Sunburned

It's only been two days here. I arrived Monday afternoon, and it's only Wednesday afternoon and I feel like I've been here forever. Wellington is wonderful city. There is art everywhere, interactive sculptures and fountains everywhere. The landscape is stunning and everywhere you go you see lush green mountains or the ocean. The city is incredibly clean and "green" with all it's cable cars, metros, and taxis running on environmental friendly energy. Even their usage of power and water is limited, all the plugs have switches for when you want electricity to flow and the toilets have two different flushes - you decide how much water you're going to use for your flush. Also, since it's small almost everything is easy accessible by walking. The only area where it gets difficult happens to be right in my neck of the woods, where everything is a steep uphill climb.

I always feel like there are things I want to say about the city but when I actually sit down I can never remember what I wanted to say. I'm having a wonderful time and it's hard to imagine leaving a place so beautiful as this.

I've just spent the majority of my day basking in the sun. Lars and I went and bought a phone for me and then together we met up with Stephen, Morgan and two other Americans to take the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens.
Today was perfect. It was sunny and warm, but cool enough that I was wearing pants and ended up wearing a jacket walking home. We wandered around for a couple of hours through a maze of paths through beautiful woods and flowers. My favorite part was this huge rose garden. I spent the majority of my time with Stephen walking through the paths and smelling each flower and saying which one we liked the best. We also went through the green house taking LOADS of pictures.
Afterwards we took the cable car back down. Lars had to go figure some issues out with his phone so Morgan, Stephen and I went down to the ocean to check out the pier and beach area. We ended up walking along the board walk for a long time. There were all these people, mostly high schoolers, jumping off the pier and swimming. It made me jealous of their lives because their after school activity was playing in the ocean with their best mates. We laid out on the grass for a long time and then went and bought sushi and had a small picnic on a grassy field.
Afterwards we all realized we had gotten sunburned (the ozone layer is really thin around New Zealand) and that we all felt a little sticky and gross from walking around all day. We headed back and in about an hour we're going to cook some dinner, go bowling, and then Stephen is having a house warming party at his flat hosted by his flatmates to welcome him to their home.
I can't imagine school starting because this feels like vacation, but we have orientation tomorrow and then sign up for classes on Friday. I feel like my perspective of the city will change drastically once I start to become more familiar with it and also gain more friends.
I'll post pictures very soon.