Orana Wildlife Park, Shakespeare, and Chinese lanterns

We had our last round of visitors scheduled to come during our program, and we got the chance to go to a new place that we'd been meaning to visit before we even moved here: Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch a little ways past airport. The day we went, we had a very packed day with the park in the early afternoon, an outdoor Shakespeare play 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' in the early evening, and the Chinese Lantern Festival in the late evening.

Some highlights at the park were the lion feeding where the lions climbed onto the enclosed truck to get some scraps, some fun birds like a talkative tui and a mischievous kea, and a lot of tuatara lizards, including one that was just perfectly positioned for a close-up. The cheetahs had also recently been fed and were pacing around and looking so graceful and lean. Big cats really are so similar to domestic ones and so beautiful. The Shakespeare play included one of my former students, and it didn't rain on us so that was good. We popped over to the lantern festival and the timing was good because it was by then dark enough to see the lanterns lit up nicely and we saw lots of new ones -- it's a nice annual tradition in the park downtown.

Now we are nearing the final stretch of completing our theses, which means long hours and getting frustrated at having to go back and re-edit and re-write and cut words and add them and patch holes in arguments and all of the other work to put together an 80,000-word tome. We're not planning other travel or conferences or much of anything to be able to focus on the writing. It will be a challenge for sure.

caught this little critter with its tongue out!

my favorite NZ bird: the tui with two voiceboxes and fun warbles

the very intelligent kea

"Two Gentlemen of Verona" with a swingin' sixties theme

Chinese New Year in Sydney

Another cool thing about our time in Sydney was that it was Chinese New Year, and it is supposed to be the second biggest celebration outside of China because there are so many Chinese residents. The parade was cancelled due to construction on George Street, but they had 12 blow-up lanterns around downtown representing the zodiac signs, so we were able to make it to all of those. The Mahjongg ox was so cool! And they lit up the Town Hall, Opera House, Harbor Bridge, and Circular Quay in red.

The University of Sydney had a big campus and several buildings with nice architecture. You have to wonder what people are going to think of all our 'modern' glass buildings that seem to look the same. The library staff were not very helpful, but I still managed to check out several science fiction magazines from the early days of the genre which was really exciting. Going back to the source is definitely worth the effort because you get to see what people were actually reading and holding. Digital just can't replicate that.