Wellington

First of all another fitting piece of hostel wall art (I’m seriously meant to be here):

After New Plymouth I stayed in Wanganui, which is a boring little town, especially in the rain, but my hostel had a nice view of this river:

I also had my first rugby-watching experience here.  The sevens, a modified version of the full game that the All Blacks always win the world cup in, were going on in Wellington while I was up the road in Wanganui.  In addition to the games, it was entertaining to watch the cameras scroll across the crowd, because everyone dresses up in crazy costumes!  I guess it's their version of Halloween too.  And NZ won the tournament, so they did a Haka - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqnimvUMCAk&feature=related - there are plenty on youtube, I didn't know how to choose but this one is fine.  I guess it's a Maori war dance, and so it has to be led by a Maori member of the team.  It is always really intense, and usually at the end they stick their tongues way out, which might be where Pitbull got his signature move, Ally!

From Wanganui I went to Wellington, where I met up with a sister of a friend of a friend, her husband two kids (very cute little boys, one of which responded to an introduction to me with “plums,” .. “plums?”  “plums are like nectarines!”).  We walked around and came across a car show that was displaying the chitty chitty bang bang car!  It was pretty cool:

We had lunch, then they took me to another sister’s house, where I’m staying for the next couple days.  A real house!  Very cute with a nice living room and my own bedroom!

When left by myself with a fully equipped kitchen this is what I choose for dinner:

I started out at the grocery store picking up a small zucchini and a carrot but decided I needed a little more, so I found a small serving of peppered steak that I figured I could cook up pretty easily.  But then I went back by the veggies and decided to pick up a potato.  Then an onion looked good, and a bell pepper (which by the way is called a capsicum here; very strange).  So with all those things that sounded/looked so delicious, I decided I didn’t need the steak anymore.

Monday was Waitangi Day, the day the treaty was signed giving rule to England.  I learned that, despite what they tell you at Waitangi, things are not so peaceful regarding the treaty.  The translation of the treaty was not perfect from English to Maori, and the Maoris didn’t really know what they were agreeing to.  Apparently it turned out that they lost some rights, and have held annual protests about it ever since.

It was also Superbowl Monday, so when I came across a sports bar downtown that had the game on I decided to stop in and watch.  It is slightly less enjoyable here, since they just play New Zealand commercials rather than the hyped-up famous superbowl commercials of the US.  But it was still fun, and a good game, and of course everyone in the bar was friendly.  Not as many Americans as I would have expected, so most people who were rooting for a team were doing so somewhat arbitrarily, which was good since that’s what I was doing too.  But my team won!

Then I came back to the house I’m staying at and Anna had started cooking dinner!  So nice to have a delicious home-cooked meal half way around the world.  I’m going to cook for her Wednesday… probably either chicken parmesan or lasagna.  Today I'm going in to explore Wellington a bit more, and maybe stop in at the museum.

I had dinner with Anna and her sister and sister's family one night.  Her littlest boy (3 yrs old) took a liking to me, I think because I was wearing an orange shirt which is his favorite color (and mine!).  He was talking to me and saying the cutest things, the most memorable of which was asking why my hair was so long, and if I watered it to make it grow like that.