Auckland Museum and Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World

Auckland Museum from the front-it was such a huge building with 3 layers and it was incredible! I love how all these artifacts from many generations ago are able to be preserved and kept to one day be displayed in a museum. I think my favorite part of the museum was looking at the Maori cultural exhibits where we learned how Maori survived, made weapons, jewelry, homes, and what their life was like in general.

A Maori boat

A starfish at the Underwater world-okay I went out of order on my pictures, but that just keeps you intrigued right :)

probably the most disgusting fish in existence- this poisonous Weaver fish uses it's nasty brown color to camouflage itself with the sandy bottom so when it sees its prey it can poison it and eat it. It looks peaceful and old, but that is just part of its disguise.

Christine, Allie, Rebecca inside a snow-trac on our way to investigate the Antarctic and the penguins

Allie with a sting ray!!

So small and FLUFFY!!!

Some of the fish swimming in the Underwater world aquarium-they look cool when the camera captures them moving like that

So I wasn't thinking about keeping this picture because it is so blurry, but then when I looked at it again I thought the effect of how the sting ray's mouth is open and the body is still moving makes it look like a ghost, so I kept it for your enjoyment :)

Kara, traditional Maori man (beastly muscles), and Allie-some of our friends said we looked scared when we were posing for the picture. This was taken right after the Maori Cultural Experience performance, in which we got to listen to Maori songs, dances, the Haka, and watch the stick game (which isn't as easy as when we practiced it the first day of Literacy class). In that class we just passed the stick across us to a partner, but in the performance, the 4 performers twirled and passed it to each other-all with rhythm and synchronization.

Performers doing a traditional Maori dance

At the museum there was a Maori large hut on display and if you took your shoes off you could go in and explore the vastness of the building, and here is one of the pictures I took while I was exploring inside. In Maori culture there are many wood workings with inventive designs and facial expressions, where the eyes are usually big and the tongue is sticking out-this is supposed to symbolize defiance and courage.

Another wood work statue

Me in front of the entrance to the Auckland Museum!

There I am with the Auckland Museum behind me :)

It was a very fun experience to go to the Auckland Museum, spend a few hours there just looking around, and then head off to the underwater world. The museum was much more interesting because of the vastness of the building, and there were more interactive things to do there. For example, I got to go into a volcano house-you actually got to watch a volcano erupt and then feel the earth quake as it erupted. I wasn't scared, but this one child started crying and it was so sad! Earthquakes are scary though. The rest of the time Kara and I just walked around and browsed the different exhibits as we walked through the Asian artifacts, the war memorial, and the natural world exhibits. It was a very spiritual experience too because of the history behind all the artifacts, and just knowing that real people used these weapons, pots, tools, jewelry, and buildings. Their stories are real, and they have been passed down to us. It makes me wonder what I will pass on to the generations after me, as my legacy. Some may say that museums are boring, but I am a history nerd and I just love the power of the past.

Kelly Tarlton's Underwater World was okay-it would have been more fun if I came as a child. There were some fun activities, like walking through the shark aquarium, and then going on a snow trac car to visit the penguins, but mostly, all of us were tired from the museum and not eating much, so we were ready to go home after half an hour in the underwater world. Of course, we had to stay for another hour after that, but actually, with the gift shop, the kids station, and looking at some of the exhibits kept the time rolling at a steady rate. My favorite part of this stop was watching the sting ray in the water and seeing all the fish. It was too bad I didn't get to swim with any of the sea life but being near them was cool too. I also got to walk through an exhibit of what a ship's cabins would look like, which was pretty awesome. Overall, that part of the adventure was focusing on two explorers to the Antarctic, Scott, and Shackleton. I knew about Shackleton from my reading in children's literature "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World," by Jennifer Armstrong. Shackleton and his crew's story is amazing because amongst all odds, they were able to make it back safely to civilization without sub coming to the icy frost of the Antarctic. Scott and his fellow expedition weren't so lucky, and some of them died while they were exploring the penguins over there. I didn't really learn that much about Scott's discoveries actually. Most of the time I was just wandering around and taking pictures of the fish and shark models, and let me tell you, those shark models have sharp teeth! Those teeth weren't even as sharp as they are in real life because they most likely have been trimmed, like Hannah said. Oh my goodness, I would never want to be inside one of those chompers!

Overall, it was a fun Saturday and now I am getting ready for church, and then after that and choir practice, I am going to start packing for the trip to the South Island! I hope I'll be brave enough to at least do the arc swing and horseback riding...but I really want to bungee jump. *Mom and Dad I promise to be extra careful with my eyes and to jump right so nothing bad happens*

I'm not bringing my laptop while on this trip, so my next post will be a long one with lots of pictures of Queenstown and Christchurch.

Til then!