Around town

Now that the semester has started, things have slowed down a bit, so I'm going to compress a few weeks of activities into one superpost! First there was birthday week. Arleah's birthday was February 29th, so we went out to dinner at a French restaurant and got crepes.

Next there was my birthday on the 1st, where we went out for cake and then to karaoke (I didn't take any pictures though).

Classes started, so things started to get a bit busy, however, we went to the opening concert of the Pacifika Festival where people came from all over the Pacific Islands to perform. It was in western springs park, which had a nice lake and some beautiful waterfowl.

The performers were numerous and wonderful, but since it was getting pretty dark I didn't take too many pictures.

The next day, I headed off on my entomology field trip from friday to sunday. We bussed out to Waharau regional park and learned how to collect and preserve insects. Some highlights were encountering this beauty on a trail at night:

And finding a Puriri moth, a beautiful and giant native moth of New Zealand.

I thought about keeping the moth for my collection, but let it go, not just because it's a lovely animal, but also because it's so large you have to gut it to preserve it properly, and it comes out looking brown and shriveled. Yuck.

I got a good start on my collection and now I feel a bit like a taxidermist, but it's a pretty interesting field.