Wellington, the other windy city!

So today was windy. Which was AWESOME! I mean, if I had long hair like the girls on the trip, I might not like it so much, but I don’t! The feel and sound of the rushing mighty wind ;) was incredible, and nearly swept me off my feet!

Today was my first full day in New Zealand, and it was definitely a blast. Today I unleashed the child within. After breakfast, which was delicious by the way, we had a tour of the campus and housing. It was helpful and slightly entertaining. My favorite comment by the tour guide was, “If there’s an earthquake and you’re in your housing building, pray.” It turns out a fault line is half mile from our housing! After the tour, we went to the botanical gardens. Yesterday we heard from a professor’s daughter that there was a big playground with a zipline, so I was pumped! The gardens were very pretty. If I were a biology major, I would probably categorize the plants by type. Instead I was more interested in only two categories: climbable, not climbable. There were some pretty awesome climbing trees, I must say! My friends even said they would like to come back to climb trees. That made me happy! We walked back to our dorms around noon for lunch. After lunch, we split up for a couple hours. I played ping pong; some others took a short nap. Apparently, hiking up and down mountains is very wearing! Then, a large group of us went to Te Papa, which means ‘Our History,’ or ‘Our land,’ or something like that, but definitely not ‘Your Dad’ (spanish-ish). Te Papa is the National Museum for New Zealand, kinda the equivalent of the Smithsonian, but not quite as extensive. It was pretty cool. I think the coolest thing was the ocean section, which includes a giant squid they have preserved there. We’ll go back sometime in the next few weeks to look at it more. On the way to the museum, the wind was so strong we had to grip the railing next to sidewalk to prevent ourselves from being blown into the street. Professor Garton said these are normal strength gales. 32 mph winds are normal. Tonight, we are going to plan out some of our weekends. Talking to a professor today, I learned you can rent an ATV, drive out to some massive sand dunes, and go sand tobogganing! Other possibilities include underground caving/rafting zip-lining through forests, and much more!