We left Wellington this morning. We spent three days with our friends Poppy and Jamie. We had a great time.
On Tuesday, we got to Wellington. It was pouring rain! We decided to go to Te Papa. Its the national museum. That kept us busy the whole day. Its a really good museum.
On Wednesday, we went to visit Poppy's school (she's a teacher). It was very interesting to see a New Zealand high school. High school here goes from year nine through year thirteen, which is the equivalent of our grades 8 through 12. The kids were not so very different than the kids you see in an American high school. The whole atmosphere was so much more relaxed, though. The day starts with a staff meeting at 8:30. The first class is at 9. Each class is an hour long. There is a 20 minute break from 10 to 10:20. Everyone gets lunch from 12:20 to 1:20. The day ends at 3:20. Everyone seemed a lot less stressed than at an American school. We visited 2 math classes of different levels and then we visited Poppy's digital art class. We got a chance to talk to the kids about the differences between the American schools and NZ schools. It was really cool.
After spending the morning at the school, we went to Mt. Victoria to see some more Lord of the Rings filming sites. It took us a while to match the spot described in our book to the actual location, but we found it in the end and then we took lots of pictures. After that we went to the summit to watch the sunset.
On our last day, I don't even know what we did. Just kind of relaxed and didn't do much of anything. We kidnapped Jamie from work and had lunch with him. Then we watched the Fellowship of the Ring (the first LOTR movie) in the afternoon. After looking at so many of the filming sites, we had to watch one of the movies! Then we went out to dinner with Poppy. She took us to an amazing Malaysian place called Satay Village. We went out for ice cream afterwards at our new favorite ice cream place, Kaffee Eis. It is even better than Movenpick (our favorite from Auckland)! NZ has amazing ice cream.
This morning we woke up early, said our goodbyes, and boarded the ferry for the South Island. We are really excited to see what the South Island holds.
More pictures: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=27412&l=66ec5&id=813269869
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