DAY 8: Wet Welly

Today! What a day!

We woke up early to get on the bus to Johnsonville, location of (spoiler alert) OUR NEW FLAT. Unfortunately, buses are spawn of the devil and we had to hike up and down hills in some truly dismal rain before knocking on the door of the wrong house. Oops. Eventually, we did meet up with Libby, our (spoiler alert) FUTURE ROOMMATE, who led us around the house.

I don't want to ruin the surprise, but Claire and I did agree to live there.

I'm not quite sure what to say about the house. It's about a half hour's bus ride from Wellington central (theoretically; that does not include the woe and anguish that comes from exiting a bus and having no idea where you are in the world), and it's in a cute little neighborhood near the supermarket and so on. Claire and I are sharing a pretty sizeable room (it was described as being large enough to be a "rumpus room," which delighted both of us until we realized that perhaps the phrase isn't as rare as we thought it was), which exits out onto a terrace. I'm not a hundred percent sure how many roommate we will have, as there are two other rooms in the house that are going to be rented out as well, but our room is on a separate level from the other rooms, and it gives us a decent amount of space all around. It's currently unfurnished, but I think someone else is moving out, and we might be getting some of their furniture. If not, there are nearby shops that sell and deliver affordable stuff.

Anyhow, we were pretty stoked about that. It feels a bit surreal to finally have a place to unpack our things. (In the middle of writing this, I had to pause to reaffirm with Claire that, yes, we Have A Place. We're currently in our LAST NIGHT IN A HOSTEL and tomorrow will be the last day in hopefully a while that we will wear shoes in the shower and write our names all over our groceries. Crazy!)

Libby offered us a ride back to town, which we happily accepted, and then, in a nice one-week parallel, we decided to catch a movie on the last day of the New Zealand Film Festival in Wellington. We ended up watching a series of French animated samples that ran the gamut from ridiculously HIGH ART EDGY PRETENTIOUS to pretty cool. There was one short in particular, by someone who may have been called Guillairme something or other called "Tyger" and it was captivating. Overall, it wasn't my favorite hour and a half ever, but it was certainly a film festival experience.

Because the weather was so dismal (the raindrops were so fat that each droplet felt like being slapped), we opted to catch another film festival movie, I Travel Because I Have To. It was preceded by a short called "This is Why I Travel" or something, which was this really really artsy chroma colored film that lasted about an eternity. I'm not sure what the effect is called, but the filmographer had filmed in three different color films and then overlapped the three in the super trippy final cut. It did not look at all like the movie that was advertised and that we had paid for, so I was absolutely convinced that this was going to end up being one of those social experiments where everyone knows something is wrong but no one says anything. While I was thinking about that, the music would keep coming to a soft decrescendo as if the film was going to end, and then it'd start up again. The entire thing became so absurd that I could not stop laughing. I was shaking with laughter while trees danced and swayed in triplicate primary colors, all Very Seriously. Eventually, after what felt like years, but what Claire tells me was about fifteen minutes, it came to a hazy close and the actual movie started. Anyhow, I Travel Because I Have To was certainly less EDGY LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME WHOA EDGY, instead, it was a first person travelogue with some really lovely photography. I think I was getting a bit artsy-ed out, so I started to zone out a bit during the long slow pans of rock formations. But it was nice!

Anyhow, afterwards, Derek texted me, and we decided to do dinner tomorrow at their "favorite place." Presumably we'll be eating at some ridiculously hip place on Cuba Street. Oh my god, you guys. How are they so awesome?

For dinner, Claire and I went to Sweet Mother's Kitchen, which both Ian and libby recommended. It's one of the many hipster cafe/restaurants on Courtney Place, and it's walls are papered with strange little knick-knacks. Oddly enough, the food was dixy themed, and I had a po' boy while Claire had some really tasty jerk chicken. It's unbelievably odd to have them in New Zealand, but I guess it shouldn't be any odder than Dixy Kitchen in Evanston.

But by that time, Claire and I were stuffed and the weather was still disgusting, so we trudged our way through the awful rain to come back to the hostel.

I would just like to mention now that one of our current hostel roommates is Irish, and as Claire was talking to her, Claire's vowels went haywire too. Kind of hilarious!

Tomorrow: we check out of the hostel for the last time, move into OUR NEW PLACE, then come back to town to do a little bit of job hunting etc, and then dinner with Derek and Lauren.

WE WILL SEE HOW IT GOES.