Around town

This is the our view of the bay at night.  Isn't it pretty?  You can see the lighted trees and the lights going up the steep hills behind them.  In this one, you can even see the moon and the side of John's face.

I still have trouble keeping my mind around what month it is, since the seasons are opposite our usual.  So September brings the beginning of spring here, but it's most like our March with crazy mixtures of winter and spring weather.  On Tuesday, for example, we had sun, then rain, then hail with ice that covered the streets, then thunder and lightning with more rain, then sun again.  Very confusing.

Last week John played basketball in Newtown with the grey panthers, and I went out with a new friend to a lovely waterfront cafe called Maranui, where you could see airplanes land and parasailors and boats and surfers as you drank your "flat white" (latte).  On Friday we stayed at home and watched the All-Blacks (NZ national all-star rugby team) play Japan as a part of the Rugby World Cup.  Yes, the Kiwi basketball team IS called the Tall Blacks.  But really, it's all rugby all the time now with 48 international teams in the tournament.  We are enjoying the cross-cultural hospitality and trash-talking, so we've been trying to learn the difference between a maul and a ruck and have been working on our scrum in preparation for seeing the Aussie Wallabies trash the US Eagles next Friday.  We were so engrossed in Friday's game that we totally missed the small earthquake that a number of more attentive people in Wellington felt.  I looked at a website which indicated there have been 30 earthquakes (mostly imperceptible) in NZ since Sept. 5.

Saturday morning dawned sunny and fine, and we walked downtown to the post office (This is a picture of the soup kitchen across from the post office called  the Compassion Center, and I included it just because I think it is cool.), then over to the Friends Center to get our hands in the dirt by helping weed the vegetable garden.  There were still some potatoes and garlic in there, along with a withered passionfruit, but everything else had to go in preparation for spring planting.  We were rewarded for our trouble by gaining a few mandarin oranges from one of the trees.  We have noticed that there are fig and olive trees along the streets, and have heard that people pick as they go. We have already benefited from snatching a few sprigs of lavender from bushes that grow around town to make Paul's delicious honey-lavender chicken.  Still garden-inspired after the harvest, we rode the bus through Thorndon, where the average Joe can walk in and watch the mechanics of Parliament on a week day, then through the Karori hills to a plant and bird sanctuary called the Otari-Wilton Bush where we wandered around in the primeval forest (ferns, huge trees) and amongst the beds of native plants.

Here I am at the entrance to the bush walk.  Atop the entryway is the face of the Maori god who is  guardian of the forest.

 Coming back to town on the bus, we met a woman who had just moved back to Wellington after 45 years in the U.S., mostly spent working at Columbia in NY. She said she thought Wellington was a better place to grow old and encouraged us to visit "the mainland," by which she meant the South Island.  Since it was still so sunny and warm, we got an ice cream cone and did a little people-watching.  There was a naked baby running up and downthe beach and a Muslim family wearing amazingly beautiful garments, along with the usual assortment of seagulls, skateboarders, runners, and children on scooters.  Kiwis in general seem very fit.

  Later in the evening we walked down to the "fanzone" to see who was watching rugby on the big screen outdoor TV's past Hell's Pizza (their pizza combinations are all named after sins like Anger, Greed, and Lust) and the interactive NZ in film trailer where you can view clips from NZ film history.  Had dinner at a lively Malaysian restaurant called Monsoon Poon (no kidding).

Yesterday there was a carry-in at meeting, and there were interfaith visitors who had come to meeting for worship prepared to make brief presentations on their own faith communities after lunch.  Later in the afternoon, John and I decided to make a concession to rain and homesickness for hearing someone "talk Southern" by going to see "The Help."  Our new friends Michael and Ronis (Australians) came over for dinner, and we talked about movies and our national stories and struggles.  I read the newspaper avidly and find people to be generally pretty insightful and well-informed.  One Irish wag asked if the U.S. would be invading Ireland if they didn't win their rugby game with Ireland (they didn't, but they did beat the Russians).  Sigh. Some ask us questions about U.S. policy I wish we had better answers for.