More on the Wellington Arts Scene

So in only a few days, I've stumbled across various festivals and experienced a bit more of the nightlife. Luckily, there has been no entrance cost for most concerts and festivals.

On Saturday, I went downtown with my American friend Casey, and we stumbled upon three different festivals. The first was the Pacific Island Festival, where there were Polynesian dancers, Samoan food, as well as a Gravity Defying machine (not sure what it has to do with the Pacific Islands, but it was free!).




After that we stumbled upon the Greek Festival, where they were playing Greek music and also selling a lot of Greek food and goods. I stuffed down a tasty pita and continued down the coast.


I then stumbled across a Scottish music performance in front of the famous Te Papa museum, the largest New Zealand museum in the country. I never really liked bagpipes, but this performance was actually really great!


Along with the various daytime events going on, there is also, of course, the nightlife. Because 70% of the population is British-descended, pub life is very much a part of their culture. Two of the great places to go for nightlife is Cuba Street and Courtenay Place, both of which are fun and active streets. A lot of the bars have great cover bands, and everyone here is really obsessed with the 90's so they play a lot of songs from my youth. Even the radio stations here play all of the songs that were popular in America years ago, and most movies hit America months before they hit New Zealand. In fact, half of the programming on the telly is from the U.S. and a lot of their news is about current even in our country... it really reminds me how America-centric the world is. But that's perhaps a topic for another time. Suffice to say, a lot of us Americans have been enchanted by the bar scene- it helps that everyone here is so friendly and there's almost always live music. Luckily, I forgot to hit the bank and so I was broke the entire weekend; this kept me from buying more than one drink at the bar. The music and the atmosphere, however, have been phenomenal.




Above is me with the other Americans on my program going to Victoria University (I'm on the very top right)- they're all a great bunch of people, and I'm really happy to have friends to spend time with before all the kiwi students move into student housing.