Today the group is supposed to go to Abel Tasman Park for the afternoon but Susan and I have decided to stay in town and shop. Steve took off for parts unknown with all the breakfast stuff still in the van last night, so it's leftover pizza for me! Susan had an unopened litre of orange juice stolen out of the fridge sometime overnight. We headed into town about 9:30 and Susan decided to be touristy and brought along her little rolly luggage so we could put our purchases in it as we went.
We were very dorky tourists - I even bought a bag and a skirt from a street vendor. We also went to the Nelson Provincial Museum as they had an exhibit of Da Vinci's inventions. It was pretty neat and you could actually play with some of the models, like the Archimedes Screw and a do-it-yourself portable bridge made out of short logs.
We found a Dutch Cheese shop and Susan stocked up on salty dutch licorice for her fiance, and I went to a bakery for a chicken, camembert, and cranberry panini. There's a lot of good food here :)
We also went to another grocery store to stock up on non-perishables and water for the next leg of the trip. Interesting note: In Nelson, Shopping carts are called trundlers.
We got back to the hostel and made dinner (butter chicken and a 1/2 pineapple for me). The rest of the group was back by then - turns out they didn't go to Abel Tasman, just to a closer beach, so I'm very glad that we stayed in town. Nelson is really nice - the architecture is a mishmosh of various European and old west American styles. Very odd and charming.
Jess and I talked about the fact that she's been working in a Vietnamese orphanage for the last few months (and is going back after this trip). It very depressing. She's working with little kids who have a variety of developmental problems, and the ones that don't get adopted will probably be sold into the sex trade when they hit 7 years old or so. Jess is an amazingly strong person (as well as the most energetic party girl in the group). We began talking about microloans and NGOs and by sheer coincidence I happened to have in my bag a book called "Banker to the Poor" which I picked up at ALA, written by a Nobel Peace Prize Winner that she had written in her notebook to research. She is now the happy owner of that book. To illustrate her other side, Ronnie and Norrie saw a t-shirt in the shops that they had to buy for her with the following slogan on the back: "In order to be old and wise you must first be young and stupid"
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