Mmmm, gelato

I’ve continued to explore Wellington over the past few days, with still another week to go until school starts. It’s hard to believe that I haven’t been in school for over two months! Crazy! Although it’s been really fun to be able to head out each morning with only one objective in mind: try and make sense of this city.

So I made it to the farmer’s market! It was just as great as I was expecting it to be, and according to my roommate, we didn’t even make it to the big one down by the waterfront (where they had fresh fish and meat). There was a large selection of fruits, vegetables and potatoes (I wasn’t about to carry them back up the hill!). I acquired some a couple oranges, bananas and some peacherines (they are just as delicious as they sound) for less than $10. Hooray! Then Nicole and I went on to 11am Mass at St. Mary of the Angels, which is a beautiful church with lots of stained glass. They are extremely traditional…male altar servers, incense the entire time (yuuuuck), and although the Mass was said in English, all of the music and the Nicene Creed was sung in Latin. I was lost for sure, and Nicole almost passed out due to the incense (I never react to it well either). It was an interesting experience though, and obviously it wasn’t all that different from back home…I missed our music though!

Last night, Laura and Nicole and I headed into the city, determined to get some fast kebabs at Abrakebabra (clever, right?), but could not find the street on which we had seen it to save our lives. We determined that it was the same street as the electronics store, which we also needed to find. Finally we had to give up the search and settled for a corner café, one of the few open on Sunday. It’s crazy how little stores are open here compared to us U.S. workaholics. Almost everything is closed on Sunday, and even when we were wandering the city today around 5pm, people were closing shop. Unheard of! But, back to the café…a jazz combo magically appeared in the corner, which was fun, although I’m glad we ordered before they started playing. As we walked around the city in search of gelato (again, it was eluding us!), we heard at least four other live musical acts. That’s pretty cool for a world that is more and more turning to electronic and pre-recorded music. We located our previous gelato spot in Courtenay Place, Kaffe Eis, although I was shocked and dismayed to find that they didn’t have lemon. Instead, I had to give boysenberry a try…it was pretty good. Just not as great as lemon :P

Today we got a late start after planning our trip (read on for details), but we headed down to do some shopping and then took the cable car up to the very top of the Botanic Gardens where we walked to the Kelburn Shops for 2 for 1 pizza! Between the three of us, we managed to devour two large pizzas. We were pretty proud. The two pizzas and soft drinks for all of us (which are rather pricey) came to only $30, which was fantastic! Then we headed back down the cable car to meet a couple friends to go to the movies. We were going to use Snapper, a card that you can load money onto and then use for the bus and other various things, but the Snapper reader refused to recognize any of our debit cards since they weren’t from NZ banks. I was extremely frustrated and was hating all things New Zealand for a bit…typical culture shock. Hopefully it stays a rare occurrence. And hopefully I get my NZ debit card in the mail soon! After paying student price for the movie and not getting our 30% off with our Snapper (grr), we headed for...you guessed it...gelato. Lemon was back!!! And the same guy has waited on me all three times. I'm pretty sure he recognized me this time. Either we will become friends or it will be super awkward that I come in pretty much every day...

So, now for our trip. We changed our minds a few more times, but finally decided to head up to New Plymouth on the west coast of the North Island by bus tomorrow morning. From our hostel there, we will take the bus on Wednesday to Tongaporutu and Thursday to Mokau. Laura read about them in one of her guide books, in which the author insisted they were the best part of the North Island. They are black sand beaches with some waterfalls and other water features. I’m excited! It should be a lot of fun and a nice, relaxing trip preceding the start of the trimester next Monday. I’m not sure of the internet situation there, so you may just get updated this weekend once we return. Until then, kia ora!