statue. Beautiful. (: |
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We decided to save museum-going for Sunday, and hopped on a city bus to… dun dun dun… the Weta Cave! Spooooky… Haha not really. Kind of.
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| Window shot! It was so beautiful out there. |
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| Ahhhhh! A Cave! Building. Yeah! |
Weta is a neato prop/other movie things production studio based out of New Zealand, responsible for some of the awesomeness that went into making the Lord of the Rings movies, District 9, and many other cool things.
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| That strange fellow with the fish looks suspiciously familiar... |
Some of my friends here are pretty obsessed with Weta. Haha. Hey guys.
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| Cool ceiling paintings! |
Some pretty cool stuff!
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| Lord of the Rings figurines! |
When we got back, we did some more wandering around the city before dinner!
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| Another great day for walking around. |
Hey look, this sign says Brooklyn!
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| B-R-O-O-K-L-Y-N, come again! |
We passed this cool book store…
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| :D |
Awesome art on a public restroom in a mini-park in the middle of the road.
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| (: |
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| Loved this! |
Hey cool fountain!
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| Hi seagull! |
Then we made an emergency coffee stop at this cute little/super hipster film archive coffee shop conglomeration (I just wanted to use that word, haha).
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| Hey hipsters! :D |
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| HI MAUREN! :D |
I FOUND SOMETHING I COULD EAT! Well, drink. An amazing soy cappuchino it was.
Mmmmm…. Perfection.
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| Ahhhhhhhh. This was amazing. (: |
The next day, we started the our adventures off right with some breakfast… at a REALLY REALLY COOL café. Ahhh, it was super awesome! I really liked it (no, really!)!
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| Midnight Espresso! Cute little whole in the wall coffee shop... |
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| ... filled with awesomeness! |
They had tons of fun and funky fliers, awesome wall art, and, wait for it…. vegan food! I know right?
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| I SEE THE WORD VEGAN ON THIS MENU. |
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| Yummy food! |
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| SEE THERE IT IS AGAIN! ...VEGAN! :D |
Too bad I’d already whipped myself up some oatmeal for breakfast. Definitely hoping to go back sometime.
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| A rad collection of posters for awesome happenings. |
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| Pinball, what up! |
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| Neat wall photos. (: |
Regardless, I took a whole bunch o’ pictures. (:
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| Snazzy coffees... |
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| Moccachino! |
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| What are those cars doing on the ceiling? I don't know, but I like 'em! :D |
Yeeeah. A lot of pictures. There was just so much fun and interesting art everywhere! :D
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| A telephone booth? Or.... |
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| More random stuff on the ceiling! |
Even the bathroom was super decorated - and lit with black light - crazy!
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| So darned cool! |
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| So much detail going on too! Wish I could've taken even more pictures. :D |
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| Ahh! There's a tiger in the bathroom! |
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| Leaves! :D |
Then we wandered around the city some more, and made our way towards the museum!
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| Fun record shop! |
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| Fun swirly things shop! |
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| MORE VEGETARIAN STUFF! GAH! Gotta try and eat here next time! |
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| The crew out walking in the concourse in the center of town. |
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| Cool Maori lizard thing! |
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| So lovely. (: |
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| MORE RIDICULOUSLY BLUE WATER. WHAT IS THIS?! |
Te Papa!
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| Their logo! Maori swirly fingerprint! Cultural identity. (: |
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| Here at last! |
The museum was really neat, a fun mix of natural history, cultural history, and art.
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| Neat exhibit on New Zealand environments and wildlife. |
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| View from a cool overpass! |
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| BIRDS! :D |
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| More birds! |
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| Even more birds! These are for you Gaelyn, haha. |
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| Another view of the pier... couldn't help myself. (: |
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| This neat interactive floor map of NZ. |
They had lots of exhibits on the historical and native animals of New Zealand, Maori culture, and even a small park with examples of some New Zealand habitats.
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| Really powerful Maori/traditional respect for the land exhibit. |
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| Incredible birds! |
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| It's almost as if New Zealand has a lot of birds or something... |
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| Lots of great quotes like this one. |
Check out these neat-o ferns!
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| Big fern curl! Fiddleheads? |
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| Little baby fern curls! |
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| Oooh a waterfall! |
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| Lots and lots of ferns! They really look like aliens to me. |
After the museum, we had an hour or so before our bus back, so we wandered a bit more and made our way to… a farmer’s market!
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| Some neat street art. |
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| A giant head! AHHHH! |
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| Oh hey, hippo. |
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| <3 |
Ahhhh it was sooo cool! Tons of fruit and vegetables everywhere, all really cheap and delicious and fresh and amazing! Unfortunately, we were really pressed for time. ):
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| AHHH SO MANY VEGETABLES! <3 |
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| Fantastic fruit! |
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| <3 <3 <3 Did I mention that I love vegetables? |
But I did get some small vine tomatoes, oranges, and peaches. Yum! Ate ‘em all on the walk back to the hostel. (:
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| Such beautiful tomatoes! |
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| Ahh! Got some of these and they were incredible. (: |
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| Ahhh.... |
Back in Palmy… it was back to baking!
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| Ze recipe! |
We used the rest of the pumpkin leftover from pie and fritters to make some mean pumpkin scones!
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| Using just about anything we could find as a mixing bowl... so much batter! |
We chopped up some apples and walnuts and threw them into the mix too… and they were amazing! We tripled the recipe and made about a bajillion scones. Yum.
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| Dust 'em with brown sugar... |
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| Ready to go! |
Silly picture time!
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| Peter likes pumpkin scones. |
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| Nom time! |
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| Robert approves this scone message. |
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| We even got a Kiwi to eat a scone! Success! |
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| Hi guy! :D |
Course work ensued…
I still really like my classes. Vertebrate Zoology is awesome – the professor is really engaging, interested in teaching, and hilarious. He’s also really friendly and makes a point to get to know all the students even though the class is pretty big.
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| Dogfish heads! |
We have a lab once a week, which is generally dissections and drawing. It’s pretty tiring (and 3-hours long), but still lots of fun! I feel like I’m learning a lot. We’re gradually making our way through the vertebrates – we did some urochordates (nonvertebrates), lamprey, dogfish (sharks!), frogs, and tadpoles (aww! That one pulled some heartstrings.)!
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| CRAZY AMPHIBIANS! I believe this guy's a Hell bender. |
Our term project? We’re given a possum head and have to clean it off and prepare the skull to permanent specimen condition! Crazy! We get our possum heads next week (haha weird!), so I’ll let ya know how that goes.
Applied Ecology & Resource Management is also really good – we’ve been doing a lot of population modeling (we used the data from our field trip to estimate bird populations!) and learning about environmental management in New Zealand. Another field trip coming up soon!
Communication in the Sciences… is okay. Hahaha. It’s basically a class about how to write good. Err, I mean well. Haha. Okay, so it’s pretty much how to write competent essays, but a good review for sure! Well. A good review a little. The good with the bad. (:
Now, back to fun stuff!
Made it downtown for dinner one night – got Korean food, which was actually REALLY GOOD!
Mmm, this picture is making me hungry…
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| Bibimbap with really yummy tofu and grilled vegetables. And lotsssss of chili paste. (: |
Now that it’s been raining less (ie. not all the time) down here, the river slowed a little and really cleared up! Check out that water (and those cool hills! See the windmills?)!
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| Nature! :D |
Spent a quiet weekend in Palmy, which involved several day trips downtown… and spending about 5
hours in this awesome little thrift store! It was great! I got a spiffy pair of loafers, hooray!
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| Awesome thrift store! |
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| Small, but great selection and really nice people! Awesome! (: |
We also saw this nifty bench, and a tree covered in foil! Earlier that morning, we’d seen a group of people painting and decorating downtown, so this may have been part of what they were working on.
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| Hakuna matata. |
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| Haha crazy tree! |
We also hosted a Mexican food night in the common room associated with our dorm! Joined by fellow cool-kids Mauren, Peter, Robert, Evan, and Abby (did I miss anyone?), we cooked up home-made tortillas, delicious beans with tomatoes, mexican rice, mango-corn salsa, some unimportant meat stuff
gross (haha jk), and a Mexican chocolate cake to celebrate Peter’s birthday!
Lots of deliciouuuus food and fun times were had! Ahhh, so much food. (:
(still trying to track down some pictures of this... coming soon!)
We ended the weekend with… you guessed it, more delicious food! With the awesome team efforts of Kelly, Abby, and Ashley, we baked five loaves (haha) of honey oat wheat bread!
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| Abby kneading dough. |
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| Fun with flour! |
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| Honey glazed, oat topped, and ready to go! |
It turned out amazing! Really hearty and delicious! We made a super yummy honey glaze and added raisins to some of them… yum yum!
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| Hey! That man is KNITTING! |
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| Ahhh! Stay away from me with that flour! |
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| Pretty ladies. (: |
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| Yay! |
Chow time!
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| Fresh out of the oven! |
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| INTENSE BREAD EATING. |
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| Yum! |
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| Slicin' away. |
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| Out of focus but we made a braided loaf! It was awesome (and had extra honey glaze and raisins... hehe, yum)! |
Other exciting news – I recently (last last week… haha) joined up with the MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Club here at Massey! They do jiu jitsu and muay thai, each twice a week, and I love it! I’ve been going to both the jiu jitsu classes and one of the muay thai classes (I have a time conflict with one of my labs for the other, awww) and it’s been awesome! It’s been great to meet some new people, get involved with a club… and get rolling! (:
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| Running some drills. (: |
Stole this from some pictures were taken during a class a few weeks ago! Lots of sore muscles, bruises (so many bruises!!), and fun times. (:
This past Thursday, the international family pulled together a surprise birthday party for me and two of the other international students (two 21st and one 18th birthday)! I was so surprised it took me a while to figure out that it was for my birthday too, haha.
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| Lots of friends packed into the common room = awesome. (: |
Yummy vegan banana chocolate cake! Thanks guys! (:
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| Mmmm, cake! Thanks so much you guys! <3 |
We spent another quiet weekend in Palmy, the weather cleared up on Saturday so a bunch of us walked down to the river and explored down there for a few hours. It was really scenic, no pictures unfortunately though!
I also got the very special treat of video chatting with my favoritest little sister! Without a doubt the highlight of my week. Awww, I miss you, fluffy! <3
Aaaand, more baking! Cinnamon raisin swirl bread, delicious! Also no pictures, darn.
It’s been gradually getting warmer here (spring soon maybe?!), but earlier this week we were hit with a cold snap, oh no!
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| Snow from my window! |
But it quickly turned into some of the fluffiest snow I’d ever seen. Really! Giant fluffy snowflakes. It didn’t snow too much (about an inch, maaaaybe), but all of the Kiwis here were so excited!
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| Snow (and flowers!) on a tree the next day. |
A lot of them had never seen snow before at all, and snow pretty much never hits Palmerston North.
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| Ah! It's melting! ): |
The snow’s since cleared up, and hopefully things are getting warmer again! We’re at the end of week 5 of our semester, and after next week we have… mid-semester break! It’s two weeks long, and I’m planning on traveling all over the North Island with a group of friends! Can’t wait! (:
But before then… essays and lab reports and exams, oh my! I think I can handle it. (;
Until next time!
Ariel
