day 1 in Wellington

Today I wandered through part of Wellington. There are tons of cool shops and walkways and cafes and such. I must come back at some point to explore these further. # 1 on my agenda was visiting the parliament buildings. I did the 1 hour tour plus intro with a fairly large group, and was befriended by a super friendly Austrian who now lives on the north Island and who invited me to come visit him when I'm up there. I didn't take his address to take him up on his offer. The Parliament buildings are located right next to this funny looking building called the "Beehive"" which hosts many of the office buildings of the cabinet ministers. New Zealand was the first country to give the women the vote back in the late 1800s. They're working on woman PM #2, and also have a woman speaker and GG and about 1/3 of their parliamentarians are women... Neat, compared to Canada. They abolished their senate in 1951 and have recently (not sure of the details) adopted a form of proportional representation. I'll have to look more into this to find out the details. We visited the actual floor of the house, which doesn't look that different from Saskatchewans. I wonder if they hekkle as much?? We also sat in one of the something or other committee rooms and I had the good fortune to pick to sit on the government side of the house. It is interesting, learning a bit of another country's politics and political history.

I also visited the LOTR exhibit at Te Papa. It was really surreal, almost. Before I departed Canada I had begun to watch some of the extended versions behind the scenes. Today I saw things like the mithril, Aragorn's coronation crown, Sauroman's armour, many behind the scene early sketches of what things would look like, the shards, Andruin?? or whatever the reforged sword was called, and various other LOTR stuff including some of the models of some of the places. It was neat- they also had commentary from Peter Jackson and others on the making of the film. They had a demo, for example, on how they made actors look big and small. They also had some of the detail on the programming (called Massive) that was used in the battle scenes- and they commented that early on some of the soldiers started running away. They hadn't anticipated that! They put so much detail into the making of all of the props and such. I found out that Hans Jensen in Nelson who made the ring (or the various rings, since there were many scales used) passed away shortly after completing the project. One of the things they mentioned was that the actor who played Boromir's father was surprised to find a crest or something on the inside of his garment- even though it would not be visible in filming. They believed it would make him seem more like a king. Another interesting tidbit- Viggo, aka Aragorn actually became so close to his horse that he purchased him upon completion of the film. I have SO very much respect for the folks behind the scenes in creating something as amazing as LOTR. There was also a surprisingly lifelike deceased Boromir lying in a boat. Very very interesting. No photos allowed, but worth the trip to Wellington- if only to get a sense of all of the background that went into making LOTR what it is.

I'm not sure of my overall feel of Wellington. Sometimes you know instantly you love a place, and sometimes it takes time to grow on you. I loved Devonport in Auckland. So far I just like Wellington. There is so much culture here though- in terms of theatre and opera and such- I may just have to think about coming back for a short term work stint to get to know the place a bit better. (I did see my first kiwi bird today- albeit stuffed - in te papa).

I'm super duper tired from getting up so early and from walking around and I'm looking forward to a good sleep tonight. But first I'm going to go rustle up some supper and perhaps check out a bookstore that is open until 10.