Kiwis are the avian equivalent of teddy bears

So on Tuesday we went to Willowbank, which is a native bird reserve and Maori cultural center. It was nice seeing some of the IES people I hadn;t seen in a while again. First off we had a Maori welcome, where this one guy in the group (which included us, a party of elder American tourists, and a Japanese rugby team) selected as our chief had to accept a peace offering from the tribe (who were quite effectively scary) and then we all went to this building with a stage where we saw the maori do a whole bunch of haka, including one where they had us join in which was basically the maori version of the hokey pokey. It was fun, if a little for the tourists. We ate lunch there, where we could pick the main dish and everything else was a buffet. I selected the salmon with sweet chili glaze on a bed of rice, which was quite good. After dinner this guy took us to the various native bird pens, where we saw white herons, moreporks, little owls (which are an introduced species), tuataras (although I didn't see any), giant snails, and other cool stuff. I was kinda sad that there weren't any keas out (those are the world's only alpine parrot, which apparently quite like destroying the tires and windshield wipers of the cars of unwary skiers), but oh well. The kiwis were off in a little enclosure of their own, which was dark (they don't like direct light, so we weren;t allowed to take pictures with flash of them). We did see a whole bunch of them tho, and they were quite adorable. In a memorable moment, we discovered that they were also keeping at least one giant eel in the enclosure as well, when it almost ran over one of the kiwis. There was also an enclosure which had a ferret in it, which made me quite happy, even if they are a destructive invasive species here. They also had a possum, which was quite adorable for such a pest.

Wednesday I went to a party to celebrate the release of the CD of one of my fellow IESers. It was dull, with no nonalcoholic drinks, altho they did have good puppy chow (the chocolate coated chex mix stuff). I eventually left to go back to my room.

Tonight was an introductory night for SAGA (the roleplaying club) where you could pick a short game. I ended up picking Settlers of Catan, mostly because I had never played it but I'd heard it was good. It was fun and my fellow players (all kiwis) were interesting people. The woman who brought the game was a talkative and outspoken ultraliberal foodie who spoke disparagingly of organized religion (specifically Protestant Christianity, although she did tell me all the things she disliked about Judaism once she learned I was a member of that particular religion), and asked me about Oregon, the American political system, and our gun control system (or lack of it, in her eye). Because I wasn';t paying as much attention on the game, I didn't do so well, but it was an amusing time. After the game was over, we hung around and chatted about random stuff for a couple of hours, which was fun and interesting. I think I learned a lot about New Zealand culture in those few hours than I had learned previously in my last few weeks. As I was heading home after one of my fellow game players decided she needed to go home, I happened upon some of my fellow IESers and hung out with them as they read horoscopes and watched the end of Jurassic Park. Then I came here.

So tommorow I hope to get a haircut (I know, I know), and then go to the Ellerslie flower show, because I'm missing the Wild Foods festival on the West Coast (because I didn't plan ahead for it) and so I want to do something every day this weekend to make myself not feel like a lazy bugger squandering my experience here in NZ by just staying in and cruising the internet. Anywhoo, I'll report back on what I end up doing this weekend, whatever it turns out to be.