a wonderful Thursday

Today was a great day! I had to say bye to my friend Hailey, who lives in California, and my friend Nick who lives here in New Zealand. Then, I went to brunch at a place called Shaky Isles with Njeri, Jo, and Flora. I got bruschetta which was grilled yummy bread with fresh avocado, tomato, coriander, crushed pepper and grilled halloumi (amazing delicious cheese). It was SO good, partly because all of the ingredients were so fresh and partly because it wasn’t usual International House food.

Then, we all went shopping for souvenirs for people. Jo and Njeri headed home, and Flora and I went on to Parnell (a really cute area of Auckland) where we did a bit more shopping and ended up walking back through the Auckland Domain. On the way, we saw tons of flowers, a bride and groom, random dolphin statues… It’s always fun walking through Parnell. We also saw a road with two trees with the road paved around them. Rather than cutting the trees down, the road people built the road around the trees, and it’s SO cool! New Zealand tries to stay as environmentally friendly as possible. (Notice also that the tree appears to have no leaves. There's these stubby sort of trees that I've seen in a couple of places around New Zealand. Not sure how they photosynthesize if they don't have leaves.)

Walking through the domain, we also took some cool pictures of the Sky Tower, because the sun was behind it in the sky. Also, it’s getting more and more noticeable that it’s fall (notice the changing leaf colors). We also found a bunch of geese in the domain. There’s so many birds there because everyone goes and feeds them.

It was SO nice to stop thinking about exams for a day!!
Also, my dive trip this weekend got cancelled because it’s going to be bad weather, and we can’t take the boat out in bad weather.