The first day
The first few days here in Wellington have been spent mostly on logistics and catching up on sleep. After I arrived on Wednesday morning, I was picked up by the runner and taken to the Duxton hotel - a rather posh hotel in downtown Wellington. Weta gives their incoming employees a suite for two weeks and a rental car. Not too shabby!http://picasaweb.google.com/lori.smallwood/01_NZ_Arrival
After I crashed for a while and took a shower, I wandered across the street to the Te Papa museum of New Zealand. Te Papa is Maori for "our place." It's amazing how well-integrated the native people are with the modern settlers. Many street and suburb names are Maori, and most of the signs and such are in English and Maori. Also, many New Zealanders are part Maori. The treaty between the English crown and the native tribes that was signed in 1840 was very modern for its time. The Maori still hold a lot of sway in the government and sometimes still file disputes with the crown. Pretty different from the histories of the treatment of natives in Australia and North America. You can learn all about the Maori culture and many other facets of New Zealand in this museum. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries so I didn't get very many shots.
http://picasaweb.google.com/lori.smallwood/02_Te_Papa_Museum
After another nap, I met my friend Jade for dinner at a restaurant called "East West" on Cuba street downtown. Cuba street has a lot of shops and restaurants, whereas Courtenay Place is party central with a lot of bars and pubs. Here's Jade enjoying a "flat white" and feijoa custard (a feijoa is a small fruit that tastes like a cross between a kiwi fruit and a plum, only tarter).
posted by Lori @ 8:42 PM
1 Comments:
No snakes! But we do have the heaviest insect in the world, the weta.
Women were granted the right to vote in New Zealand in 1893, making New Zealand the "first self-governing nation in the world" to give women the right to vote. Read more about it here.
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