Finding Nemo at the Aquarium

This week has been full of earthquakes and tsunami warnings. Samoa suffered from a devastating tsunami, caused by a quake, which killed 104 people. The small island nation is receiving aid from it's southern neighbor, New Zealand. A few days later Vanuatu also had a tsunami. Both of these natural disasters caused Auckland Regional Council to call a tsunami warning. Residents were advised to stay off the beaches. The tsunami must have only been a few centimeters for us, because it didn't even make the news.

Yesterday, Borghild and I went to Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter Underwater World. It's pretty small, but we still managed to spend about 90 minutes there. Megalodon, the monster prehistoric shark was the featured display. For the Antarctic portion of Kelly Tarlton's you hop into theme park-styled snow cats and are taken around the small penguin exhibit. The aquarium has two types of penguins, King and Gentoo. To see the sharks, sting rays, turtles, and fishes, there is a conveyor belt that takes you underneath the fish as the swim over you. While we went through the various displays Borghild and I were constantly quoting "Finding Nemo."

Because the buses weren't running yesterday we had to walk to and from the aquarium, one hour each way in the wind and occasional rain. But it was still nice. Woke up this morning and made some pancakes and coffee for breakfast, now back to the studying routine with only two weeks left of lectures before final exams!

Picture 1: Me and Malini at my friend Frank's birthday this week.
Picture 2: One of three sea turtles that are at Kelly Tarlton's that are there for rehab purposes
Picture 3: Standing inside the ancient jaws of Megalodon
Picture 4: The scorpion fish
Picture 5: Me being eaten by Megalodon
Picture 6: Taking a ride on the turtle

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