kaikoura to christchurch to auckland

• so sunday morning i took the bus from kaikoura back to christchurch for one more night in dreamland . . . and a quick trip to the antarctic center. christchurch is the jumping-off point for most antarctic exploration so they've built a little museum where you can learn all about life in the big deep freeze. the museum has this room where they keep the temperature at 8 degrees C and then blow some fans through to make the wind chill something like -18 C - they provide coats and overshoes so people can experience antarctic weather. i skipped that experience since i just survived five months of chicago winter. i always suspected chicago was as cold as antarctica - we had weeks and weeks of that sort of weather. i think -18 C is about 10 or 15 degrees F, pretty balmy compared to some of the weather we had this winter.
• the other exhibits were pretty cool, too - info on which countries have stations and where, and pictures of the animals that live around the continent. seems like nothing really lives on antarctica itself - it's too cold, and surprisingly, too DRY. i'm still unclear on how a place with so much ice is dry - i guess the ice is just really, really old, and they don't get any precipitation to speak of, and of course it's never warm enough for the ice to melt. very strange. as intriguing a place as it is, i have no plans to visit. dad, if you're reading this, i don't know how you survived a whole year there. sounds miserable, though the penguins are pretty cute.
• oh, and the antarctic center has a bunch of penguins, too, mostly little blue ones with some kind of injury: broken wing (is it a wing or a flipper or what?), blind in one eye, missing toes, etc. these penguins are native to nz, so they can have a partly-outdoor, partly-indoor living area - no need to keep them on ice all the time. they're really small - no bigger than a cat (and i'm not talking about MY freakishly large cats, i mean no bigger than a NORMAL size house cat). and they really are kind of bluish, dark and shiny like a blueberry. they weren't doing much when i saw them, just huddling in one corner and occasionally waddling around a bit - pretty cute anyway.
• next morning (monday) i mailed a box of stuff back to chicago - no need for me to lug my shoes, wool socks, fleece tops, and assorted souvenirs around southeast asia. r2, if you're reading this, it should arrive at our house in a few weeks, probably by 21 april. can you let me know when it comes? then it was off to the airport again for the last leg of my nz trip - back to auckland for one night, and then on to bangkok.
• i didn't do too much in auckland that afternoon - looked around at the harbor, which i saw on my first day in nz, but was too jet-lagged to appreciate. also i picked up a few things i'll need in laos: extra strength insect repellent, check! can't have too much of that. i was pleased that i remembered which bus to take back to kitty & tim's house - no trouble getting there at all. i arrived just in time for dinner (lucky timing for me).
• so, it's off to bangkok next, with a quick stopover in sydney. more to follow!