Wellington: Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum and Weta Cave

The next day was windy and rainy -- not pleasant weather for exploring a city on foot. Our luck with travel (see Queenstown trip) seems to be continuing as people have been saying this downpour is uncharacteristic even for Wellington. The guidebook said that the National Library had the Treaty of Waitangi (1840 agreement between many of the indigenous Maori chiefs and the British Crown), but we were disappointed to find that it is undergoing restoration and won't be on display for two years. She said there was a copy at the Archives down the street, so we went there, but the Constitution Room was closed, of course. I gave up and had to be satisfied with the facsimile copy in the lobby.

view of Wellington from the balcony of Airbnb apartment

Te Papa National Museum

Fortunately, the Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand did live up to the guidebook's praise. We spent hours there checking out the exhibits on the history of New Zealand.

Highlights:

The museum has the only colossal squid on public display in the world, and that thing was gnarly! It is the largest invertebrate, has eyes as big as soccer balls, and is preserved in a tank of liquid.

A self-taught woman, Joan Wiffen, discovered the first dinosaur fossil and many subsequent ones in New Zealand.

It was frustrating and saddening to learn about how destructive humans have been to this land. The British and other Europeans wanted to turn New Zealand into a little Britain, and in the process burned and bladed much of the forests, as well as taking land from the indigenous Maori people. They introduced farm animals and invasive plants and animals, leading to the extinction of many species.

Green indicates forests. Now, only 25% of indigenous forests remain.

Brown indicates Maori land ownership on the North and South Islands (not much anymore).

"Pakeha settlers wanted to create a prosperous outlying farm of Britain."

I already knew about the giant moa bird that went extinct, but the museum had a nice recreation of it being attacked by its main predator before Maori arrival, the Haast's eagle (also extinct). It kind of looks like an ostrich, but its legs are a lot thicker.

Weta Cave
Weta Workshop is known for its work on the special effects for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but it has grown a lot in its 20-year history and is working on the three new Avatar films and a lot of other projects. The 30-minute behind-the-scenes movie in the "theatrette" really just ended up making me want to watch LOTR and some of the other movies the company has worked on again!

Yogurt or Cream?

We met up with a friend from Christchurch at a Malaysian restaurant and then went to another restaurant for dessert. When you order cheesecake, they ask whether you want yogurt or cream. I didn't understand what they were talking about until they brought out the plate and had little ramekin dishes on it with plain, tart yogurt in one and whipped cream (unsweetened) in the other. It was quite strange to not have a glob of whipped cream on top of the cheesecake, and having tart yogurt with a bite of cheesecake was not pleasant. They also ask the same question when you order a brownie!

"Thanksgiving" Week

This week's theme was being aware of being international.

In order to keep my U.S. phone number, I switched it to a prepaid account and have to top it up every three months to keep it active even though I'm not actually using it (haven't turned it on since the first week I arrived). I tried to top it through the T-mobile website and that failed. I tried it again and it failed. I discovered it is free to call toll-free U.S. numbers through my Viber app, so I called the refill number which the online chat rep had advised and tried that way which failed. I called my credit card company to make sure it wasn't on their end. I then called T-mobile's customer service number and after three people and having to go through a credit card verification (which was the reason it was failing), it finally worked. So, the point of sharing this is to advertise the good news that while abroad, if you have internet access, you can call your credit card and other customer service companies for free through their toll-free numbers with the Viber app.

While we missed out on the Black Friday shopping experience, one of the Walmart-like stores here, Warehouse, which has a red logo, had a "Red Friday" 1-day sale on Friday. There were more people there than usual, but Warehouse hadn't quite learned the tactic of placing the deals throughout the store to force you to go through the store and decide to pick up other things. All of the deals were on pallets up at the front. So we grabbed the two folding tables we wanted, checked out, and were out of there in 15 minutes. Not too bad.

That evening, we went to our first Operation Friendship dinner for international students hosted by a local church at one of its member's houses. We also had to bring a wrapped gift for a gift exchange since it was the last one of the year. There was a sizable group - 45 - with international students from all over (Iran, India, Korea, Malaysia, Serbia) and older folks from the church. They encouraged mingling through a meet-as-many-people-as-you-can game. Dinner was a potluck of leftovers from someone's Thanksgiving party and other dishes like casseroles and vegetables. Dessert included chocolate cake and ice cream which I haven't had in a long time. I enjoyed meeting a variety of new people and had a somewhat intense conversation about U.S. immigration policies with a guy from India. He said it was good to get a different perspective than the media's.

This theme has been increasingly apparent as I realize how much we are all at the mercy of what gets reported in the news. I may be quite ignorant of a lot of what's happening in the rest of the world - especially since we aren't subscribing to a newspaper anymore - but most people know or at least think they know what's going on in the U.S. because certain stories make headlines. Yet I find that people's opinions are so often just based on a tiny snippet of information and nowhere near the whole story, or are missing a crucial opposing viewpoint, at least in terms of my perspective as it's my home country. This is good in a way because it forces me to reflect that this happens in reverse when I see media coverage of something happening in another country and think I have it figured out or form an opinion based on one article. It doesn't mean we can really help it, but it can help us keep an open mind when someone challenges our beliefs or opinions.

Saturday was the American Club's annual Thanksgiving party where they supplied the turkeys (super expensive here - $50-$70) and we all were supposed to bring a plate of food to share. I made pumpkin cheesecakes (gluten-free with some yummy hokey-pokey flavor cookies for the crust) in cupcake liners and they turned out great. We met up with the cool British couple and their kids whom we had met at the Halloween party last month. The guy even lent me a couple of his British science fiction books to check out. I let myself indulge a bit and got a big plateful of food and tried several desserts (pumpkin pie with whipped cream, warm berry pie with whipped cream, some kind of meringue-type cake, and a brownie).

notice how plain the picky eater's plate is

As I've been weeding the flower bed along the fence, I found that the massive dandelions were obscuring a bunch of strawberry plants with some ripe strawberries on them. Sweet! I picked a decent handful today before the critters can get to them. Free fruit is always a treat.

Tomorrow begins the last month of the year. December already!

uncovered strawberry plants