Today we headed to the Wellington Museum of City & Sea. It was a small museum but one of the best we have seen. The used space as well; their stairwell was a three-story screen for short videos about New Zealand. I liked it better than Te Papa, though Te Papa was more varied. City & Sea was a history museum that dealt only with Wellington, whereas Te Papa was a combination history, art, and natural science museum.
After City & Sea we finished off Te Papa before wandering around town. We had thought about going to the Wellington Hurricanes’ rugby game that was happening that night, but we got an invitation to dinner instead. (The rugby game was heavily advertised and one of the taglines was, “Fiercer than blow-drying your eyeballs!”)
Back at A&M I met a guy who had been NZ for a summer (a shout out to you, Greg). When he found out I was headed to Oz/NZ he helped recommend some things and also told me about a family he stayed with while in NZ, and that’s how we ended up on their doorstep. To get there, however, we left downtown Wellington and climbed up the hills into the suburb of Khandellah. (The street names are all Indian-themed.) Driving up was like riding a bucking bronco with the ups, downs, twists, and turns. In the end we were rewarded with a great view looking to the south and over downtown Wellington. We were treated to a great dinner of lamb, kumara (a sweet potato), pumpkin, and some sort of greens that I couldn’t identify but were delicious. We ate well. We had seen paplova on menus in NZ and we ended up having it for dessert; it turned out to be similar to a meringue. The primary topic of the night was rugby since that is what had brought Greg into their home and it was a household obsession. I got the rugby basics just as I had gotten the cricket basics several weeks before. The background was perfect because from their porch you could see the “Cake Tin” where the Hurricanes played and with binoculars you could watch the big screen. NZ’s national symbol is the silver fern. I read something that said the debate came down to the silver fern and the kiwi, and the Maori members of the national rugby team (that later became the All Blacks) voted against the silver fermn because it “does not fly, only comes out at night, and we eat them,” which isn’t the message they wanted to convey. The All Blacks’ name comes from a typo; a British paper said that they played like they were “all backs” (as in the position) but an “l” slipped it and it became All Blacks.
[Interjection: I’m writing this while we drive to Christchurch. We stopped and I walked by a car with the most hideous interior I’ve seen. The seats looked like they were upholstered in brown shag and the trim was the color of sallow skin.]
It seems that almost all private schools here wear uniforms. We have seen kids in all sorts of uniforms, but most look like they haven’t changed much from British boarding schools in the 1950’s – lots of argyle and plaid. What we call high school they call college. (University is what you go to after college.)
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