Carterton, La Traviata, and The Women

I spoke at the Carterton Rotary Club last Monday night.  Carterton is a little under an hour and a half away from Wellington, so I did what I did with Paraparaumu.  I took the train and then spent the night with a Rotarian’s family.  I took the train out there, met two Rotarians at the train station, and went straight to the meeting.  I love how each club is so different.  This club is significantly out of Wellington, so it seems much more relaxed, none of this city-pace business.  The club was very sociable, like a group of friends who had gathered for a party.  I had a great time giving my speech.  I was closer to the Rotarians than I usually am, so that fostered even more of a sense of community.  They also gave me a great bottle of cabernet sauvignon merlot with the Rotary Centennial label.  Way cool.

That night I stayed with Helen and John Hayes at their home in Greytown (which I believe is the first planned city in New Zealand).  They are both Rotarians, but Helen has been a member for only about a year.  Helen was the woman who had set up me speaking at the club, so that was a treat to be able to meet the woman behind the emails.  Also, it was especially nice to meet John.  John is the newly elected National MP from the Wairarapa electorate.  He has spent years working with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade; has represented New Zealand in Singapore, India, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Papua New Guinea (as High Commissioner), and Iran (as Ambassador); and he played a significant role with Don McKinnon to solve the Bougainville conflict.  Needless to say, this was very interesting for me as an International Affairs student.  He’s done so many awesome things!  He drove me in to Wellington the next morning (he had to attend a caucus meeting at the Beehive), so I got to spend a little over an hour talking to him.  It was a great time.

That night I did something else exciting.  I went to the opera!  I have never been to an opera before, and my friend Alex thought that this one would be a good one with which to begin.  It was La Traviata.  The main plot is that a prostitute, Violetta, and a rich man, Alfredo, fall in love and run away together.  Alfredo’s father convinces Violetta to leave Alfredo for the sake of his family, so she returns to her previous life and marries the baron.  Both Violetta and Alfredo are heartbroken, and in her grief, Violetta’s health takes a turn for the worse.  She dies at the end, but not before Alfredo returns to her and the father apologizes for the wrongs he has committed.  Except for the leads, this was a Kiwi cast, and they were phenomenal.  The Russian woman who played Violetta was just amazing.  Her voice was so clear, so pleasant.  She could sing loudly, softly, high, low, everything.  Of course, I don’t have anything to compare it to, but it was amazing anyways.  The entire thing was in Italian, with some surtiles on the sides.  I loved hearing that language.  I don’t see how an opera could be in anything BUT Italian.  It’s like someone created Italian so that opera singers would have a language to speak.  It really was an enjoyable evening.  I got all dressed up, the most dressed up I have been since being in New Zealand.  Very Wellington.

I have spent the majority of my time between now and then holed up in the library studying.  I have my geology final next Wednesday, so I am trying to learn an entire semester in four days.  The class is not structured very well, which makes it difficult to study.  We had lots of different lecturers, and there is not even an assigned textbook.  There are ‘recommendations,’ but the main professor said that any introductory geology book would do well.  Also, I have not been good about going to lecture.  Mike and I split the lectures (i.e. I went on Wednesday and Thursday, he went on Monday and Wednesday), so we really need to get together to put our notes together.  He is out of town until Saturday, and I am until Sunday, so we shall be getting together on Monday hopefully.  I have spent a good time going through all the online lectures yesterday and today, as well as reading most of the book and looking at the notes that I do have.  I am not too worried.  I am not in New Zealand to be worried.

I don’t want you to get the impression that all I have been doing for two days is study.  Perhaps at home this would be true as I crammed for GT exams, but I am in New Zealand!  I don’t want to have my nose in a book all the time!  One of my friends here is moving to Auckland to take a job in mid-November, so I won’t get to see her much any more.  We met for a coffee/study break yesterday, and I met my friend Dan for a coffee/study break today (he works in the library on marketing business).  I also claim a good seat in the library.  I study in Wellington Central Library, not the Vic Uni Library.  I pick out a desk that overlooks Civic Square, right in front of the huge windows, so I don’t have to look at a book the whole time.

I also enjoy my evenings.  Tonight was absolutely amazing; I needed it after studying all day.  Meredith, Claudia, Lauren, and I met for dinner and then went to a show.  We ate at Strawberry Fare, which was just amazing.  You walk in planning on eating an incredibly small dinner so that you can enjoy their amazing desserts.  The presentation is incredible; I took a picture of my homemade sorbet.  It was incredible food after eating hostel food so often (although, I think it would be incredible anyways).  Next, the show.  We saw The Women: Sex, Sin, and the City.  This show was a riot.  It is billed as ‘These are the ladies who lunch, but who lunch on each other.’  Imagine Sex and the City in play form.  I was literally laughing out loud.  This show had such female stereotypes (it even had a fast-talking valley-accented big-mouthed blonde manicurist) but was still very witty, very clever.  I would see it again; it was that good.  We saw it at The Downstage Theatre, which is a very intimate setting.  I counted 12 men, but there were probably about 15 – I couldn’t see everyone.  Meredith saw one group of women troop in, all sit in the same row, and then the lone man sat at the end.  We decided that he had been recruited as the DD for a Girls Night Out.  I think that the men enjoyed this show as well, though.  It was just so well done that you couldn’t enjoy it.  It’s like How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days – the men won’t see it without a woman, but they don’t mind having to see it.  I would absolutely go again.

And that brings us up to the present.  I am going to the gym tomorrow.  I am going crazy not running.  Then off on another adventure this weekend!  Ciao …