Wellington

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I was excited for the NZ portion of this semester but I knew that it wouldn’t even compare to the amazing 10-day break. When we stepped off the plane it was obvious that we weren’t on the South Island anymore. The spectacular mountain backdrop was gone and the airport was bustling with people. Wellington is the capitol of NZ so it is one of the biggest cities. It also happens to be the location for the world premiere for The Hobbit in a couple weeks. The airport and city was full of Lord of the Rings propaganda and extravagant displays to promote the premiere.

I like the structure of this NZ field trip because it’s a lot more relaxed than the other four week-long field trips that we went on during the semester. We usually have a few hours of activities planned for the morning then come back with free time before and after dinner with maybe a lecture thrown in there.

The first day we went to the Te Papa museum to learn about the history of Wellington and NZ. Our final paper for this class compares aspects of sustainability in The States, Australia, and NZ so we had to take some notes even though we were free to explore the museum on our own.

At night we had free time for whatever we wanted to do. My 4 girlfriends and I decided to keep the 90’s rom-com theme going and watched 10 Things I Hate About You. Since it’s pretty cold in NZ and we have to get up every morning at an earlier than desirable time, our typical night includes lots of goofing around and watching a girly movie before bed instead of checking out the nightlife.

The next day we went to the West Wind power plant to learn about alternative energy. The weather was really nice and we had some great views on our walk through the wind farm! There were so many sheep that it became pretty obvious how NZ has way more sheep than people.

Another really cool part of this day was that it was during a lunar eclipse! A lunar eclipse is when the moon lines up directly between the sun and the Earth, blocking the sun. This happens very rarely and you can only see it from certain parts of the world so we were really lucky! Since the sun is way bigger than the moon, it doesn’t go black or anything but the light shines a little big more dimly and shadows are totally skewed. We poked holes in paper with pins, held them up to the light, and saw the shadow from the moon. On a normal day you’d expect to see a circle of light shining through the hole, right? We saw a crescent of light instead because the moon was blocking the sun. If we had better technology and timed it just right then we would have seen an outside ring of light with a dark center where the moon is. We coincidentally ran into some kids that had special glasses to look directly at the sun without hurting your eyes. When I looked I could clearly see the crescent of light from the sun and the dark outline of the moon that was blocking most of the sun…so cool.

We spent another day at Victorian University hearing from a couple speakers about energy sources in NZ and then packed up our messy room for the next stop on our road trip: Tongariro National Park.

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Photos

The Hobbit
This huge display of Gollum was in the airport to promote the premiere of The Hobbit in a couple weeks

Lunar eclipse
Alexa is holding a piece of paper in front that has a pin hole in it and another piece of paper in back to see the light. Since it's a lunar eclipse there is only a crescent of light that shines through the hole

Girls at the Wind Farm
Sarah, Bird, Leah, me, Alexa and Melissa

Lunar eclipse shadows
See how the shadows are a crescent instead of a full circle

Whaaaaaaaaat
EW! Not exactly sure what this thing is but it's so huge and disgusting!!!! Not to worry though, it's an herbivore