Out and About

Fall is in the air in Wellington. The days are getting shorter and the weather is getting cooler and rainier. That said, I can still wear shorts and the weather has actually been quite nice!

For context, this blog post will chronicle my adventures from May 15th to 21st 2023. I hope you enjoy.

I learned two things over the weekend relating to food. One is that rice can go bad and start growing bacteria. I learned this when I was explaining to my friends while we were on Kapiti Island how I made so much rice last week that it will last two weeks and that’s when they let me in on the bacteria fun fact. Indeed, my rice smelled kind of funky when I got home so I threw it away which meant I would have to make something new.

The other information I learned from my friend Annelie is that you can eat the peel of a Kiwifruit. This is best with gold or red kiwi as the hair of the green kiwi is not a great texture. I promptly tried this and although it’s not as tasty, it sure is easier!

Monday for me was Sunday for everyone in the US so I called my mom for Mother’s Day! I had Media of New Zealand in the afternoon and we were learning about the Ultra Fast Broadband Initiative in New Zealand which is also what my essay for the class is about (we got to choose from a list) so it was helpful to hear about it in class. I did some food shopping after class and did homework in the evening.

On Tuesday, I visited my Media tutor at his office hours for some help making my thesis. I had spent the previous week attempting to write 300 words a day and now I have the amount of words I need for the assignment but I have to kind of stitch it all together. My tutor was very helpful and told me I made the most use of his office hours of anyone in the class which was cool to hear.

I had AI class and Media tutorial after that. I chatted with a guy from my class on the way back from tutorial and went to the AI Help Desk. In the evening, I walked my way over to the Wellington Opera House for the Inter-hall Talent Show. Each hall could do a variety act and a musical act. All the performers did very impressive jobs. The Everton performers represented our hall well with an awesome musical performance that also involved a dude in a gorilla costume running around the stage.

Now if you are wondering “why didn’t David go to tramping club?”, first of all, good memory! The reason was the meeting was to vote on the new president (old one moved to Queenstown) and to decide on what they would do during mid-winter break. Given I leave in a month, neither of these decisions mattered much to me and the meeting conflicted with the talent show timing.

There has honestly been a lot of change since I began here just a few months ago. The school bookstore closed, leadership at tramping club has changed and our deputy head of hall left. I forgot to mention this in the previous blog but we had a little get-together sausage sizzle in honor of Deputy Matt at Everton last Thursday. I’ve learned the word deputy is basically like assistant or “vice”. It was a nice event in the hall and I played some pool with my flatmate Sam.

Ok, back to this week. When I returned to my flat, my flatmates were playing a game called Coup and invited me to join. It wasn’t actually that hard to learn and it was fun to play with them.

Wednesday was the day I finally submitted that third AI assignment that I was going to all those help desks for! It sure was a lot of work. Time to turn my attention to assignment four, lol.

I had some free time so I went up to the Botanical Gardens, walked around a bit and ate my lunch before my Visual Narratives class.

Our professor was at graduation so one of our tutors did a quick lecture on Zines. Zines are basically self-published little booklets (comics, poems, etc) that you sell, leave places or spread in some nontraditional way. The tutor provided paper in case we wanted to try making a zine. I worked on my children’s book instead. There is a Zine Fest happening this Saturday they were talking about which I plan to go to!

After class, I treated myself to a banana chocolate crêpe from the lovely crêpe stand.

Also, fun fact about graduation here: If you finish your degree in June, you graduate in December and vice versa. I can’t figure out why!

Thursday was the day I used something I brought all the way to New Zealand but hadn’t yet figured out how to legally use until now. And that is my drone! I finally learned that you just have to fill out a form on an app and call Air Traffic Control and that’s it! So, I filled out the form, called ATC and took flight at Kelburn park! I hope to fly in more parts of the city over the next few weeks.

In the afternoon, after class, I ran around the city a bit getting some shots for a TikTok I am making for Brandeis Study Abroad. I even went into Te Papa for a couple shots of the Gallipoli exhibit (my fourth time in there). I then ended up walked along the waterfront!

After class on Friday, I called my parents to say hi. It was kind of a rainy day but I wanted to do something cool. I decided to check out the Wellington Museum because I hadn’t been there before. It is pretty interesting with a lot of exhibits about a variety of topics. I also was going to check out the portrait gallery but it was mostly closed for a special event. That’s ok, it will give me something to check out another time. I’ve found that going to museums by yourself is really freeing because you can spend as much time or as little as you want and not worry about if you are doing it in the “correct proper way” I often just walk through kinda quickly and look at what catches my eye. At night, I played another game with my flatmates which was a modified version of Coup.

Saturday was Zine Fest Day! I walked over to the Te Aro Design Campus and on the way, I happened to meet up with my friends Georgia and Max who also studying from the US. Georgia is in my Visual Narratives class. Max was one of the performers in the talent show so I congratulated him on the amazing performance! And then, just like that, we were at Zine Fest!

We walked around and checked out the different booths. Dylan, my professor had his own booth so we went over to say hi. He was selling a new zine he had just finished for the festival. I recognized Tara Black, the author of the book This is not a Pipe which was the book I presented about in class. I was pretty excited so I went over and told her how I had presented about the book and bought one of her zines. She was so kind and very happy to hear that I had read her book and presented about it. At that point, my friend Callum showed up. He is in my Visual Narratives class as well. I got to meet his girlfriend and then we walked around the rest of the fair.

Callum headed out but I stuck around with Georgia, Max and Tom (he had joined us at the fair) and we went to a cafe followed by New World grocery store. They invited me over for egg salad (Max was very keen on eating egg salad) so I came along. We hung out and ate lunch. It was cool to get to know them better!

In the evening, I went up to Kelburn flats and Rebekah, Skye and I did our classic cooking and a movie. This time we baked again and made cranberry and white chocolate cookies, got pizza delivered and watched the second half of the third and final Lord of the Rings movies. So, I now can say I have seen them all! Did I understand them that well is another story.

Sunday was hiking day. Our group which back in March might consist of ten people has been dwindling. Today it was only Skye, Lauren and I. We met up, walked through the botanical gardens to catch a bus to Karori, a suburb of Wellington where today’s walk would begin. The walk is called the Skyline Track and it goes across Wellington and the views are stunning!

It was a long walk but we ended up on the mountain we had walked to back in March when we met all those weta bugs in a cave. We walked by the cave again but no one wanted to relive that experience. We ended our trip with a stop for ice cream. I went to Cafe Eis and Lauren and Skye went to Duck Island and we met up after getting our respective ice icecreams.

So yeah, another eventful week here on the other side of the world. I know my way around Wellington quite well now. It feels like a photograph being developed. At first, it was all a blur but over time, I’ve figured out the geography and I’m figuring out where all the locations are I had gone to with groups earlier on. I feel as though I am understanding New Zealand more and more each day. See you next week!