New Zealand Study Abroad: Week 5 at Uni

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Monday – Friday, March 30 - April 2, 2010

At design studio on Tuesday, they had us do an egg drop competition since we already turned in our first projects and this was the only class we had before break. We got one egg, 4 pieces of large paper, and a meter of masking tape. Theres 80-100 kids in the studio (split up among 4 instructors) and we split into groups of 6. Our design shot down pretty fast whereas the other surviving eggs just had big parachutes and floated down slowly, only 6 groups had surviving eggs. The judges selected 2 winners based on egg surviving, design, and flare. We were one of the two winning groups and got Pineapple Lumps as the prize.

Egg Drop

Egg Drop Design

On Wednesday we watched “Mr. Vampire” in cinema class, an old cult classic I highly recommend.
On Thursday Raizel came over and we made french toast then ran a bunch of errands around town. I went to the camera warehouse and got four 2 GB memory cards for Easter break. Later Raizel came over again to make an apple pie with a friend from Malaysia who had never tried it before.

Pie

A bunch of classes were cancelled throughout the week, and Friday was a national holiday. Nicole and I walked to the Warehouse but it was closed and didn’t have holiday hours posted online. We stopped at Te Papa and looked at a few things, including the colossal squid and the natural disasters area.

Only Colossal Squid on public display in the world

One of the largest ammonites in the world

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Went to Weta with Nicole for the Gary Hunt sculpting demonstration. He’s worked on LOTR, King Kong, Narnia, and made several sculptures for Weta Collectables. After the talk and sculpting demonstration there were several young artists who were showing off their work to him. We stopped at Subway back in Wellington, went to Warehouse to get cheap clothes for the trip, then came back to Nexus and did laundry. Heather came over and we watched a few episodes of 30 Rock.

One of his miniatures

Gary Hunt and his sculpture of Gandalf

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Everyone is gone except Melissa, and Stefani and Nicole and I who are all leaving Monday morning. Theres only 6 people in the whole building right now. I set my alarm for 9 figuring that I would be up at 8 because of daylight savings. When I got up my computer said it was 7, my phone said it was 8, and my alarm said it was 9. The official time online said it was 7, so I reset all my electronics accordingly. At noon Nicole and I went to the bus stop and headed out to Weta. John Howe and Alan Lee are in New Zealand to work on concept art for The Hobbit. John Howe was at the Weta Cave for the release of his new book, “West of the Mountains, East of the Sea: the Map of Tolkien’s Beleriand.” The line wasn’t too long, but took forever since he was doing little drawings in the books he was signing. I got a postcard signed, and Nicole got a “Myth and Magic” book.

John Howe