Wellington on my own

So today, I went into Wellington on my own (I was supposed go Monday, but didn't feel like it). I met with someone in the Geography dept. at Victoria University and talked about grad school...and it actually sounds really cool...like there are lots of field trips to cool place (i.e. the south island)...and a lot of stuff in NZ hasn't actually been studied yet, so it's really easy to get funded by the council to do a project (which is what I would be doing the whole second year of school if i went there). But, it all sounded really cool and the guy I talked to was even the Coastal geographer in the dept. - saa-weet! But don't get too sad yet, i prob. wouldn't be staring for like a year....well i could start 2nd semester this year which would be in July, but that might be a little too soon for me hehe :)

Anyway...I also went to the Te Papa museum which as all sorts of stuff about NZ culture/history and also like sciencey stuff...i didn't take a very in depth look today because I want to go there with my parents when they come visit (yay!)...but here are a few things i thought were cool...(oh yea...i took all these pics with my phone because my camera is somewhere in the mail hopefully getting fixed soon....)

Here is a giant squid...it's kinda hard to tell in the pic, but it was actually pretty gross looking and pretty big...i didn't really pay attention to where they found it, but i did learn it has a very sharp beak i would not like to be bitten by and sharp claws on the ends of its tentacles that can swivel around 360 degrees! AH!

They had this cool map...well...as you can see, there was this big light up map of NZ on the floor...and it's made up of all aerial photographs! it was really cool to look at and like see places I've been. that would be so cool to have as a floor in your house....

They also had an exhibit on impressionist paintings which i, of course, had a look at. There was a lot of Monet...here is a quick snapshot of his waterlilies...i don't think you were supposed to take pictures....but, it was cool and i enjoyed it! (Liz-they had some of the same paintings we saw in Chicago!!)

Here is outside the museum looking towards part of the city. It was a gorgeous day out!

And here is another view. Wellington can be very nice, but it's known to be really windy...last week when Steph and I were there it was real windy and cold, but today was warm and sunny...still a little windy, but not too bad.


anyways...hope all is well back home :)