Regular weekend

People have been asking me for more pictures, so I took my camera along on this typical weekend while running errands, going to church, etc. Life here isn't really that much different than it was in Spokane, but the scenery is nicer!


Here's the large farmers' market, conveniently located across the street from my flat. I was hoping it would be more like the farmers' markets in Portland, where they sold things like goat cheese and homemade bread along with the fruits and veggies. But no, this one is basically just fruits and veggies, with some fish too. I'm not complaining though--the prices are great and the produce is nice and fresh!



This is what they call a "dairy" here, as in, "I'm going to the dairy to get some chippies [potato chips], anyone else want anything?" It's one of those terms I'm having a hard time adjusting to, since to me, a dairy is a place to milk cows, not a place to buy candy bars and magazines. But anyway, I dropped by the local dairy to top up my Snapper card (the card I use to pay bus fare).



And next I stopped by the library. Even with a Kindle, I haven't been able to kick the library habit.


I walked past the creche, AKA "day care" or "pre-school." I think this is another funny term, because in Spokane my stake had a "creche exhibit" every Christmas, where a bunch of people brought their personal Nativity scenes and they were all set up in the cultural hall. The exhibit was open to the public and they had local choirs perform music...it was all very nice. So when I hear the word "creche," that's what I think of. At church here, when they announced a Relief Society activity and said that a creche would be provided, it took me a long time to figure out they were talking about a nursery!


Cool-looking pedestrian bridge over the motorway.


An example of gas prices here. It looks cheap until you realize it's in dollars per litre, not dollars per gallon. So we're actually paying about $7/gallon. At least, the people who have cars and buy gas are paying that much. I probably shouldn't include myself in their misfortunes.


Now I'm on my way to the Mount Victoria neighborhood to do some grocery shopping at the large supermarket they have there. Wellington reminds me a lot of San Francisco, and Mount Vic is a good example!


My own neighborhood has some smaller, more expensive grocery stores and lots of pricey ethnic stores, so I usually make a trip out here to the supermarket for bulk shopping. It's only about a 20-minute walk from my flat. Plus there are taxis waiting here all the time, in case I want to buy more than I can comfortably carry back home.


There was supposed to be a HUGE storm today. My coworkers had been talking about it for days, how they were planning to rent some DVDs on Friday so they could just hunker down for the weekend during the huge storm. Looks terrible, doesn't it? Predicting the weather here is completely impossible! I know the weatherpeople are hardly ever right anyway, but at least with a continental weather pattern, you can look at what's happening a few hours west of you and know approximately what weather to expect the next day. If Seattle is getting a huge storm today, odds are it's going to snow in Spokane tomorrow. Right? But on an island, even a big one like New Zealand, the wind is usually blowing in three directions at once, and the weather patterns are completely dependent on things like ocean currents, which apparently can't be predicted at all. And especially here in Wellington, at the tip of the island and right at the mouth of the Cook Strait, I don't know why they even bother trying to predict weather. It's never, ever right.


Just look at all those empty benches and the empty beach! Normally this place is packed on nice weekends. Everyone must be inside waiting for the big storm. Admittedly it is windy, but it's always windy here. They don't call it Windy Wellington for nothing. (And those of you who grew up in southeast Idaho like I did would feel right at home with the wind here.)


So I got some ice cream and sat on a bench to enjoy the sun and read one of my new library books.



The Oriental Bay neighborhood, as seen from the harbour.


More Victorians. I think they're pretty.


This thing sits on one of the street corners. I have no idea what it is. Every time I have to walk under it, I wonder if it's going to start shooting at me.


And finally, I stopped at the local electronics store. (That poor lady is probably wondering why I'm taking her picture.) I bought a DVD player here a few weeks ago; I had been pricing some of the name-brand DVD players, but I got talked into buying a cheaper store brand. Two weeks later, it had stopped working. (Shocker, right?) I took it back here to exchange it or, even better, get store credit to buy a better quality one. But instead, they took it and told me they were going to fix it. I only paid $35 for this player in the first place, and while it would have been nice if it had worked, it didn't seem like it was worth fixing--at least not from my American throw-it-out-and-get-a-new-one perspective. But I let them take it and try to fix it, and two weeks later they called and told me it was working again. So I dropped by today, picked it up, took it home, plugged it in, and...it doesn't work.


I'm SO glad I don't have to climb that hill to get home anymore!


Here's my neighborhood. I was going to post a picture of my actual building but then had second thoughts. It's not like I'm militantly safety-conscious, but publishing my address on my non-private blog just seems like a bad idea.



Moving on to Sunday...

This is Callie and Adam, who ride the same bus to church that I do. And they're also from Washington. All the Americans in my ward who aren't from Utah are from Washington, which seems rather coincidental. I'm the only one from Spokane (for now), but there are others from Moses Lake, Tri-Cities, and the Seattle/Puyallup/Federal Way area.

Here's my church building. And if you're wondering if those clouds mean that the storm finally arrived...it didn't. It just sprinkled in the morning.


Choir practice in the Primary room. Some things are universal.