After an early wake up call, I began my first full day in Wellington. The first part of the day was spent on a walking tour of the campus followed by a orientation session. Once on the walking tour, we all began to realize just how good of calves we are all going to have after leaving this trip. Wellington is COVERED in hills. You have to understand, I am from Texas where the hills here would be considered treacherous mountains. The classrooms are a good 10-15 minute walk from the dorms up a very, very steep hill. Fortunately, the incline includes the benefit of an amazing view like this one:
Also, the main room of the student commons at this university looks suspiciously like the CULC. Its kind of creepy actually.
After all that, we were released for another unscheduled afternoon to do whatever we wanted. Unsurprisingly, there was a pretty general consensus of how the group wanted to spend the afternoon. The beach. It took us probably 30 minutes to walk to the beach but the weather was perfect and the scenery incredible. And even with about a zillion warnings of how much stronger the sun is here and several applications of sunscreen, I still managed to completely burn my back the second day here. They were not kidding about that whole hole-in-the-ozone thing, I guess.