Canterbury Museum

So Saturday I went to the Canterbury Museum in downtown Christchurch. It's a free museum that I had noticed on the walk around Christchurch, and I wanted to explore it in more depth. It turned out to be a fun way to spend an afternoon. First off, there was an exhibit about the moa, New Zealand's ancient giant flightless bird that was hunted to extinction by the early Maori, as well as a few artifacts from the original Maori inhabitants. The next room involved more advanced Maori art and artifacts, as well as Maori interaction with white explorers and settlers. There was an interesting sidebar about the Moriori, the native people of the Chatham Islands, a part of New Zealand a ways away from the main two islands, who were related to but different from the Maori. After that I seemed to have gotten to the end of the exhibit by accident somehow, as I ended up in a section about New Zealand in the 19th and 20th centuries. I ended up working my way back through to the Maori section. There were a lot of kids with their parents in the museum, and there were quite a few things for them: I especially liked the old 19th century bicycle (one of those ridiculous ones with the tiny back wheel and giant front wheel) which you could get on: I wanted to go on myself, but there always seemed to be a kid, and plus I worried that it might not have supported my weight.

The second level of the museum had stuff on more than just New Zealand. There was a picture gallery of Pacific Islanders from throughout Polynesia, an exhibit on the Antartic and Antartic exploration (by the way, apparently UC is one of the few places in the world to specialize in Antartic research), a mummy (no, I'm not really sure why), a gallery of birds (including New Zealand birs like the kiwi, the tui, the kakapo, and the kea), an Asian art gallery (which was cool), and a gallery focusing on the challenges to New Zealand right now (i.e. invasive species, like how. The reason why New Zealand can resemble England sometimes is because so very very many English plants, animals, and the like came over with the English). All in all it was quite a fun gallery.

I wish I had someone to show Christchurch off to. I think I'm beginning to grasp the structure of the downtown, and it really is a beautiful city to see

Anywho, today is my first day of classes. I hope they go well, and I shall report back.

David Lev