After winter, the trees are 're-leaved'.

 Another busy week. The rain actually eased off enough on Saturday for a group of us (pictured left) to make a trip to Wellington's famous Botanical Gardens; turns out they're only a 15 minute walk from where I live. The plant life was beautiful and bursting with colour (I imagine it will be even better in about a months time) and there was a fantastic climbing tree which we made full use of. To continue on our childlike theme we spent the evening watching Disney movies from the library whilst eating the flapjack I had made in order to show the Americans what true flapjacks are (not pancakes).

 On Tuesday I attended a much more mature gathering at GNS (Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences) where a group of us from my geology class learnt about what they do there and their job opportunities. Although the jobs weren't so useful, given that I'm leaving in 9 months, it prompted me to think about my future and the scary world of work for which I currently have no plans. It also opened my eyes to the vast amount of geology there is to study here, we don't find quite so many active tectonic plate boundaries slicing through the UK. Don't worry though, this won't stop me from coming home!
Back to play: Thursday night was Jamie's (American) birthday party which was great fun. Then on Friday night, after having dinner at Ricarda's a group of us ventured down to Meow where a jazz band was playing 1930s music which was tremendous fun to dance to; despite my complete lack of coordination I had a fantastic time.

Last night I met up with the South Island crew to get Korean food which Lisa was craving (she is South  Korean). Due to it being a Sunday all the Korean places in town were closed but we found a very tasty Thai restaurant instead. Whilst munching my way through chicken satay we discussed plans for a North Island trip and I realised that sadly it didn't make sense for me to join them as they will be cramming what I hope to experience over the 3 and a half months of summer in to 5 days. So I'm now looking into other short breaks to go on before the majority of the internationals head home in November.
Can't quite believe most of my friends' travels are coming to an end; I still have three quarters of a year full of new and exciting experiences to come!