So last weekend, as one of my scholarship requirements, I flew to Wellington to participate in an Inbound Scholar Orientation. This was the in-country counterpart to the orientation I attended in Kansas City last year, and was a great chance for us New Zealand scholars to get to know each other a bit better, and to discuss some of the hurdles people have dealt with while settling in.
Wellington seems to be a great city, and I'm looking forward to returning with some free time. However, Rotary did make sure to give us some taste of the area - we toured the Parliament building, had a couple of great meals out, and our Sunday afternoon was left free. Many of us decided to spend our extra hours at Te Papa, an amazing museum with great Maori history, including a BEAUTIFUL modern marae, and tons of other great exhibits. In fact, when we were there, they had a traveling Monet exhibit that some people were quite excited to see. (The exhibit was on loan from the Boston Museum of Modern Art, so I'd actually seen it a couple of times already.)
All in all, it was another great weekend organized by Rotary, with great information and a few new friends. Although it might be good to have it a bit closer to the beginning of our stay ... at this stage, topics like "Finding Accommodation" seem a bit pointless. Oh, well ... there were a few Kiwi scholars headed outbound, and I'm sure they found it all quite useful!
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