Sunday 1-24-10
The alarm went off at 8:30, so we got up and got ready for Church. Then we went down the stairs. We still don’t trust the elevator. We walked to a bakery and I got cheese bread with bacon (ham bits) on flaky bread. It was quite tasty. Then we walked around for a while until 20 till 10:00. Church started at 10:00, but we got restless. It was a Wesley Church and had lightly cushioned pews and a pipe organ (which was practicing when we entered). We were greeted with first time packs of information, then we sat down. It was a small church (less than 40 people). The pastor was a cute old man who kind of stuttered.
We sang hymns we never heard of and everyone sat and stood in unison. Alison and I had no idea when to sit or stand, so we always had our feet on the ready for songs, scripture, choral reading…
It probably was an hour or less, but when it ended, the guy behind us asked where we were from and where we were staying. I gave him a brief summary of our situation. He was so nice and tried to help us out. He said a guy ran a Christian hostel, but wasn’t there then. He asked about my work. He told me that Wellington would be harder to greet a teaching job, because people don’t travel much here. He said Christchurch and Auckland would be better. He also said this was the worst summer in 50 years. It was so bad, that the weather is all people seem to talk about. It is just cold and raining all the time…not that we were at all surprised.
This man, Desmund, told us that we could come to the church office and talk to him if we needed any help. He was so sweet and it made us feel a little better about Wellington, although I don’t think anything could make us feel like we could actually like Wellington…
We went back to the room and changed (walking the 6 flights of stairs to avoid the elevator). Then we checked on ferry times. We were keeping our options open, but were actually waiting for a call from the person who is helping me with the jobs to see if she has any suggestions. She probably won’t call until tomorrow though.
So we walked to the Botanical gardens, through the cemetery, rose garden, duck pond, and other areas (all uphill). So…nothing in New Zealand if flat. Auckland was even worse than Wellington in terms of how many hills there are. It seems that everything here is vertical. This Botanical Garden was the pretty part of Wellington. The rose garden was our favorite. There were 140 or something species of roses and it smelled wonderful.
Then we went to St. Pauls. This is not used by a Church, but is more like a museum. There were stained glass windows, and it was pretty. Then we went to Kelburn Park. You have to go uphill like crazy, then go down these really steep steps. We walked through quickly, then went up the stairs, then down the hill to the city. It was sad that we could tell we were getting really close to the city when we saw glass shards of beer bottles on the ground.
We walked to Cuba Mall (a major shopping area) and went to the Friendly Café for a treat. As we ate and started to write in our journals, we realized we have pretty much done all the touristy things in Wellington. We thought of other things we could do while we were there. It was before 4:00, and Friendly’s Café kicked us out…not very surprising, but it was ironic that the name of the café seemed to be opposite of our treatment. It just added to our dislike of the city.
So...we couldn’t stay at Friendlys, it was too cold outside, it was to expensive to sit anywhere else, so we went back to our room. Our door is ridiculous, too. You have to slam your body against it several times to get it shut and it always gets stuck.
We stayed in the hostel for a while trying to figure out what to do. We eventually set out to find a place to eat. We tried to find a particular crepe place, but we walked up and down the street trying to find it and never did. We did find a Cathedral that had the Notre Dame structure. We got tired of looking, so we decided to settle for Subway. Well, it was almost 9:00 and they had already closed the doors. So we walked all the way back to find a grocery store…of course all the crazies were out, so we were trying to hurry along.
We found a store and bought bread (that was quite expensive) and yogurt. Then we ran back to the room and made peanut butter sandwiches. Then we decided to take a shower. I kept dropping my soap and it would shatter into millions of tiny pieces. Then Alison asked if I had the key. Of course I didn’t, so she was trying to toss it to me. It took us three tries, but it eventually came to me and I was able to get into our room.
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