It's May Already?!

   Once again, I’ve had a busy weekend. I love keeping busy, and I love getting out in the city and experiencing it.

   Friday night was Stafford House’s Ball, which was Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy themed. It was so much fun! It was a formal event, so I got all dolled up. It’s been a while! It looks like I still know how though!

"I don't know what to do."

"This is what the models do right?"

   I walked down to the bottom of the cable car, which is only about 10 minutes from my flat. The ball was being held at Carter Observatory, at the top of the cable car, so our tickets to the ball permitted us to ride up to the top for free! I’ve never taken the cable car at night, and it was so amazing to climb up up up and see the city lights appear. Wellington is just as beautiful at night as it is during the day!

   Our tickets also allowed us one free Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blaster, or in human terms beer or wine. I’m lovin’ all the free drinks I’m getting here! I got my free wine and wandered around the observatory a bit. I haven’t been there yet, and I love space, so it was neat.

My building manager Caron! Love her!

   We got to see one of the planetarium shows which took us on a tour of the galaxy. I am always dumbfounded by that sort of thing! I probably wasn’t supposed to take photos, but of course I did! I got some pretty awesome shots!

The planetarium show. So cool!

Speeding through the universe!

   I stayed at the observatory for a while, exploring and mingling. When I had had enough, I took the cable car back down. This was also really weird, ‘cause I’ve only ridden up in the cable car. I’d much rather walk down the hill than up it!

   Overall, the night was so much fun. I loved getting all dressed up, and I loved everything at the observatory. I’m so glad my apartment building has fun events like this!

   Saturday, Hallie and I spent the day exploring. We tried to go to the old government building, the largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere, but it was closed! Bummer! So we just moved onto our next plan for the day, which was the underground market. The first Saturday of every month, Wellington has a market with a different theme in an underground parking garage. There are so many talented local vendors, and I’m impressed each and every time I go there. This month’s theme was wool, but there were a lot of other things there too. I splurged and bought myself this fabulous pounamu (jade) necklace. They are all over the place here! I’ve been wanting one for so long, and I finally found the perfect one. I also found this incredible artist and I couldn’t pass up his work!

Shut. Up.

My lovely greenstone necklace! I'm a real tourist now!

   After the underground market, we headed up to Cuba Street and Courtenay Place. They’re both streets with a lot of cool shops. We went to another market, the Mighty Mighty Market. It’s held in the Mighty Mighty Bar, hence the name, and also has a lot of local vendors. It’s every Saturday, so I go quite a bit! It’s where I got my latest nalgene sticker.

Holla!

   Unfortunately (or I guess fortunately so I didn’t spend more money!), there was nothing good there this week. Oh well.

   Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day, and Hallie and I had talked about going swimming. I hadn’t been swimming at the waterfront downtown, and it was definitely on my to do list. Since it’s getting colder here and it’s almost winter, I figured this was my only chance! We headed back to the flat, got our togs on, and walked back down to the waterfront. There’s a high dive platform smack in the middle of downtown, and also a plank off the pier. I walked the plank, and after some convincing (from myself and the massive audience that had gathered) I jumped! Or, rather, I slid off the plank. The ocean was FREEZING! It was such a shock! It felt amazing though, and I’m so glad I did it.

So much hesitation. 

But I finally did it!

   Later in the evening, Hallie, Paul, and I went ice skating on the waterfront. That makes 3 walks down to the waterfront in one day! Anyways, they have an ice rink set up near the waterfront. It was strange to be ice skating when it was warm out! It was a lot of fun, and it made me miss ice skating on Pushaw!

The rink was so busy!

   May 5^th is apparently the International Day of Dance, unbeknownst to me. Wellington was celebrating at the Te Papa museum, so I headed down there for the day. There were workshops all day ending in a big multicultural performance. I participated in jazz, hip hop, Samoan sasa, and Maori contemporary dance workshops. What a workout!

   The jazz workshop was slow paced, so a good introduction. Hip hop was fast and really pop-and-lock-y. It was difficult, but so much fun! The Samoan sasa was performed mainly seated, which is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It was still exhausting even though we were sitting! The Maori contemporary was definitely my favorite. We danced with sticks, which is sacred for the Maoris and they treat the sticks as they would treat their ancestors. Everyone in the group received their stick (which I don’t know the Maori name for) and the instructor began to show us some moves. However, he did it with no words! The whole workshop was silent. He taught us by showing us what to do, and then pointing out when we did something wrong and showing us how to fix it. It was SO SO cool. I liked it a lot. I think it took some people a while to understand what was happening, and how to mimic the instructor, but at the end of the session we were all totally on the same page, even though we hadn’t spoken at all. At the end, we played Tanemahuta Says, the Maori version of Simon Says. I was one of the last people standing! Go me! It was so much fun.

Learning hip hop from the best! I had to keep hopping out of the group to take photos.

The best part of the sasa.
Checking our hair and makeup after the Wellington wind blew us over!

Maori contemporary. My favorite!

THE COOLEST PICTURE I'VE EVER TAKEN.
Groups of dancers spinning around!

   At the end of the day, I watched the multicultural dance performance, which included: Sasa, Polish, Integrated Dance, classical Indian, Israeli folk, Kapa Haka, Indonesian, Rwandan, Highlands, and South American batucada.

The Samoan sasa.

The Polish dance troupe.

Integrated Dance was a group of dancers who all had disabilities.
I had to struggle to not cry at how amazing their piece was. 

Lovely classical Indian.

Israeli folk. Not what I was expecting!

Kapa Haka was a group of young dancers performing traditional Maori dance.

Fantastic Indonesian dancers.

Dancers from Rwanda.

The young Highlanders. So cute!

South American batucada was a super high energy mix of a percussion band and dancers.

Everyone was on their feet by the end of it!

   My day at Te Papa was seriously amazing, and I’m so thrilled that I went. I’m not much of a dancer, and I still had a great time! My weekend in general was amazing. I love Wellington more and more every day!