Zealandia, Playing Dead, and Settling In

Hi everyone! This has been yet another eventful week! This city on the other side of the world is starting to feel more and more familiar!

On Saturday, I went to Zealandia, a wildlife reserve with friends and saw some adorable Takahe birds, a type of parrot called a Kaka and a Tuatara. Fun fact, the Tuatara’s ancestors existed before the dinosaurs.

On the way back, I tried to take the iconic cable car photo but my phone died, I got lost and then I spent a long time navigating my way back to my flat. Amazing, I found it without a map or asking anyone! In the evening, I met back up with Skye and Rebekah and we went to a circus performance which was part of the Wellington Fringe Festival. The performers were extremely talented.

Sunday started with the weekly Farmer’s Market. Skye, Rebekah and I were gonna cook like last week so we bought the ingredients for Potato Leek Soup. Then I went back to my flat to prepare for my big adventure of the day! I would be going to play a dead guy in a short film! I am on a Wellington Extras facebook page and they posted this:

So naturally, I signed up. A cool dude with long hair and a beard picked me up to take me. He knew the producer from primary school and decided to play a dead king as well. The set was in the middle of a gorgeous park. Here are some views of the park. I wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of the set but once the film is out, I’ll share it!

The film was being made by filmmakers fresh out of Masters programs and they were doing the shooting in a very professional way. There was someone on makeup, someone on hair, tents for changing rooms and lunch was provided. I spent probably around two hours lying still in a hole with a bunch of random people all dressed in costume in the middle of a grassy hill in New Zealand! It was definitely memorable!

In the evening, we made the potato leek soup which came out delicious and finished the first Lord of the Rings movie. I also got to meet many of Rebekah’s flatmates.

Monday was back to school but there was also a very special visit! My second cousin once removed (my grandfather Irwin’s cousin’s daughter) and her husband happened to be visiting Wellington as part of a larger trip to New Zealand and Australia. They learned I would be studying here from our holiday newsletter and so we arranged to meet up! We walked around the waterfront together and we got dinner. I hadn’t seen them since 2018 so it was lovely to reconnect (on the other side of the world).

Afterwards, I went to a restaurant that shows movies for free on the first Monday of every month. Some other people from the Arcadia program went as well. The movie was “What We Do In The Shadows” which takes place in Wellington and was made by Taika Waititi, a New Zealand filmmaker.

Tuesday I had my Artificial Intelligence class and we learned about AI search algorithms. I ate lunch afterward with the guy Kevin whom I met last week in class. He is from Wellington and majoring in Software Engineering. In the afternoon, I had my Media of New Zealand tutorial for the first time. Tutorial is basically just meeting with a teaching assistant in a smaller group setting. We went over our upcoming assignment in which I must research a New Zealand media organization. In the evening, I went to the tramping club meeting where they were going over what we need for the big tramping trip this weekend.

Wednesday is my free day. But it quickly become not free. There was a potential issue of me not being able to transfers my Creative Nonfiction class to Brandeis for credit and in the process of confirming this, I found a fabulous class about cartooning that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to take at Brandeis. So, I switched classes and ran to the new course which luckily meets only on Wednesdays so I made it to this week’s meeting and only missed last week’s! The class is called Visual Narratives and the professor is a publishing comic book artist. He started the class by telling us a story about a man in a trench coat that he swapped laptop bags with by accident at the bus station and then he asked for us to give suggestions for what was in a special locked box in the trench coat man’s bag. Having just transferred, it took me a minute to register that this wasn’t real but rather the start to an activity 😂. The purpose was to get us thinking of story ideas for our big creative project this semester. The class has such a good vibe. The people at my table were so kind. I love the class already!

I also cooked up some potatoes, rice, tofu and broccoli for a new meal!

On Thursday, I had Artificial Intelligence class and then I face-timed with my wonderful friends Michael, Jamie, Lauren and Jennifer. It was so nice to see them!

Every Thursday, one of the RAs here runs a cooking class where they basically make a dish they like to make and we help out. I went to that event and in the process, met some other nice people and we ended up going for a walk to the harbour after dinner. Then I did some food shopping for the upcoming tramping trip.

Whew! What a week. See you next time! I’ll tell you about my tramping adventures!