Where in the World is Saura

Rock Garden, Hagley Park

I am officially done with studying until February, so…Woohoo! I felt relief that was almost equivalent to finishing the MCAT’s after these New Zealand university exams. They are held in a “standardized test” style where you go to a lecture hall and proctors give the exams instead of your teacher. And they are strict! I had to go to the bathroom during my first exam and I had to hand one woman my student ID and another physically escorted me to the bathroom, like we can’t be trusted! Over the two days, I wrote for three hours on each exam to the point where I thought my arm would fall off and we were actually expected to back up our arguments with cited sources. Thats pretty tough when you don’t even know what the questions are going to be, but its over and I’m pretty sure I passed.

The weather has been pretty nice lately. Its 21C and sunny right now (thats about 70F) and its just gorgeous. Al and I went to the botanic gardens this morning. It makes for a really great Sunday morning stroll. There’s always ducks around, the rhododendron are out in full bloom, and the roses are just getting ready to open. We found a new installation (the last photo in this group), the World Peace Bell. Its made from coins from countries all over the world that are melted down and made into these bells. Then they are sent to world capitals to support the beautiful ideal of world peace (just a side note: Christchurch is not the capital of NZ, but maybe it was put here as the capital of the South Island).

As we were crossing the Avon River going out of the park (it snakes it way throughout the central city and around the botanic gardens) we noted these huge blue and speckled trout in the water. Then we noticed a line of tubers making their way down the river. The picture is a little fuzzy, but you get the point. It looked really fun, what a great idea!

Well, I’ll sign off with that. Over the next few weeks I’ll be working on the house, getting it ready for Mom and Dad. It will be as close to Mona clean as I can get it! I’ve tackled the living room, now I just have the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, back bedroom, the yards…. Good thing I have 5-6 weeks.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 28th, 2006 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.