Earthquakes Galore

Kia Ora! Well the wind is still a blowin. Wellington is known as Windy Welly. Mary said I looked like I was on a roller coaster today because my hair was flying backwards and my mouth was open real wide from laughing about the wind. Apparently there were two more earthquakes today! But I didn't know about either of them. One happened last night around 2:30. It seems it woke a lot of people up, but not me of course. Supposedly another small one hit early this afternoon. Helen says this isn't normal, but Wellington is overdue for a big one. Apparently there is a fault line in Wellington. I walk over it every day, and I had no idea. It's literally about halfway down the hill from my house, but Helen reassured us that our house is very safe if there would be a big earthquake. The houses here are built to withstand an 8.0 earthquake. That's good news.

So classes for the rest of the week. Studio wasn't too bad. Everyone seems to be really nice. There's even another American. He's from Pennsylvania and goes to Penn State, but I didn't catch if he's landscape or architecture. They started out showing us a bunch of mapping they've done with their firms. For those of you who know how much I love mapping, you can imagine my joy when he told us what we would be doing. But the good thing is that it was all very familiar to me. They were very curious to know how we do some things in the States. For our project we get to pick from two different sites. However, we don't go out as a class. So I need to make my way out to both of them this weekend. One is called Petone. Its apparently in the suburbs and is part of the beach and waterfront. The other is Memorial Park. I think that one is quite close to campus. Of course everyone else is already familiar with these, and I don't have a clue.

I went to Colour, Pattern, & Light today with a positive attitude, sat down, and then she started talking. Not good. Instantly I said, "I can't do this. She's gonna drive me nuts". After a few minutes of discussion, we were supposed to head to computers to start our exercise, analyzing a painting. I walked out the door. I went to find out if there were any openings in the Digital Representation paper. There was, which was really exciting, and then I looked at the time it is offered. Of course it conflicts with my schedule. All the fun papers conflict with my schedule. Somethin about being an architecture major. So this means I have to go back to class. Bummer. So I grabbed a computer not really knowing what I'm supposed to be doing because she's so hard to understand. Well I wasn't the only one. I'm also not the only one who doesn't want to be in that paper. The IA kids have to take it and couldn't believe I was taking it for fun. They were recommending a bunch of other papers to take, but I don't think they'll work out. Oh well. I'll suffer along with them, and in the end will know a lot of worthless crap.

So that iced chocolate thing I talked about a while ago...they're not any good anywhere else. The cafe at the Botanical Gardens is the only good one I've had. I have been very unimpressed and don't really want to order another one anywhere else. And there are these biscuits called afghan biscuits. I've seen them around a lot, and finally broke down and tried one today. I'm not really sure how I feel about them. It is a chocolate cookie with some icing and a walnut on top, but there is somethin crunchy inside, and I have no idea what it is. It was okay, but I wouldn't buy one again. I just looked up the recipe. The crunchy stuff is cornflakes. Weird. Speaking of food, there are these kebab places all over town. My first thought was meat on a stick. Not so much. It is meat in a big tortilla, and then its like subway. You get to put on whatever you want. It sort of reminds me of Chipotle because kebabs are huge. So we have been trying to get to this place called Abrakebabra...I love the name...cracks me up every time...but whenever we want it we can't seem to find it. But we made note of where it was the next time we saw it. So we finally ate dinner there tonight. They're not my new favorite food, but they're pretty darn good. I got lamb with some onions, carrots, lettuce, and garlic yogurt sauce. Lexie you'd be disappointed in me. I couldn't finish it, but I wanted to save room for a crepe. There's a tiny crepe stand across the street, and I had yet to have one. It was delicious.

Before dinner, there was an international student welcome party down at the Pipitea campus, which is downtown by Parliament. Anyways, they had free food and alcohol. That advertisement will get any college kid to come. But when Mary and I got there they were out of food, had lots of drinks left but no glasses. We made a beeline for the table when we saw they had some clean glasses. So I got some wine and juice and all was good, except for the food factor, but then people started coming in with random food. First was Dominos pizza. Speaking of, they have crazy pizza. BBQ sauce seems to be pretty popular, and its damn good. Then they brought in some sushi, sandwiches, and fruit kebabs. The fruit kebabs were real kebabs. Although its all international, Americans seem to take up the majority, and most of them are from my group, AustraLearn, so we knew a lot of people there.

Side note: Some of must look like Kiwis because we have been asked for directions too many times. Last night we were in a dairy to get some ice cream, and this man is walking by on the street, turns in, comes straight to me and sort of whispers, "I'm looking for this Irish Pub". I stopped him right away to tell him that we're not from here. So we all kind of laughed and he walked away. We laughed some more after he left. Anyways, I'm off to bed. Until next time...

Kia Ora,
Laura